Hey, good afternoon, it's time for another fast tip on Friday. I want to get you to stop and think for a minute about how your sales week went and how you did as a business development professional. And whether you collected enough decisions to get you on track or to keep you on track for the goals that you've set for yourself this year.
It's never a bad time to slow down and look at what you've done, and really get inside what it is that created the success that you took to the bank this week. And so one of the things that we always have to get people to slow down and really focus on is whether or not they're closing, or in our terms, Growth Dynamics, we don't like the word closing. We like are you collecting enough decisions? Are you asking people to say yes or no? Either one's acceptable. And I found over my years, my 30 plus years in the business advising, business development professionals in all kinds of businesses, that there are a lot of people that say they have a real problem closing. And for a long time, I have to admit, before I was in the program as a trainee instead of a trainer, I would have to tell you, I had a closing problem, too. But the truth is, a closing problem is not the real problem. The truth is, you have an opening problem, which means you didn't set the rules of engagement up for the people you were trying to do business with. If they didn't know you expect them to make a decision. You shouldn't be expecting them to make a decision. And you shouldn't be annoyed that they didn't, but rather, you should be aggravated with yourself that you didn't structure and manage the expectations of the process correctly so that this wouldn't happen to you.
There's a line we share at the beginning of all our training groups when we first meet and get together. The best time to defuse a bomb is before it goes off. And sales is full of bombs. It's full of opportunities to have things blow up in your hands and make a mess out of something that shouldn't be messy. Collecting decisions should never be messy. It should be expected.
So when you take a look at your results this week, and you think about how to do a better job next week, stay focused on this. It's not a closing problem. It's an opening problem and make a commitment to manage expectations and be more disciplined about how you make it clear to the prospect that you're happy to talk business with them. But you expect them to make decisions and not just end the discussion with the proverbial thanks a lot, really loved it, call me back later excuse for you sucked and I can't tell you out loud.
Thanks again. Have a great week. Have a great weekend. Go make money next week. Take care
