4 To Dos to Improve Sales Everyday Blog Feature
Molly D Protosow

By: Molly D Protosow on April 17th, 2013

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4 To Dos to Improve Sales Everyday

sellers | Sales Tips | Sales Training | business | strategy | A to B | optimize | dials | KPIs | First Appointment | Completed calls | Pipeline Management

Everyone who’s serious about accomplishing their goals will find a way to inspect their work to ensure that they’re making progress.  You should too.

To Do List:

1. Do a daily pipeline check.

2. Inspect your calendar.

3. Check your KPIs.

4. Keep testing new strategies.

1. There is nothing more sobering than either beginning or ending the day by looking at your pipeline.  Oh, my goodness!  Although you’re very busy, you may realize something new and say to yourself, “What am I so busy doing again?  Because - whatever it is - it’s not changing my pipeline.”  Your income is going to come out of that pipeline.  Everything you do needs to be coming out of that pipeline.  You want to make sure that you’re doing the things that can actually shape and improve the look of that pipeline. 

 

 desk_calendar_month_800_clr_38922. Inspect your calendar. If you look at your pipeline first, you will bereminded  of certain call opportunities. It will help you make decisions about calling or emailing some folks and the  decisions you make will impact your time.  Now, go look at that calendar on your desk or phone and ask yourself, “Where’s my time going? Am I spending my time in a way that makes the most sense, given what my pipeline looks like and what it needs to look like?"  Align your activities with your goals.  The single biggest mistake that people make is being unable to focus on the activities that will bring them closer to their goals on a daily basis. Don't make that mistake!

 

3. Track your KPIs.  In sales, KPIs are the number of dials, completed calls, visits, and sales.  What does each one mean? Track the dials that lead to first meetings, introduction meetings, meetings that begin a new sale either with an existing customer or a new one. Don’t count the number of times that you simply pick up the phone and call someone.   Track the number of completed calls or the number of times you actually speak on the phone with that person.  Track the number of First Appointments, or first meetings that initiate the sales process on the verge of a new opportunity, and track how many of the First Appointments are closed.

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After a while, you will begin to learn your ratios and find a pattern.

How many dials does it take to get a completed call?

How many completed calls are required to get an appointment?

How many appointments result in a certain number of sales?

What is the average value of each sale? 

When you start to work with those ratios and develop new strategies, you will gain an understanding of what you’re really accomplishing. If you don’t, you will inevitably do the wrong things because how else will you know if you’re generating the right number of leads or allocating the right amount of time unless you know the number of dials it takes to get a sale?  Track your KPIs all the time. When you track things, you’re subconsciously driving yourself towards an improvement in behavior. 

 

4. Keep testing new strategies.  It’s very common to conclude that the best way to drive from point A to B is this one route and to do everything in a pattern that utilizes that proven method. Yes, indeed consistency is great. However, how do you know that there isn’t another smoother or more efficient way to double up on productivity?  Unless you’re testing out new strategies all the time, you won’t.   

 

 

 At all times, think about:

“What’s another way that I could get old leads to come back and talk to me?” 

“What’s a way that I could get sales that had stalled out to come back?”

“How do I get sales that were this big to be a little bit bigger?”

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 You will begin to develop a certain amount of energy derived from this type of creative thinking and before you know it, you’re suggesting things and doing things, spending time in a way that you hadn’t done before.  Your focus will be on making these newly found strategies work for you. The energy associated with testing these strategies is something that can’t be measured, but it is the single most common factor evident in all great sales people.

 

So there are four things you want to be doing:  check your daily pipeline, inspect your calendars, track your KPIs, and test out new strategies all the time.

 

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About the Author:

Steve_Bookbinder

Steve Bookbinder is Co-founder and CEO of Digital Media Training, a training partner to some of the most successful sales organizations around the world.  DMT delivers training which treats sales as a competitive sport and changes behavior needed to help sellers consistently win.  DMT is a leader in M-learning training reinforcement with a proven track record of improving sales through training. Steve has delivered more than 500 keynote speeches at national sales meetings, conducted more than 3,000 training workshops and trained, coached and managed more than 35,000 sellers and managers from leading companies around the world for more than 20 years.

 

 

About Molly D Protosow

Molly Protosow is the COO and Training Strategist for DMTraining. She manages the day-to-day business and training operations while helping research and develop new training programs as well as refreshing signature programs to reflect the newest sales trends, technology, and best practices. Molly utilizes her wide-range of skills to create sales and marketing assets focused on delivering value to DMT’s clients. Molly has a passion for learning and leveraging new knowledge and experiences. Outside of DMTraining, Molly is a hard core Pittsburgh sports fan, enjoys staying active by running and golfing, and unwinds by reading and playing the piano.

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