When B2B Sales Decisions Are First Made
B2B sales people are having difficulty getting prospects to engage. Here are your two choices to survive and thrive in the B2B selling environment.
There are four things that you should be doing every single day. If you’re not doing these, you should be worried about how things are going. Â
There will be a good chance you wont accomplish the goals you want, or make the kind of money you wanna make if you’re not doing these activities.
These 4 critical activities are:
The first thing that you should be doing every single day, that’s extremely important, is prospecting. With prospecting, I’m not saying just to go email people all day, or to spend time on LinkedIn and look around and try to find the right people to contact.
That’s not prospecting. That’s improving your list!
When I say prospecting, I mean activities where you are actively trying to talk to a customer. You’re trying to get someone to pick up the phone. You’re actively trying to get someone to come out on a cold call. That’s actually doing prospecting. None of this, oh, well, I sent out 50 emails today, Derek. Am I prospecting?
Give me a break. You’re not prospecting.Â
When you’re prospecting, it’s scary a lot of times. You can get rejected. You’re out there creating opportunities. That’s exactly it. And typically, when you want a big reward of creating an opportunity, you’ve gotta put yourself out there.
There’s nothing scary about sending emails. You’ve got to pick up the phone and call people. You’ve got to go in person and try to get them to come out. That’s prospecting. Prospecting is the first thing that you should be doing on a daily basis in order to make sure that you’re being effective.Â
The second thing you should be doing every single day is you should have scheduled client meetings. When I say client meetings, I mean actively trying to sell your products or services.  If you’re constantly filling your funnel, then you’re never going be worried about how things are going in sales.
I think you should be shooting for four meetings in a day. Obviously, that’s going to depend on your geography and how quickly it’ll take you to get to meetings, but if you can’t get to four a day, then of course you’re mixing that with prospecting.
The third thing you should be doing every single day is presenting proposals. You can have your client meetings, where you’re creating an opportunity, and then you could have follow-up meetings where you try to build that opportunity.
Then the next important meeting is when you’re presenting the proposal.  If you’re taking four out of the eight hours, of the golden hours of the day, making a proposal then that’s not a good use of your time. Â
You should’ve been doing that before hours or after hours, not during the day. However, if you’re presenting a proposal, that’s a good use of your time.Â
The last thing that is a good use of your time implementations. You sell something, and now you need to make sure that it’s living up to the expectation of the person that bought it, right? You’re there for the install. You’re just making sure that it’s moving according to schedule.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you are there for the entire week install. You probably have people that are helping you make sure it gets done correctly. You just oversee it to make sure it goes right. You must rely on your team to do it.Â
There is a way to make sure you have productive weeks every week. Here’s how to get it done.
You start by looking at your calendar. Glance at your upcoming week. Then ask yourself these questions below.
Well, it’s really simple. Your calendar most likely only has a short list of activities on it. Here’s where you start.
Well, if you have an implementation, how do you minimize the amount of touches you need to do there? I mean you could be calling your people and making sure they’re doing the right things throughout the week. But maybe there’s only some points where you need to just show your face and just make sure that the customer is happy with things are going. So, plan that out. That probably doesn’t need to be too long. But you need to show your face here and there.
Then you ask yourself…
If so, hopefully you have an actual appointment to present that proposal. If not, I would schedule that if it’s not already scheduled. Plan time outside of the golden hours to get it done and have someone else take a look to ensure it looks right.
You’ve spent hours cold calling and prospecting to get to this point with your new prospect. Now, what do you do to make sure it continues down the path to a sale?
Any first appointments that you scheduled from previous weeks that are showing up this week? Schedule time to get ready for them. Prepare for a great first impression. Do this outside of the golden hours of the day.
That’s cold calling in the field. That’s cold calling over the phone. That’s the scary things that you get paid all the money for. Right? It’s time to schedule it!
When you signed up for sales in the beginning, you said, I want to control my income. I want to be that person that can bring in more money than anybody else. Well, the reason why sales people can do that is because they do what other people don’t. And that’s cold call.
Those are the 4 critical activities that must happen and as long as you keep your calendar packed with them, you never have to worry about how things will end up for you in sales.
B2B sales people are having difficulty getting prospects to engage. Here are your two choices to survive and thrive in the B2B selling environment.
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