Tweet

Personal Selling - It's Time For A Tune-up

Written by: Jim Meisenheimer

Article Overview: Personal selling success depends on an equal balance of selling skills and sales planning. Discover the six critical questions to ask if you want to go to the next level of success.

Personal Selling - It's Time For A Tune-up

It happens every year at the end of the third quarter.

Nine months down and 3 months to go. What will you do differently during the last three months of

the year to improve your selling results? If you don't take time to think about what you'll do

differently, you may not do anything different.

Now that’s okay if you're happy with your year to date selling results. If however, you want better

results during the last three months you'd better think about making some changes now.

One of the keys to raising your personal selling bar is effective sales planning. For most of us

selling is fun and planning is not. Remember that selling success doesn't come from doing what

everyone else is doing.

The most successful salespeople I know, do the things that most salespeople avoid or put off doing.

There are two requirements for sales planning. First set aside some quiet time for creative

thinking. Second, be sure to put your thoughts on paper.

At least once a year professional salespeople and entrepreneurs should dedicate a minimum of one-day

to strategically think about your businesses. Don't be too quick to say you're already doing it.

Most sales reps acknowledge they think about their territories and customers daily. When pressed

however most will admit they don't have time to creatively think about blue sky scenarios that may

happen a year from now. If you can't devote one solid day for unrestrained creative thinking, don't

think about aiming for the stars.

Your best bet is to wait for a shooting star to come your way.

Begin your planning process with these six critical questions. Direct these questions at your

business, your territory, your accounts, your customers, and naturally your competitors. These

questions will raise more questions and you should consider this process a success if you end up

with more questions than answers.

Here are the six questions that can take your personal selling success to the next level.

1. Where are you are now? Where are you now relative to your selling results and sales skills?

How's your performance? What's your relative rank within a your region and within your company?

What kind of overall growth do you have in your territory and in your top-10 accounts? Where are

your competitors making inroads in your accounts?

How well are you managing your time in your territory? What are your biggest challenges and best

opportunities for growth? Please be specific.

2. Where are you headed if you don't change anything? What's the implication for you if you don't

acquire new skills? What happens to your overall performance next year if you don't make up the

loss of your second-largest customer?

How will your customers react to a strategy that is really based on a "More of the same" philosophy,

especially when your competitors are becoming more creative in their approach? With more work and

less time available, how are you planning to manage next year when your business is expected to grow

7% across the board?

If you can't handle the challenges and opportunities this year, how will you respond to the one’s

you are given next year?

3. Where should you be headed? Do you have specific personal and professional goals? Are these

goals specific and clearly defined? Are they in writing? Do you have completion dates established?


For each of your top-10 accounts do you have specific objectives for sales, margins, growth rates,

product mix, etc? Have you made a commitment to read sales books and to subscribe to sales

publications? Have you analyzed your travel time and the time you allocate to large, medium, and

small accounts?

4. How will you achieve your objectives? You really can't "do" a goal or an objective. What you

can and must do is create a written action plan detailing how specifically you plan to achieve the

goals you outlined when considering question three.

For example, if your goal is to increase your sales by 6.5% in your largest account, how

specifically will you do it? How many “how’s” will it take to achieve your goal?

Your goals define (what you want to achieve) and your strategies define (how specifically you’ll do

it.) Without proper linkage between goals and strategies, your goals begin to look like dreams.

And in time you end up being a daydreamer instead of a goal achiever.

5. What are the specific details involved? The details referred to are the who, what, where, why,

when, which, and how as they relate to initiating and implementing your strategies. Ben Franklin

once said, "Small leaks can sink big ships." In sales, minor adjustments often create big impacts.

When it comes to personal selling never forget that little things mean everything to your selling

success.

6. What should you measure? Always measure what matters most. One of my favorite old sayings is

"What gets measured gets done." To keep you on your stated course (objectives) how will you measure

your progress? What key elements of success should your review monthly? Personal growth and

development are often the result of careful measurement and evaluation.

The difference between first-place and second place is often a very narrow margin. It's time for a

tune-up if you're serious about making this year's 4th quarter your best 4th quarter ever.

These questions can make a significant contribution to your selling results, but only if you invest

the time to ask them them. The favorite day of the week for procrastinators is tomorrow.

Action-oriented people, the real doers in life, recognize, if you focus your energy on today,

tomorrow takes care of itself. The future is yours to live one-day at a time. The shape of your

future personal selling success depends on the foundation of your plan.

Are you planning your future today or waiting for tomorrow to do it? It's a clear choice and it's

all yours.

The choices you make today will determine the personal selling success you achieve tomorrow.

Related Articles
  Jenny Craig Weight Loss
  At-ti-tude, n
  Selling Skills for today’s economy
  Selling in a Business
  Selling Power 26

Article Tags: best bet, blue sky, creative thinking, critical questions, effective sales, months of the year, nine months, personal selling, professional salespeople, quiet time, sales reps, scenarios, selling success, shooting star, three months



Related Forum Posts
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - We've also expanded the list for Contest and All-Time Leaders. It's great to now see David and Yinka on the All Time list and recognize the contributions they've made to the forums!
No B.S. Time Management - A great book I read on Time Management is No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy.
Re: Kevin's Case Study #10 - When to become an entrepreneur? - When the bug bite you. A lot of successful entrepreneurs started in their teens or at school. Selling sweets to fellow students or lemonade to firends in the neighbourhood.
Re: This is Marketing Warfare! - Hey GT, I guess this was from a while back, and it'll test your memory a bit but could you possibly elaborate on Unique Selling Proposition? Can you give us some examples of good USPs?
Re: Twitter vs Facebook - I know this is a naive question but i'm really not sure: What do you tweet ? Business? promote your business? Personal? Are there things you can't do? ALSO :Is there a rule book? Is there a success formula using twitter?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Designing Employee-Enhancing Training Programs

Why Small Businesses Don't Survive

Do You Pretend To Listen To People?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.