Sales activity should be a focus for anyone in sales.
In sales, it’s all about sales activity.
And many lines of work are all about sales. Even if you are not directly involved with selling a product, you might be working to attract clients to your business, you might be offering some kind of service, or you might be involved with fundraising or politics. If you’re reaching out to get people interested in something, you’re in sales, and this blog post is for you, because you have to get busy in order to succeed.
Yes, the ideas, the personality, the knowledge, the relationships—those are all critical components if you’re going to get that “yes,” but if you don’t see enough people, none of that matters. Now this isn’t to say you can go into a meeting ignorant about your industry or product, but if you don’t go to that meeting at all, none of it matters.
The tracking of activity is important, to a degree, but the activity itself matters more. I’ve seen sales people track activity, and I have hounded them for it, but either they have the activity drive or they don’t. They either are willing to live by eating what they kill, or they aren’t. Can you drag someone to that point of motivation? Maybe, but it’s unlikely.
That’s why, as a business owner, I strive every week to have five to ten good appointments. These are not fifteen-minute chats. I invest time in these meetings. Not all meetings lead to sales, and I don’t expect them to, but all of these are relationships that have the potential to bear fruit. Sometimes that fruit isn’t even a sale—I might learn something, start a collaboration, get a recommendation, or simply meet someone I really like. Whatever happens, I’m talking with human beings whose time is as valuable as my own. I treat them accordingly.
Either you need to hold yourself accountable for keeping up the pace and talking to people, or you need to find someone else in your organization that can drive the activity.
Seeing enough people matters most.
A Guest Post by Harold Howell