Sales Performance Tuesday – 5 Quick Hits

Tuesday’s Sales Performance Thoughts:

1. Don’t get too cute in your sales presentation.

Your product and value proposition should largely be enough to get a close. If you’re having to get “creative” to “find the pulse” of your prospect, take a hard look at just how qualified they are. If your marketing team is generating leads that consistently require a song and dance just to get an appointment, it’s time to start evaluating some new lead sources.

2. It’s better to make a decision that’s “good enough” and go with it than to agonize (and waste time) over making the perfect one.

Like most things, “careful thought and analysis” is useful in moderation, not in excess.

This concept has served me well over the years. You can always adjust plans on the fly, but it’s pretty hard to accomplish much with your backside stuck to the bottom of your chair.

3. There’s ultimately only two obstacles to success: stuff out of your control, and stuff people do.

Budgets are out of your control. Either a prospect has the money or they don’t. But what if you could get a prospect to rethink how the budget funds are allocated based on the value you show them?

4. When people fail to execute a given course of action, it’s usually for one of three core reasons:

1. In their minds they’re still deciding over whether it’s really the best decision (out of fear, lack of information, lack of experience, lack of perceived value, etc.).
2. They don’t know how to implement it.
3. They’re actively sabotaging it for the sake of their own personal agendas. This can be as extreme as Enron-level fraud, or as simple as employees surfing the Web on company time “because they think they deserve it.”

5. It’s not always the case, but sometimes consistency trumps performance.

My sales metrics friends and gurus at The Bridge Group are constantly evangelizing the fact that sales teams should rarely be over or under their quotas by more than 10%. Massive over/under numbers in sales forecasting means either managers and reps are sandbagging, or the company isn’t getting good sales data.

Author: Ken Krogue | Google+
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