Did You Do Everything You Could Do?

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The recent movie release, ‘Hope Springs’ has an interesting message in it for sales professionals. Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep play a couple that are struggling to re-ignite their relationship. They go to a town, Hope Springs, for intensive couple’s therapy to work with a renowned psychologist in hope of saving their marriage. At one point in the film, the psychologist meets with Jones and asks a thought provoking question, “Have you done everything, I mean everything, you can to make this marriage work?” The question stops Jones in his tracks as he ponders on the question.

It’s a good question to ask yourself as you kick-off 2013. Are you doing everything, I mean everything, to be successful in sales. Here are a number of questions that will help you get to the answer.

  • It’s Monday morning. Is your calendar blocked off for the week with proactive business development or do you start preparing for your week when you hit your desk? (You know, developing the list of prospects you’re going to contact, work on your email templates or researching target companies.) By the time you start working, your best competitor has already contacted and set appointments with your best prospects.
  • Do you ask for coaching and advice from peers, mentors or your boss? Or have you somehow slipped into complacency, allowing your sales skills to slowly diminish? Do you invest in yourself or wait for your company to come up with the investment dollars?
  • Have you written down key objections from your prospects and/or customers and crafted smart responses and redirects? Or do you continue to get stumped by the same questions and issues each month. (Insanity is repeating the same behavior…..)
  • Are you consistently doing the sales activity needed to generate new opportunities? It’s a fairly simple formula. If you don’t have enough opportunities in your sales pipeline, you need to change something in your ‘go to’ market strategy. Are you doing enough activity? Is it the right activity? And are you saying and doing the right things when executing the activity? Are you calling on the right people at the right level?

You get the point. So ask yourself the question… Have you done everything, I mean everything, to achieve your goals for 2013?

Good Selling!

Colleen Stanley

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Colleen Stanley
Colleen Stanley is president of SalesLeadership, Inc. a business development consulting firm specializing in sales and sales management training. The company provides programs in prospecting, referral strategies, consultative sales training, sales management training, emotional intelligence and hiring/selection. She is the author of two books, Emotional Intelligence For Sales Success, now published in six languages, and author of Growing Great Sales Teams.

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