The Sales Experiment

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Starting New Habits by Creating Deadlines

I sat down with a colleague today and worked on setting up a personal sales and marketing plan for the next few months.

He had engaged me to assist him in creating a plan that he could implement to kick his sales efforts up a notch.

I’m not technically a sales trainer, but consuming content and attempting to implement said content has helped me to recognize patterns in me and in others.

I see that while many of us want change, we fail to create deadlines to reinforce and establish new habits.

Therefore, when I sat down with my colleague, I attempted to focus on developing a clear system.

The Importance of Committing to New Habits

My suggestion was to be systematic and habit-focused:

  1. Decide on an ideal client profile.
  2. Create a list of at least 100 potential prospects that fit said profile.
  3. Commit to weekly prospecting appointments with self that are every bit as important to commit to as client appointments. Be violently committed to that time.
  4. Use that time in a systematic way: make calls, intentionally research client organizations, write content.
  5. Make note of ALL questions that current clients and prospects ask and have that running list handy.
  6. Use those questions to create consistent emails, blog posts, mailers.
  7. Reach out to that list of 100 as close to a monthly basis as possible as the relationships open up.

And I suggested that he commit to having the list of 100 list in a week and to have the first email scheduled to go out on a specific day, even if only one person is on his list on that day.

We settled on a specific date to send out that initial email, but I felt some hesitation. No list yet. Who is he going to email?

I said that it doesn’t matter. Put a couple current clients on your list and send something out.

Give yourself a deadline. Go ahead and write the email for that matter. Why not?

Change Is Simply The Accumulation of New Habits

This whole program will require developing new habits. The habit to schedule a weekly appointment or two solely dedicated to prospecting. The habit to make note of common questions for content fodder. The habit of sending regular emails out. The habit of taking time to map out potential clients’ organizations and finding connections.

All of these habits require intentionality. They require doing more than just popping on LinkedIn to send a connection request when the idea hits. They require more than just allowing client call-ins to determine who goes into the funnel.

To be better than average requires quality habits.

[Tweet “Quality habits don’t happen by accident. Crappy, useless habits happen by accident.”]

Quality habits happen by creating deadlines, taking a bit of time to plan, and scheduling them in the calendar. There really is no other way to build a new habit.

It’s consistent, daily action.

I hope that my colleague (and I, for that matter) will find some traction. I hope that there’ll be enough reward from forging ahead that the new habits will be reinforced.

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Recent Reading and Listening

Social Media Marketing Happy Hour 163: Fight Your Border Bullies 

Dawn Marrs Ortiz and Traci Reuter are two of my new podcast best friends. I love short podcasts with big nuggets of info and experience-gained knowledge. This particular podcast discussed the idea of ‘border bullies’ – those folks who stand around the edge of your safe life and encourage you strongly NOT to push the envelope and slay your dragons and forge new territory and pursue passions (and all the other metaphors that indicate moving outside of your comfort zone).

3 Questions That Matter Most This Year – Jeb Blount, Sales Gravy Podcast

Jeb’s is another wonderfully short, power-packed podcast. This episode encourages you to answer these questions this year:

  1. What do you want?
  2. How do you plan to get it?
  3. How bad do you want it?

It’s stuff you know, but more than likely you need to listen to it again. I, for one, have learned that it matters not how much I know. It matters what I do with what I know. As soon as ‘I’ve heard that before’ comes out of my mouth, the very next statement better be, ‘And I did something about it.’

Pinterest Smart Feed Is It Bad for Business? – Oh So Pinteresting Podcast with Cynthia Sanchez

I love Pinterest. I’m not all that consistent with it, but thanks to Ms. Sanchez, I’m getting better and better at it. I highly recommend her podcast and other content. She’s the go-to girl on the topic (in my humble opinion).

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Tactics, Strategies, and Effectiveness

I’ve spent the last few days catching up on Michael Stelzner’s Social Media Marketing Podcast. The podcast is a wealth of information on digital media’s most effective tactics and strategies (if they are used wisely and surgically, of course).

Today, I listened, specifically, to the podcast with Zach King, a filmmaker who has used his talents to conquer the new world of Vine video.

