Episode #165: Reflecting On Your Learnings In Sales
THE Sales Japan Series
You are as only as good as your last sale is harsh but true as a synopsis of our sales life. Bosses are not interested in what you did last year, because that is history, done and dusted. They are focused on this year’s numbers. They got their big commissions, bonuses, promotions, their five star holiday with the family. They are looking at you for a bigger number this year. You might be thinking just how you are going to pony up that bigger number, when getting last year’s number was a herculean effort.
We tend to be like sales locusts. We swarm in, eat everything we can find and then move on to find the next meal. The reflective salesperson is a rare bird because the pressure is always forward facing. “Don’t tell me about yesterday. Show me what you can do for me today” is the driving philosophy and we tend to get sucked into that vortex. This translates into forward momentum without allowing us time to ruminate and reflect on lessons learnt throughout the year.
Take some time for yourself and go back and visit the deals. This means the ones won and those lost. The records on those lost can often be scanty, because we tend to lick our wounds on the move, as we are off to secure the next deal. You may have a strong regime of record keeping within your Content Management System (CMS) or you may be like a lot of salespeople and hate the CMS. You see entering a bunch of stuff in the CMS as a massive waste of your valuable time, when you could be talking to clients.
Hopefully, you at least kept some notes of your meeting discussions with the clients? Whether you were a good boy or girl and kept the CMS up to date or you were a rebel and just kept you own notes, you will have a record to consult. If you are reading this and you have nothing, then what the hell are you thinking? Start keeping detailed notes of all sale’s meetings, so that you can be sure you are clear what the client wants and what is the next step.
Assuming you are not totally crazy and have some records, make some time to go back and consult them. This should not be some casual review of Caesar’s triumphs. Make it more specific than that. Analyse the notes by looking for some things that went well and areas where improvements could be made. The better organised among us will have ensured that immediately after the meeting, they could review their notes, make the writing legible, flesh out some key things they didn’t have a chance to write down and add their thoughts. Those thoughts should also include an analysis of what went well and what needs to be worked on to do better next time. This is the best time to do that. Everything is fresh in our mind and it allows us to grab the gains immediately and apply them to the next meeting, which might be in the next thirty minutes.
If you are reviewing your sales calls over the year, with this type of insight, then the whole exercise becomes that much more pointed and valuable. This would be ideal but even if your were not so well prepared, then make a commitment to change your ways and become better organised in the next year. Take the notes you do have and look for patterns.
Where did the client originate from? Did you identify the client or did your organisation generate the client as a lead for you? What was the client’s problem? Is there a commonality in play here, where this problem may be a trend or is it just contained within this particular company? What was the reaction to your pricing. Did they think it was expensive or reasonable. Did you supply more than one solution? Was there a chance to spider out into other parts of the organisation and help them with their problems? Did the person you were dealing with get moved and the replacement prove to be a pain and not helpful? Did you make a note to wait for their replacement to reconnect with that company and try again or did it just fade out and disappear from your mind?
There is so much rich material in the review process, but we miss it, because we are so busy and constantly moving. We need to organise time to review each month what happened and then gather it all up and take an annual view of the what happened. Time spent in this activity will set us up well for the new year.