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Start Managing Your Time Today
One of my favorite “Salesperson’s excuses” for not doing any business is: “I’m so bogged down in paperwork I don’t have time to make the calls, let alone go on appointments.”
My reply to this is always the same. I say, “There’s a very simple solution. Just stop selling altogether and there won’t be any paperwork.” Of course there won’t be any job either, but that’s beside the point.
A very important key to organizing your time as a salesperson is to always remember:
Paperwork time is infinite, Selling time is not.
You can only sell when clients and prospects are around; let’s say between 9AM and 5PM. However, paperwork is a one person task that can be done 24 hours a day, even at 3AM on a Saturday morning. Now I’m not telling you to do paperwork at 3AM Saturday morning, in fact I don’t want you to. I want you to have a life: I think that’s extremely important, but you get the point.
Oftentimes there’s no way around it. Very few people in this world became successful working 40 hours a week. You wouldn’t be the only person to put in extra time or take work home with you.
Why do paperwork if you can be talking to a client on the phone or in person? If you absolutely have to do paperwork during normal business hours, block out a certain time to do it. Don’t do it as you’re making phone calls. Try to avoid momentum breaking starts and stops.
Never do anything during “Prime Selling Time,” that can be done at any other time. The whole idea of working smart is to be able to call; speak to; and see as many clients and prospects as possible during a limited period of time. Maximize your effort.
If you liked this time management tip and found value in it, click this link for my new audio program, “Time Management Skills That Work”, where you’ll find 20 tips just like this one guaranteed to help you save time, work smarter, see more prospects and increase your sales. Check it our now!
Always Follow Through
Anyone who has ever followed my articles, blog postings, videos and podcasts knows that I’m passionate about the importance of prospecting. Time and again you’ve heard me say, “If you’re not making the calls, nothing else matters.”
Well let me amend that a bit, because as it turns out, there is one other thing that does matter: If you’re going to make the calls and set up the appointments, please remember to show up!!!
You’re probably saying, “What kind of boob would make an appointment and not show up?” Obviously the kind of boob that doesn’t want to do business; as my wife can attest to.
My wife, Linda, was attempting to find a tree service that could cut down and remove one tree from our property and cut back and trim a number of others. She asked a friend for a referral and received two names.
The first service came highly recommended because while they charged more, they were “The EXPERTS!” So, Linda called them, left a message, they called back, set up an appointment and guess what; that’s right, they didn’t show up. I guess Linda’s friend forgot to tell her there was one thing they weren’t expert on.
The 2nd service was very nice. He showed up on time, looked around and told Linda he’d get back to her with an estimate in “the next couple of days.”
Two weeks later; no estimate; but he did call to say his father had been sick and he needed to take some time to straighten things out and would it be OK if he dropped off the estimate in the next couple of days. Linda was very sympathetic and said “No problem, in fact email it if you want.”
Needless to say the estimate never arrived, either in person or via email. I guess following up is another thing that matters.
My favorite is the 3rd character she called. This was a recommendation from a friend of mine. He called to say he doesn’t like to make appointments but he’ll be around “Next week,” and he’ll call when he is in our area.
We didn’t hear from him for 2 to 3 weeks, when all of a sudden he called to ask “Do you still want me to come?” Linda said, “I thought you were going to contact me a couple of weeks ago?” He said, “I was busy (wrong answer).” To which Linda replied, “That’s OK, I found someone else to do the job.”
Here’s the lesson; just because you made the calls and booked the appointments it doesn’t end there. Prospecting is also about showing up for the appointment (on time), following up and letting each prospect and client know their business is important to you.
If you want to learn more about prospecting and how to use it to supercharge your activity, get more appointments and increase your sales, join me on September 22nd at 6PM Eastern Time for a two (2) hour simulcast on “Prospecting Skills that Work.”
For $59 you’ll learn how to:
- Overcome the fear of rejection
- Develop a call counting system that will show you how much activity you need to generate on a daily basis in order to hit your goals.
- Control the conversation
- Anticipate and turn around any objection that comes your way.
Making the Calls
About 6 months ago I had the opportunity to address Carolina Chapter of the National Speakers Association at one of their monthly meetings in Charlotte. The topic was Sales with an emphasis on how to prospect for business.
