If you’re ready to move away from destructive habits and become a productive sales professional, where do you start? Are there daily nuisances distracting you and dividing your focus? In this episode of Sales Reinvented, Barb Giamanco joins Paul to help you get down to the root of your struggles and delivers some tips to get you started!
Barb Giamanco is the founder and CEO of Social Centered Selling. She’s all about helping salesmen and women find transformation and start reaching sales goals. One of her career goals is to encourage more women to become sales professionals. If you’re looking to jumpstart your sales productivity, listen to this transformative episode!
Barb points out a stunning statistic: Salespeople are only using 15-20% of their time to engage in the sales process. Why? One reason is that companies expect their sales force to be data collectors. But should that really be their job? Probably not. If you’re in a leadership position, Barb advises reducing the administrative duties carried out by your sales staff.
She also notes that there is too much focus on a tech stack.
Eliminate apps, systems, and tools that don’t integrate well into your CRM. Stop using unnecessary software that makes you constantly shift between platforms. A sales team needs to be allowed to focus on making phone calls, sending emails, and connecting with people on LinkedIn. If something distracts them from that, it’s not worth using.
Are you ready to improve day-to-day productivity? According to Barb, it’s all about planning. You must go into every day knowing what you’re going to accomplish. Scheduling time to complete specific tasks is how you drive results. She takes Sunday evenings to plan each day of the upcoming week—and blocks time in her schedule.
She does not let anyone interfere with that time. She advocates protecting your calendar.
You need to prioritize your focus on what gets you closest to the cash. One way to do that? Knock out the difficult things first. Stop focusing your time and energy on the easy things that don’t drive results. They can fall into place later—or even be delegated.
A good salesperson is focused, committed, and carries out the plans they’ve made for their schedule. Because in reality, if things don’t get done, you only have yourself to blame. This is why it’s beyond important to know your metrics.
How long does it take you to close a deal?
What is the average value of each opportunity?
How many opportunities do you need to hit your quota?
Barb has run into many sales professionals who don’t have answers to those questions. There is no excuse!You need to know on average how many calls, appointments, demos, etc. will get you to a sale. Take ownership and learn your numbers.
Here are Barb’s top tips:
Being a successful salesperson involves knowing how to solve the problem of your target market and offering them the solution. It takes time and diligence to learn how to do this well. Becoming more productive is one of the best things you can implement to become more effective.
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