Episode #277: The Salesperson's Time, Treasure and Talent

Sales is such a rollercoaster. You have a good month or a good quarter then you hit a wall. Clients change their mind, something happens to the supply chain beyond your control and the order get cancelled. You usually cannot control the quality of the solution being delivered and someone else in the organisation doesn’t do their job professionally enough and you suffer. We do have total control though over our time, talent and treasure. Are we making the most of this control?

Time is the most expensive asset for any salesperson. Where you spend your time determines everything. I deal with many different suppliers and potential suppliers as a client. I notice that very few firms are good at follow-up. We know that finding a new client is vastly more expensive and difficult that extending the purchase profile of an existing client. We also know that most salespeople give up after three rejections when cold calling. Given we know all of this, you would think that a good portion of a salesperson’s time would be allocated to keeping in touch with buyers. Trying to stay top of mind with a buyer takes a lot of effort and time, but if your competitor isn’t doing it, then you are more likely to win.

I am going to translate my book Japan Presentations Mastery into Japanese. The firm I have chosen is a good example of sustained follow-up. They met me at a networking event a couple of years ago, but have kept in touch. They are top of mind. I am busy, so it is an easy decision to use them, because I know them already and I don’t have to run around trying to drink from the firehose of all possible translation service providers. We know our clients are always time poor, so this is the type of mental equation they are applying too, so we need to make the decision as easy as possible for them. The time they have invested in me is going to mean a deal for them that others won’t get.

What are we doing with our time? Do we have good systems of follow-up, can we keep track of all of our potential clients, can we automate the process so that no matter how busy we become it gets done? It is no good putting them on the weekly email blast list and imagining that you are top of mind. Your weekly email is probably sitting in their junk mail or clutter list or they may have written to your marketing department to take their name off the distribution list and no one has told you that. We need to invest our time wisely and keep in in touch with potential buyers, lapsed buyers and existing buyers has to be a top priority.

Talent is time bound. If you are a master of selling via fax machines then you are not going to be selling much, because technology has moved on. Are you a master of content marketing and using social media to sell yourself? Are you laying a breadcrumb trail back you through business social media posts which highlight your knowledge and capability? Are you comfortable in front of the video camera as you create content for free which gets pushed out through all the channels to attract buyers or to build greater credibility? The flip side of all of this is getting known has never been easier. Okay, it is not easy, but it is easier than twenty years ago. We didn’t have these tools before to project ourselves globally and locally.

Having the skills required for the sale is a given, although so many salespeople don’t have the basics under control as yet. In this modern deluge of free information and availability of access to the best minds on any subject, how could that possible be? Back in 1939 Dale Carnegie opened up public classes for salespeople. At that time, if your company provided sales training then you got trained or you had to work it out by yourself. By providing open public classes any salesperson could access the highest level of sales training. All they had to do was spend a microscopic part of their treasure to pay for it. Fast forward to today and the same things apply. If your own company doesn’t provide sales training or very good sales training, then invest in yourself and go access it.

Do the top salespeople stop learning? Do they stop buying the videos, audio sets, podcasts and books? They are the top people because they never stop investing in themselves, so that they can stay current with whatever the market throws at them or whatever technological shifts upset the apple cart. The critical other piece of the puzzle is that they not only spend their treasure on educating themselves, they apply what they have learnt, then customise it and refine it further to suit their particular situation.

Time is our greatest asset as salespeople and we must maximise its power. We have talent but the world keeps changing so we need to keep re-inventing ourselves and adding to our talent bank. We have access to an immeasurable amount of free information on selling and we have the best of the best, providing their ideas and insights, if we pony up some treasure. It has never been a better time in history than to be in sales today. Let’s seize this opportunity and go for it.