“If you do not prepare or plan to succeed, you are planning to fail.”
Athletes and sports teams prepare before a game. Can you imagine a top sports team arriving to an important game without any preparation or practice? Can you imagine them not spending time studying strategies or tactics of the other team?
For sales professionals, the game is the sales call.
Why do we fail to pre-plan our sales call? There are varieties of reasons:
- We may know the customer well,
- We may feel confident that we can anticipate and respond to questions,
- We may be too busy to develop a sales plan and spend time preparing for the call and
- We may feel that we are skilled at improvising or winging it.
Researches reveal something interesting. Even if we are good at all of the above, we can still be more effective with a plan. With a plan, we can measure our improvisation skills for the circumstances that inevitably arise that we couldn’t anticipate or plan for.
HOW DO WE PLAN?
- Prepare for your meeting- ensure you are well prepared with:
- Who will be there?
- What do I know about him?
- What is your objective?
- What is your alternative objective?
- What is your last alternative?
- What questions might I get? – anticipate questions
- What objections or stalls?
There are two parts to preparation-
Objective
Get all the facts
Name, Title
Personal Interests
Current Projects
Their Competition
Use Google
Use Website
Subjective
Visualise today’s outcome
Feel positive emotions
Imagine Questions
Hear confident responses
See yourself smiling
- Ensure you have all the required materials- sales tools/aids etc.
- Arrange: Yourself, Bag, Interview
- Rehearse and visualize the Interview- its results and actions
WHAT YOU’VE JUST DONE?
- You’ve programmed your mental computer to direct you to your goal
- You’re preparing to Succeed.
TERRITORY PLANNING
- Where are my customers located?
- How can I best cover the territory?
- Where am I planning to meet my targets?
- Territory account inventory
- List of active and potential customers
- Divide customers into few larger zones to avoid fire fighting calls
- Plan loop journeys
- The first call should be farthest from the base and salesperson should work back towards his base.
The better prepared you are for your calls, the easier they will be. A little research, a known objective, some anticipation and visualisation, having your marketing materials ready and a planned territory will give you more confidence when you make calls and lead you to the road to success.
Do let me know what you picked and implemented from this blog, and how it impacted your sales calls. I look forward to know about your experience.
Do not forget to grab this Sales Call Planning Checklist I created Just For You.
