Did you ever notice how 101 things will arise during the week to distract you from the sales activities you had planned – calling that prospect, arranging that meeting, following up on that proposal, asking for that referral, etc. Managers continually tell us that although sales is priority number 1 , more urgent but less important activities continuously strive to put it in second, third or fourth place.
This years hot topic among sales managers is the issue of sales process. Now, process is not a term that one associates with manufacturing, or other areas of business, much more than with sales. However that is changing fast. Sales once focused on the sales person, that is the individual that could ‘sell sand to the arabs’, or ‘ice to the eskimos’. It was a art, rather than a science, indeed a black art. However, art, even great art, is unpredictable, even unreliable – something that is very much inconsistent with meeting next quarters numbers. Terms such as ad hoc and unstructured, once traditionally associated with selling, are clearly gone out of fashion. Managers are putting how they sell under a microscope and applying a consistent and repeatable process to optimise all aspects of winning the sale
OK, sales is not a numbers game , but simply increasing conversion rates may not be enough to delivery the results that you need. We see sales activity and sales effectiveness as two sides of the same coin – you must have one with the other.
In a difficult marketplace the quest for more effective sales techniques and campaigns has gained momentum. As marketing budgets have been cut and sales teams trimmed, managers must do more with less. Sales Is Not A Numbers Game Clearly sales is not a numbers game – after all too many sales leads, meetings and even proposals go nowhere
