As we fully embrace the arrival of 2012, many of us are revisiting our 2011 business approaches and outcomes. As a result, we may be considering integrating changes, improvements or different disciplines and habits. A friend of mind shared a great link from Inc.com which highlights a few simple, yet salient, tactical tips on how to improve our sales results. We can all benefit from these smart suggestions, which are easy to implement – if we just make it a practice. I, for one, am going to discipline myself as we fully enter 2012:
- Talk to one client for 30 minutes each week. The key here is to really listen to your client…what is keeping him/her awake at night? What challenges are they facing? What are the industry trends, from their perspective? What is their business outlook? This elevates the relationship from a pure sales relationship to an interested partner and potentially a truly trusted adviser.
- Talk to one prospect for 30 minutes each week. They key here is not to be “selling” what you have to offer; rather, this again is about listening to them – what is on their minds? What do they need? How can you be of service to them?
- Talk to one industry leader for 30 minutes each week. This can be someone in our Rotary Club, our Sunday School class, a trade association member, a blogger we follow – the list is right in front of us. Again, these folks can shed light on how they see the future of the world, our industry, the overall market, etc. This gives increased insight into how to move forward with our business and our offerings.
If we do this, we can potentially uncover a new opportunity each week – that is 52 new opportunities by simply spending 90 minutes a week focusing our efforts in a thoughtful, strategic, aligned manner. Let’s give it a try…one thing is for sure: we will benefit from what we will learn from these three new conversations. How and what we do with this information is up to us!
Good goal and idea!