We are all busy but consider the following activities:
| Define assigned quota
Increase margins Increase market penetration Develop target account list Conduct daily, weekly, monthly calls on target accounts Develop business plan Conduct product demonstrations Communicate product features and benefits Identify customer needs Identify competitive threats Provide solutions Coordinate internal resources (pre and post sales) Capture sales activity in reporting application Complete sales reports Read and respond to email (internal and external) Listen and respond to voicemail (internal/external) Submit expense reports Gather competitive intelligence Participate in sales meetings Respond to requests Develop strategic business plans Train Negotiate contracts Develop proposals Define customer-specific value proposition Etc……. |
Establish KPI’s
Create and deliver sales budget Conduct sales meetings (individual/team) Identify customer needs Create customer-specific tactical plans Identify sales, pricing and “packaging” opportunities Review sales forecasts Update planning tools Assign targets Analyze sales data and create action plans Champion new product launches Track customer demographic and adjust tactics Communicate problems and customer requests Create annual business plan Create tactical plans Identify training needs (individual/team) Deliver training (individual/team) Resolve conflicts Present periodic sales updates to Sr Managers Analyze sales and revenue streams Make recommendations Coach and mentor sales team members Identify operational inefficiencies Retain staff Interview for “the bench” Enforce policy Etc… |
The activities on the left are typical in the day of a sales person while the activities on the right are typical in the day of a sales leader. Suffice to say, sales teams are busy. They must multitask and do it efficiently, effectively and without error. Add to this the results of their work, REVENUE, is visible for all to see.
With so much required and the high stakes involved, it is inevitable that stress levels will be high. When stress sets in mistakes and omissions are made. Stress creates lack of focus and “blind spots”. It is part of who we are as humans to respond to stress. Studies show that a person can experience lack of focus and blind spots for up to four hours after a significant negative emotional event (think dealing with an unreasonable customer, prospect, manager, etc and you get the idea). Negative emotions are not necessarily bad for in the primal regions of our brain the move us action – good and bad. The challenge is to decide which path to take. “Pressing on” does not eliminate the impact of the event – you cannot ignore it.
So why is this important to the élite high performance sales team of Economy 2.0? It is important because it happens every day with the sales team, their internal colleagues, clients and prospects.
Stress and blind spots create mistakes and missed opportunities. Consistent across the clients we work with we find that opportunities are lost for two reasons – the team, leader or sales person did not have the time to complete a necessary task or it was not done well. Lost opportunities come in many forms, both internal and external but for the sales team, lost opportunity can show up in the most important (and visible) metric for the company, their REVENUE.
So what are you to do? Stress and blind spots are not going away. You have to deal with them and the associated emotions. There is a large body of work focused on emotional intelligence and how to strengthen it; we suggest you research a program best suited for your organization. Don’t ignore it or think it won’t happen to you – it will, it does and it is.
Image: Chris Abatzis