One young man in the audience, who had only been in the speaking business a short time, and did not have a sales background, contacted me a few days after the meeting so that he could set up an appointment to come to my office and pick my brain some more, which was just fine by me.
I talked to him for a couple of hours about sales; prospecting; the importance of “making the calls,” tracking your activity; using a script and handling objections. But most of all I emphasized that making the calls on a consistent everyday basis was critical.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. My wife, Linda, and I were at the National Speakers Association Convention in Scottsdale, Arizona. Sure enough, I ran into the young man who had come to my house for sales advice. He informed me he was “Making the calls,” and guess what: He was booking business; funny how that works!
With all the excitement about LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and all these other social networking sites, sooner or later you’re actually going to have to talk to somebody if you want to do business. Social networking sites are great for creating awareness and keeping your name in front of people; it’s called marketing. But it’s real hard to close a sale on Facebook.
This young man proved that there’s still a place (an important place) for making the calls. In fact, the last thing he said to me was, “I now have to get better at my technique,” to which I replied, “That’ll come. What’s more important is that you made the calls, because without that nothing else matters.”
If You Don’t Care, Why Should Your Customers?
Two days ago, my wife, Linda, and I were at the Phoenix airport standing on the check-in line at Southwest Airlines preparing to fly home. The line was long, but moving like lightning. On the opposite side of the terminal, facing the Southwest counter is the US Air check-in counter, which also has a long line, but unfortunately for its customers, was moving as fast as a turtle with a broken leg.
A woman in front of us remarked about this and wondered why. I said, “Very simple; Southwest cares, US Air doesn’t. There’s a reason one airline is perpetually in Chapter 11 and the other turns a profit. Look behind the counter of each airline,” I said. Southwest has about 16 kiosks where you can check in, with the help of a Southwest employee. With US Air you’re lucky if they have 3 people there to help, with one of them being a manager, who usually stands there dumbfounded muttering, “Wow, that’s a long line.”
At that point I decided to conduct an experiment. I focused on a person on the US Air line who was about as far back as I was on the Southwest line to see how much faster I would get to the front than she would.
Well, with easily 50 to 75 people in front of us, Linda and I reached the counter and checked in in 6 minutes! I took a look over to the US Air line and the woman I had chosen had barely moved. She was maybe 6 or 7 people closer to the front of the line than she was when we first started. Now you might think that’s incredible, but I would say that’s pathetic.
There are no magic formulas out there. Being successful in business and life is very much about caring. Caring enough about what you do to strive to be great at it. Caring about your customers and wanting them to have a good experience. Caring about the people that work for you (Ever notice how cheerful Southwest employees are vs. US Air employees who always look like they’d rather be anywhere but working for US Air) so that they pass that attitude on to the customers.
Whether in boom times or tough times save people time, create a hassle free atmosphere and make their lives easier and they’ll find a way to buy from you, plus they’ll tell others to do the same.
Change is Hard But Doing Nothing is Harder
Why do most salespeople dislike prospecting, even though it’s the most important part of the sales process? Easy, fear: Fear of rejection; fear of failure; fear of the unknown and, fear of change.
Most salespeople, heck, most people, do the same things every day, whether it works or not. Someone once said that was the definition of insanity. During this economic crisis, I’ve spoken to numerous sales executives who have told me their salespeople are operating the same way during this tough climate as they did when business was booming: and, wonder why it’s not working.
Change is hard. The problem with change is; it brings into play all the other fears I mentioned earlier: Rejection; failure; the unknown. Heck, even insignificant change can be difficult.
I’m left-handed. Because of that I wear my watch on my right wrist. The other day I scratched my right wrist and it made wearing a watch very uncomfortable. So, instead of going without a watch I just moved it over to my left wrist for one day; and it was so uncomfortable it drove me freakin’ crazy!! Try it sometime and you’ll get a real good idea of how difficult change is.
But, be that as it may, if you DON’T change what you’re doing, especially when it comes to your prospecting effort, you’ll soon be out of a job.
