If you don’t have a clear answer to the question of whom you plan to sell something to today, it’s time to consider the 3 causes of insufficient sales.
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In a previous episode I asked the question “to whom do you plan to sell something today?”
Many people don’t have a good answer to that question. In fact, many have absolutely no idea who might buy from them today, and if that’s the case — if you’re not sure — that indicates 3 very specific problems.
1. Inadequate lead flow. Without sufficient leads in your pipeline, it is unlikely that anyone will buy from you today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Inadequate lead flow is probably the single biggest cause of failure among salespeople today. It is also likely the biggest cause of stress and anxiety. Many business owners and salespeople waste enormous amounts of time “puttering around” with things like social media, blogs and tweaks to their websites, instead of addressing the biggest problem in their business, which is very likely inadequate lead flow.
Where have your best leads come from historically? Where do your best leads come from now? And where can you go, right now, to get more of the quality leads you need to fill your pipeline? Without solid answers to these important questions, you will continue to struggle.
2. Not enough feet on the street. Many businesses know they need to hire more salespeople. But then they distract themselves with minutiae and rationalize their reasons for not taking action. As a result, they continue to operate far below their potential day after day.
Those intent on building their business by hiring salespeople, don’t spend their days doing product research for $200 orders. They don’t spend the majority of their time responding to others and putting out fires. They don’t continue to make themselves the center of the business, and then wonder why they don’t have time to do anything else.
Instead, they spend their days targeting, recruiting and hiring the people they need… and they leave all the excuses about why they can’t do it to their inferior competitors.
Why? Because they know that talking about what they want to do or need to do or plan to do someday is worthless compared to taking action on what you really need to do today.
3. Poor conversion skills. Let’s face it, if you’ve already addressed the points above, meaning that you DO have adequate lead flow and you DO have enough feet on the street, and if you’re still not closing enough sales, then you have a conversion issue.
Having the ability to convert leads into sales is not optional in our business. It’s not a “nice to have,” it’s a “must have.” If we’re being honest, it is one of the single most important responsibilities of any true sales professional.
Because ultimately, it’s not about networking and it’s not about schmoozing.
It’s not about tweeting or liking or friending. These things may all be helpful to some degree or other, but if you want to get paid in sales, it’s ultimately about converting qualified leads into sales. If you have questions or comments on this topic, please enter them below.
Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “the purpose of a business is to create a customer.” If you take that to heart, you’ll recognize that creating customers means having the ability to convert leads into sales.
If you need help in that area, I encourage you to take a full-year, risk-free test-drive of Top Secrets of Customer Acquisition. You can get details at topsecrets.com/tsca.
Or, if you’re a smart, focused independent distributor doing a reasonable volume of sales, join the AIM SmartEQP community and get an unrivaled combination of EQP Buying Power, Quality Connections and Cutting-Edge Training at smarteqp.com.