Mr. King said something that stuck out (paraphrased): “If your target audience isn’t on Vine [i.e. the younger demographic], then perhaps you shouldn’t be on Vine. It’s not smart to try to be on every social media platform.” (something like that)

The message is this: Use the tactics and strategies that increase effectiveness as it relates to your goals.

Only use the marketing platforms that drive your business forward. 

Experiment? Yes.

Commit full resources to all of them? No.

Sales and New Marketing Both Suffer from the Shiny Object Syndrome

Every new sales book that comes out touts itself (or convinces reviewers to tout it) as the greatest new development in sales since whatever the other most recent sales movement was.

The same holds true for marketing.

We get nudged off of a consistent course by grasping at the next thing that sounds like it’ll hold a silver bullet.

The newsflash is this: there is no such thing as a silver bullet. You might find a little fortune or favor here and there, but there is no silver bullet.

Be Honest About What Is Effective

As they say in recovery, the first thing one must do is admit there is a problem.

In sales and marketing, the first thing one must admit is which activities produce the most compelling results.  You’d think we’d be happy about finding the one thing, and we’d be uber-disciplined about doing the one or two things that generate the most results.

The problem is that the one or two things require the most sweat. The activities that move the dial nearly always cost us. They take time. They take focus. They take courage.

What strategies and tactics are the most effective in your work?

Are you doing them?

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By the way, Zach King’s Vine channel (or account or whatever) is ridiculously cool. Here’s a fun example:

 

 

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Have a Focused Purpose

Blogging is a funny thing. Those of us who do it relate well to each other. It’s hard to talk about it to someone who doesn’t without hedging and making a few self-deprecating snarky remarks.

I’m good at that because I sell insurance for a living, and since insurance has been a second career, I had to spend a little time getting over similar hedging and self-deprecating snarky remarks.

Both blogging and insurance sales are supremely honorable pursuits. But they are made most honorable when they have a purpose.

Blogging without a purpose is public journaling (still a small purpose, but then you have to be super witty or engaging or kind of a train wreck to be worth reading – or a family member).

Selling insurance without a purpose outside of straight-up raking in the cash can become smarmy and sleazy (although if one is going to be in sales, then making money isn’t a bad motivation at all – it just can’t be the only motivation.)

Having a purpose mitigates self-deprecation. It gives some meat and bones to what we do as either salespersons or bloggers (or both).

Having a Purpose

I’m walking through Jeff Goins’ ‘Intentional Blogging Challenge’ at the moment (to join up, check out the Facebook page he set up for the 15 day challenge).

Day 2’s challenge was all about giving your blog some focus. Identify a subject, theme, and objective for your blog.

So I considered those three items for this particular website. It can easily fall into a little business journaling exercise (a worthy thing, indeed, but not entirely useful for anybody else).

Here were my responses:

  • SUBJECT: Sales success
  • THEME: Learning how to find your ‘sales voice’ – especially for those who came to sales or a marketing career as a second career after slightly more romantic pursuits like ministry or some other liberal arts career didn’t pan out.
  • OBJECTIVE: To find and clarify my own sales voice while developing coaching tools and methods to help other individuals and organizations do the same thing.

I put myself through this exercise for my day job:

  • SUBJECT: Commercial insurance sales
  • THEME: Helping my clients protect their nonprofit visions
  • OBJECTIVE: To be a consultative partner with my clients, helping them to identify the operations, people, and assets that are vital to moving their nonprofit’s mission forward, matching appropriate insurance tools to protect those three things.

I spent some time today filtering newer opportunities as I want to work with people who have a vision (mostly nonprofits) and that value having a mission and being committed to caring enough about the people they serve to be wise about protection.

Having a Focus Filters Opportunities and Gives Us an Editorial Perspective

I love the exercise in focus because it helps filter opportunities. We can’t do everything for everybody and maintain effectiveness over the long haul. Even in our writing, the more laser-focused we are, the more easily we can identify topics to write about (as contradictory as that seems).

In sales, the more laser-focused we are, the more expertise we develop and the deeper we can dive into our chosen niche.

What’s Your Focus? 

I won’t bore you with listing the reading and listening for today.

I’ll leave you with a question: What is the subject, theme, and objective of your work life right now? Can you define it? Would it help you to sit for a moment and do so? Give it a shot…

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