If the fear of rejection; fear of failure and fear of the unknown is stopping you from “Making more calls,” don’t fall into the trap of trying to change drastically and all at once: do it gradually. In fact, do it so gradually it doesn’t even feel like change.
For example: if you’re currently making a miniscule 3 prospecting calls a week don’t even try to jump up to 20 to 50 calls a week. Sure you could probably do it: ONCE. But if you think wearing your watch on the other wrist is uncomfortable, try handling an extra 20 to 40 rejections a week than you’re used to. I don’t see that lasting very long.
Do this: track your activity. Figure out how many prospecting calls you’re making a week and then: Make 1 more.
That’s right, just one more call a week. But do it every week for a month and then the next month, do 1 more every week and so on. By the 12th month you’ll be making 12 more prospecting calls a week than you were making at the beginning of the year.
But by doing just 1 extra every month, you didn’t subject yourself to the horrors, the fears and the unknown associated with drastic change.
Prospecting is for Everyone
I received an email the other day from an old friend/client who I hadn’t spoken to in over 10 years. He lost his job recently, as have so many others, but he remains upbeat and has formulated a plan for finding a new position, which he has already put into action. Part of his plan includes many of the techniques he learned while sitting in on my prospecting seminars years back.
The reason I mention this is because prospecting skills can be used for so much more than just setting up sales appointments and finding new clients and prospects.
My friend is using it to set up interviews in search of a new job (and he’s getting those interviews). Recent college grads would be wise to learn prospecting skills to enhance their job search in what has become a very tight job market for young people. The days of mailing or emailing resumes and sitting back to wait for the calls to come in are over!!!
Those of you who think prospecting is only for salespeople could stand to learn from Elaine Sadowski.
Elaine Sadowski is the mother of San Francisco Giants pitcher Ryan Sadowski, who won his first two games after being called up from the minor leagues 10 days ago. This is significant because Ryan Sadowski was the longest of long shots to ever make it to the major leagues and he owes a lot of his success to the persistence and prospecting skills of his mother, Elaine.
According to Scott Ostler, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, Sadowski, who is 26, was a nice high school pitcher in the Miami area. He was recruited to The University of Florida, where he got his butt Super Glued to the bench. In two seasons, he pitched a total of 6 2/3 innings.
You can guess how much interest he stirred among pro scouts (For those of you who nothing about baseball, the answer is: zero). Sadowski believed he could pitch, but he knew it would be almost impossible to get a sniff. So he asked his mom, a retired elementary school teacher, to phone each of the 30 major league teams, get the name and phone number of the team’s Miami-area scout, call each team’s scout and say, “I’m Ryan Sadowski’s mother. Please phone my son. He can pitch and he’d like a chance to show you.”
Not the best message to leave, but if you’ve ever attended one of my prospecting sessions, listened to my audio program or viewed my DVD on prospecting, you know the most important thing is: Make the calls!! And that’s what Elaine Sadowski did.
To the scouts who were nice enough to phone him, Ryan said, “Listen, I’ll come to you, I have a catcher. Just give me 10 minutes of your time.”
All but two of the scouts told Sadowski they had exactly zero interest in a pitcher who barely pitched in college. But two scouts, including one for the Giants, told Sadowski they remembered him from high school and they’d take a look.
Now two out of thirty might not seem like much, but in Ryan Sadowski’s case he only needed one, or, what he really needed was 29 No’s. He did even better than that; he got two. And once you get your foot in the door, who knows what can happen. Here’s what happened to Sadowski.
Sadowski met the scouts at his old high school field, slapped catcher’s gear on his college roommate and threw. He looked pretty good. Word spread. He held another one-man tryout camp and four scouts showed. Then 10. Then 30.
One of the scouts, whom Sadowski describes as “a mysterious man with a mustache” turned out to be Dick Tidrow, the Giants’ vice president of player personnel. The Giants drafted Sadowski in the 12th round in 2003. Now here he is, six years later, pitching in the major leagues.
Granted, Ryan Sadowski is talented. But if his mother never makes the calls no one would have ever known of his talent.
As you can see from this story, prospecting is not just for salespeople. It’s a skill that can benefit almost everyone, because you never know when it will come in handy.