Marketing yourself and figuring out how to do it efficiently are two of the hardest things for sales professionals to wrap their heads around. The actual "selling", where you sit down with a prospect and pitch your product or service, is difficult enough. But all the work that goes into getting that meeting with the prospect can take up the bulk of your time. It's like my former co-worker you say, "The hardest part of the job is finding someone to talk to."
Someone gave me a great analogy one time. Imagine a very good professional golfer playing a round of 18 holes. For a good player, a round takes around three hours. But the actual playing of golf, teeing up the ball, a couple of practice swings, and hitting the ball only takes about 20 seconds. Multiply that 20 seconds times 18 holes and our golfer has spent 360 seconds, or six minutes actually playing the game.
What is happening in that other 2 hours and 54 minutes? After the golfer hits the ball, he or she will spend a couple of minutes reviewing that shot in their head. If they are in a group of other players, they might analyze their competitors' shots. Then, they walk down the course preparing for the next shot. Mentally, they are taking in the placement of the ball, the wind, where their competitors' balls landed, etc. They are laser focused on what they will do next.
It's the same with sales. I can consistently book four appointments a day, knowing that at least one will cancel or be a no show. That leaves me with three appointments where I'm actually "playing the game" and selling. The rest of my day consists of reviewing my last appointment and preparing for the next one. That gap of time in between appointments needs to be maximized and productive.
This is why your sales manager bitches at you for eating a lunch with your co-workers. "You can't sell to them, so why are you wasting your time having a meal with them?" It's true. You could be spending that time with a client. My own personal experience has shown that taking a client out to eat, or even just a cup of coffee, will greatly improve the chances of me getting that sale.
What do we do instead of making the most of our "in between time" as I like to call it? We complain to our colleagues about the bad leads, or let our personal drama kill an hour, or worse. Facebook is the number one productivity killer in the world, in my opinion. Death by Twitter feed can be slow and painful in the long run. Put your phone down and get back to work!
Slowly, you will find yourself losing your motivation. Those appointments will start to shrivel up because you didn't want to work the phones or go to networking events. You stop asking for referrals because "people just don't want to give me names of their friends".
All of this leads up to "call reluctance", or the avoidance of clients and prospects. The accumulated rejection you've had for months should be rolling off of you like water on a duck. Instead it's like a water absorbent sweater that never dries and eventually bogs you down. At that point, you have a choice: either take the sweater off and let it dry out for a few days, or drown in your lack of productivity.
In another sports analogy (sales people love sports analogies!) think of a baseball player in a batting slump. They keep taking swings, striking out, but staying in the batter's box until they hit something. And when they finally do make contact with the ball, they smack the crap out of it.
Hang in there. Get a batting coach (mentor) to help you out of your slump. Stay motivated and you'll learn that slumps are temporary and we all have them.
Chris Castanes is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. He's also the author of "You're Going To Be Great At This!", a humorous look at sales. For booking information, click here. He's also the president of Surf Financial Brokers selling life and disability insurance in several states.
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