Mastering productivity management is a stellar way for salespeople to become more effective in their jobs. Learning strategies to manage and foster your productivity can take you to a new level of success. Paul’s guest today, Lisa Magnuson, shares what she believes is the key to being productive and successfully—and repeatedly—landing clients.
After years of experience in the sales industry, Lisa founded Top Line Sales in 2005. She is the author of multiple best-selling books on sales and one of the most effective coaches in the industry. Her business prides itself on helping you land seven-figure deals and cultivating a sales process that is productive, efficient, and effective.
A salesperson can often be efficient—they send emails and make phone calls in a timely manner. But the work means nothing if you are not effective. If your effort doesn’t result in securing meetings (or the eventual sale) then you are not being productive. So how does a sales professional forge ahead and foster productivity? How do they begin to land sales? Keep listening for Lisa’s take on the question.
Lisa recommends a process she calls ‘pre-call planning’ to help boost your effectiveness. In fact, she believes if you aren’t doing pre-call planning, you are incapable of being effective. So what does pre-call planning look like? It begins with setting aside some time to systematically think about where you are in the sales process.
What do you want to accomplish?
What are the next steps?
What could go wrong?
What will make the conversation a great experience for your client? Many salespeople don’t take the time to engage in this process because it is time-consuming. They believe with their expertise and personality that they can wing it and come away with a win. Lisa states that you will be 20% more effective if you implement pre-call planning.
Lisa operates with a few key philosophies that she’s found to be effective. One of those is how she manages her calendar. She does not let her schedule run her and never schedules back-to-back meetings or phone calls. After each meeting, she invests her time in follow-up actions that were discussed.
If you set aside that time while you are in the right frame of mind, you will knock out much more than if you have to go back hours or even days later to finish up tasks. The sense of urgency allows you to complete tasks as effectively as possible and important things won’t get missed.
To hear her other philosophies on time-management and systems to have in place, listen to the whole episode!
Lisa’s favorite productivity story relates to a client she worked with last year in the shipbuilding and repair industry. She helped the client do a SWOT analysis (a strategic planning technique to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). They also did relationship mapping, while implementing other methodologies—it helped her client landed a $40 million contract.
The contract they landed wasn’t even originally interested in working with them! But because of the effort they put forth, the research, and the pre-call planning, they went front a long-shot to a sure thing. Within the first 90 days of working with that client, they referred someone else to work with them! It’s just one of Lisa’s proven strategies for landing sales.
Listen to the whole episode for more productivity management strategies and tips!
Audio Production and Show notes by
PODCAST FAST TRACK
https://www.podcastfasttrack.com