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.

I often debrief sales calls with my clients and hear of the great opportunities they’ve just uncovered, but the longer we discuss what happened the reality about the greatness of the opportunity changes dramatically. One particular part of a successful call tends to be missing when the salesperson shares the details of the call. That missing element more often than not is that no deadline of timeline has been agreed to or even discussed. And for my money, when you don’t have a deadline for a decision there is not much of a chance of completing a sale.