|
Have your best year ever one success at a time
By Jeffrey Gitomer
Contributing Writer
Slowly, I have been giving you the elements you need to succeed past your competition, past your boss’ quota and even past your kids.
So far, I’ve described the first five elements of how to have your best year ever:
1. Define yourself.
2. Develop a sales mission statement.
3. Have a deep belief in the three critical areas of selling.
4. Develop greater pride in your accomplishments.
5. You are what you eat.
Here are the next three elements to master.
Get rid of one time-waster. I’m asked one question more than any other: “Jeffrey, how can I better manage my time?”
I’m going to write a book on time management entitled, You Already Know What to Do, You’re Just Not Doing It.
You don’t need a course in time management, which I consider the biggest waste of time. What you need is a lesson in how to not procrastinate.
My advice is to get rid of one thing that is currently wasting your time. The example I most often give is watching television news programs or dramas.
If you spent as much time studying how to get your voice mail messages returned as you did watching a television show, in a year you could be a world-class expert, giving seminars for high fees on how to get your voice mail returned.
You need to invest your time in things that matter, in things that will build your success and in things that will allow you to have your best year ever.
Read a book every two months. My friend, Charlie Jones, says, “The only difference between where you are now and where you will be this time next year are the people you meet and the books you read.”
If you are going to read a book, make it a book that you can learn from and make it a book that will help you have your best year ever.
Jim Rohn, America’s business philosopher, says, “All the information you need to succeed already exists. The problem is you’re not exposing yourself to it.”
If you want to have your best year ever, expose yourself to the best information possible.
This might also include getting to know people that are having their best year ever and forming a mastermind group so you can build off of each other’s strengths.
Get your pipeline full. Most salespeople wait until the end of the month, in panic mode, to try to close the one deal they absolutely need in order to make their goal or quota.
Why are you only focusing on one deal? Why don’t you have 20 deals you are working on so that three or four of them close successfully?
I’ll give you two guarantees: 1. The one deal you’re praying for will never come about, and 2. If you have 20 deals you’re working on, three or four will always come about.
Why would you put yourself in a losing position when, with a little more hard work, you can have your best year ever?
The secret lies in the word “pipeline.”
Your sale has a cycle to it and a timeline. If it takes 90 days for you to complete a sale and you need 10 sales a month and it takes you four appointments to make one sale, then 40 appointments a month is the minimum.
Sixty appointments a month will guarantee your numbers. Eighty appointments a month will blow your numbers away.
To further define pipeline, if it takes you four calls to make one appointment, you need to make 320 calls to make 80 appointments.
Some of you listening to me are thinking the numbers are unrealistic. There is a reason for that; you’re a small thinker.
Smart salespeople find a way to get their company to hire sales support people. Or, in many cases, the salespeople hire the support people themselves.
If you are going to make money, the first rule is you can’t keep all of it. The government teaches you that. There are college fraternities who specialize in future salespeople, a ready supply of interns who would be willing to work to help you set appointments.
The simple truth is if you’re not closing enough deals, it is because you don’t have enough deals pending. Fill your pipeline and you will fill your wallet.
Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling, is the president of Charlotte-based Buy Gitomer. E-mail him at salesman@gitomer.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version