Growth Dynamics Get Down

Symptoms:

After having been in the same role for over 5 years, Ted was stuck. "What else can I talk about with these people that we haven't gone over all ready?" was the question Ted kept asking himself (with no answer) after he did a review of his clients. He knew he didn't want to be the pesky salesman that just made a meaningless follow up call, or who stopped in to drop off donuts and see what orders might be around to pick up, but he was also very aware that his manager expected him to keep growing the territory and expanding the accounts.

Symptoms:

“The weather is changing; flowers and trees are popping out and I am exactly the same” thought Sam. Sam has been in sales for her entire career. She knows she does well enough as she has climbed the ranks through various companies, but she tends to plateau with medium accounts. Sam has yet to earn some of the major accounts and or territories that make salespeople’s careers.

Symptoms:

Sophia loves selling. She loves it so much that she enjoys trying to sell her products to anyone that will listen. Her philosophy is: “No stone should go unturned.” Over the years, the number of prospects she has contacted, presented to and worked up proposals for have always been the highest in the company, but her sales results place her in the bottom quarter of the sales team.

Monday Morning Manager

Symptoms:

“Here we go again,” Jim thought as he walked into his last call of the day. He always scheduled this monthly call to be the last of his day as it left him annoyed, angry, and confused when he walked out the door. Jim just could not create the type of relationship with this business owner that he felt was key to his success with other clients. There were never issues with products, pricing, or communications from Jim, his agency, or the manufacturers, but these monthly update and prospecting meetings always ended up making Jim feel like a complete failure. Jim’s positive, enthusiastic, and lighthearted approach obviously missed the mark with this client, and Jim was sure the client disliked the meetings as much as he did.

Symptoms:

How did it happen again? Ed believed he nailed that presentation and felt he’d been as prepared as he could be for any questions the prospect could have had about his company’s latest technology.

It was early Monday morning and Brett was lying awake in bed, worrying about his upcoming week. Although his business and personal life was running about average so far this year, he had fallen into the habit of replaying past failures in his head, worrying about every little thing on his numerous To Do lists, and allowing a constant stream of negative internal talk. All of this was causing him a lot of anxiety and stress, both before and during many of his business development meetings.

Good morning & Greetings, here's this week's selling scenario to think about.

Symptoms:

Amanda was working through her list of live opportunities after putting her pipeline through a “kill it or close it” exercise. She set up appointments to move her sales process along with several of the live opportunities. She was steadfast in naming her meetings, sending homework, and even let some her more notorious feet draggers know these were decision meetings. She was ready to do what she had to do to start meeting her sales goals for the quarter.

Symptoms:

Ryan hated the pipeline review meetings his sales manager scheduled every two weeks. These meetings were meant to help the sales team validate the actual work being done towards hitting goals and meeting objectives, but they also helped determine what opportunities really weren’t opportunities at all.