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In busy times like these, some salespeople feel they have "lost control" of their business. The sheer volume of leads and all the work that comes along with them has consumed many of us to the breaking point. Business plans and marketing activities have flown right out the window in favor of just keeping heads above water. Is this bad? No! This is good!
"Never complain about having too much to do" someone once told me. She was right. We should have real problems, like no business, no referrals and phones that aren't ringing. What's to be learned from all this? What we can learn is how to effectively run a high performing sales operation from experience. While it's not a good idea to let your business run out of control, it is a great time for you to implement and test various systems to run your business at peak production. Is it time you took more control of what's happening around you? Isn't now the absolute best time to do something about it? Here's a great little project for you to begin this month: - Make a list of what is working. Even though things may seem hectic, you know you're closing sales and things are getting done. Note these things going well and ask yourself why. You'll likely discover it is because you have built good systems or processes for these things and you are staying on top of them.
- Next, make a list of what's not working as well as it should. Maybe your communication with your support staff isn't going well. Perhaps you aren't getting out as often as you'd like to make calls and contacts. It could be that your prospect follow up efforts have become just a pile of leads and opportunities on the corner of your desk. In any case, you'll probably find the reason why these things aren't going well is because you: 1) don't have any type of system in place to control these activities or 2) you have a system but you haven't been following it.
- Tackle each "out of control" item one at a time. Ask what controls or systems need to be put into place to move that item into the "what's working" list. You might need to schedule a 30-minute huddle meeting with your support staff every morning at 9 am to review the pipeline. You may decide to "time frame" four hours each week for sales calls and visits to keep in touch with your key clients. It could be necessary that you invest the last hour of each day on your leads pile. In every case, remember that if things are out of control, they will stay that way until you do something about it. Problems don't fix themselves.
- Set a follow up date on your calendar to review your systems and business in 60 days. Call a "control meeting" with yourself. At that time, evaluate your business and look for what has gotten better, what has stayed the same and what, if anything, has gotten worse.
There are two types of salespeople: those who control their business and those who let their business control them. Whether you are in the first or second group is completely up to you.
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