Monday Morning Manager
Good morning & Greetings, here's this week's selling scenario to think about.
Symptoms:
Norm hung up the phone and was absolutely ecstatic, jumping up and down while searching the office for someone to high five, all because the sale he'd been chasing for the last six months had just closed. His relief was palpable and once he shared the news with his sales manager that his drought was over, Norm planned on taking the rest of the day off to celebrate the good news.
He had been feeling some pressure to close something, so he focused on the two or three deals already started a few months earlier. Prospecting got put on the back burner until he could taste victory and he was savoring the flavor big-time with today's news that he won that big deal.
Diagnosis:
Norm was riding a roller coaster, and a ride he'll feel frequently until he realizes that prospecting can never be made less important than closing. Sure, it feels good to win, but every win has a first step that must happen for a last step to ever be possible. Norm's sales career will never be one of consistent growth and success because he still lives for the good feeling of closing a sale. To him, prospecting is just a necessary evil and, until he has nothing left in the funnel to work on, it's unlikely that he'll be sitting down to make many first-approaches. And since his pipeline has always been lacking due to his disdain for prospecting, each win becomes overly important to him and he stays on the roller coaster ride.
Prescription:
Too many sales people are addicted to the rush from a successful pursuit coming to a close. That jolt of excitement when you get a signature should never be dismissed, but to experience that as often as you would like, or as often as your quota requires, takes a stronger commitment to fundamental prospecting. The best day of any sale is the day you make first contact and open an opportunity, because without that first call, the close is an impossibility.
Norm needs to train himself to celebrate prospecting wins, the calls that turn up new sales opportunities, almost as much as he celebrates the final victory of signing a deal. It's the only way to insure dependable success in the sales business. And by having a full and consistently productive pipeline, you will actually experience the thrill of victory more often.
Critical Thinking:
It is easy to always chase the win and the feeling that closing a deal gives you. After reading/listening to this week's Monday Morning Manager are you chasing the feeling of winning or are you working to keep your prospecting and pipeline strong?
Final Thought for the Morning:
"Prospecting is like oxygen to a sales rep ... without it you'll suffocate." ~ Unknown
"We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit." ~ Aristotle
Your Top 3 Goals & Tactics for the Week
LAST WEEK: Update us on how things went last week with your stated Goals and GD Tactics.
THIS WEEK: Please share your Top 3 Goals for this week and the GD tactics you plan to deploy.
