Level Five’s extensive sales experience has led us to develop our Top Ten tips:

Top Ten Weekly Sales Activities

  1. New new prospecting
  2. Drive existing opportunity pipeline
  3. Existing account extension and development
  4. Database development
  5. Monitor fulfilment of sales made
  6. Manage up
  7. Develop internal network
  8. Client loyalty and nurture program
  9. Self assessment measurement weekly accountability measures
  10. Update forecast and monitor progress against targets

Top Ten Sales Individual Performance Measures (averages)

  1. Phones calls out per week
  2. Sales calls per week
  3. Weighted pipeline value
  4. Average opportunity size
  5. Average deal size
  6. Sales cycle length
  7. Cost of sale
  8. $ of deal revenue delivered
  9. Number of A & B quality contacts in database
  10. Win / loss ratio

Top Ten Sales Meeting Agenda Items

  1. Activity levels
  2. Win / loss report
  3. Opportunity analysis activity
  4. Stalled deal analysis and strategising
  5. Sales forecast
  6. Performance against budget YTD
  7. Competitor activity
  8. Product
  9. People development
  10. Administration matters

Top Ten Skills for Sales Effectiveness

  1. Written and verbal Interest  Creation
  2. Diagnostic  questioning
  3. Opportunity assessment
  4. Competitive differentiation
  5. Capability vision creation
  6. “C Level” conversations
  7. Objective forecasting
  8. Time management
  9. Opportunity prioritisation
  10. Internal network development

Top Ten Ways to Shorten the Sales Cycle

  1. Pre plan prospecting to target industry sector and organisational stakeholders who have issues your solutions will successfully solve
  2. Target Sponsor and / or Power Sponsor early
  3. Build broad stakeholder base in customer / prospect organisation
  4. Enter all sales calls with Plan A and Plan B next steps to progress the opportunity
  5. Utilise relevant Reference Stories which will resonate with target prospects
  6. Quantify the benefits that your solution(s) will produce
  7. Move on from prospects who will not admit Pain
  8. Use Bargaining to access Power
  9. Establish and validate budgets and customer Buying Process early
  10. Assist the Prospect to build the business case to buy

Top Ten Demotivators of Salespeople

  1. Unachievable sales targets
  2. Inadequate incentives
  3. Micro-management by Sales Manager
  4. Uncompetitive value proposition
  5. Inadequate product quality
  6. Ongoing commission disputes with peers
  7. Inadequate sales support
  8. Lack of recognition for consistently good performance
  9. Limited career path
  10. High volume of / onerous administrative tasks

Top Ten Sales Management Mistakes

  1. Activity micro-management
  2. Lack of availability to staff
  3. Focus on outputs versus inputs
  4. Monopolising joint sales calls with sales staff
  5. Personally offering deep discounts not available to sales team
  6. Recruiting salespeople you like versus those who can perform
  7. Inadequate due diligence around forecasting
  8. Playing favourites amongst your sales team
  9. Presiding over low value (to sales staff) weekly Sales Meetings
  10. Tolerating and/or protecting non-performers

Top Ten Ways to Increase your Sales by 50 % in 12 months

  1. Allocate half a day per week for prospecting and actually do it
  2. Work to a well refined “Ideal Week”
  3. Do not repeat more than 2 sales calls on anyone who cannot see or will not admit Pain
  4. Utilise an Opportunity Assessment tool to assess where you are and to establish what you should do next
  5. Never “present” before you have Admitted Pain
  6. Identify and confirm the key customer Decision Criteria for every opportunity
  7. Build strong relationships with the highest capability sales support staff and reward them for their assistance
  8. Orchestrate CEO to CEO contact to help drive decisions when key opportunities are well developed
  9. Park or exit stalled deals or those that you cannot win
  10. Focus on developing sales two and three in every existing account

Top Ten Time Wasters for Salespeople

  1. Calling on people who are not going to or cannot buy
  2. Confusing account servicing and account management activity with business development activity
  3. Administration that should be managed by the Sales Support function
  4. Inefficient sales call scheduling and routing
  5. Internal meetings (often including non productive Sales Meetings)
  6. Cumbersome non action and outcome focused Account Plan development
  7. Unnecessary travel to and from office
  8. Labour intensive weekly reporting
  9. Email
  10. Interstate travel

Contact us today to discuss your Coaching, Consulting, Recruiting, Training and Assessment needs.

We value the opportunity to start a conversation and demonstrate our unique approach and capabilities.

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