5 more ways to speed up sales in 2016

March 16, 2016 at 06:40 AM
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Editor's note: This is the last part of a two part article. You can read the first part here.

Here is how my team and I have managed to do more business in three weeks than we did all last year. It took us three months of hard conversations and tough work to get to the "start line" and begin executing our process — but it was worth it. I'll tell my exact numbers at the end of this article.

I know you might be struggling to increase your — or your team's — performance. So I wanted to share a few secrets I've learned about a cool process I found called "Predictable Revenue" (which may or may not be so predictable, but I didn't name it …)

Here are five more ways of how you can do the same:

6) Learn all you can.

Frankly, we found that the process of Predictable Revenue is extremely helpful — some smart people have even called it the "Silicon Valley sales bible." We took what we learned and added our special sauce to it. The more we saw it working, the more creative we became.

We are still learning what works. We're only a few months into the New Year and already have more business booked than all the weeks of last year combined.

And we're not going to stop learning. It's making us millions of dollars.

7) Live by your numbers.

Develop a "sales dashboard" that you can look at and check your progress. It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't matter what program you use to create it, just make sure to include these things:

  • Number of sales emails sent per week

  • Number of leads generated per week

  • Number of inbound leads received per week

  • Number of wins per week

  • Average deal size

  • Average sales cycle

8) Specialization is your friend.

If we break down the process, you've probably got three specific sales tasks (like we do):

  1. Lead generation – Finding new potential customers

  2. Closing – Securing partnerships with these new customers

  3. Account management – Managing your customers

If you have the benefit of having multiple sales team members, specialize their roles. If you're a one man band, specialize your time. For example, dedicate:

  • 5 hours – lead generation

  • 3 hours – closing

  • 2 hours – account management

9) Put your awesomeness on a template.

Make what you do repeatable, repeatable, and … repeatable. As awesomely as "repeatably" possible. But make sure that your templates do not look like templates. They've got to be emotional and personal. Write like you're only talking to one person. After all, you are.

Turn your whole sales process into a series of "templates". And keep making them better by learning. Remember: You have to stop and dig into the ugly details of what you have been doing — and why.

10) Follow up on your follow up.

A "no response" from your prospect is unacceptable. You (or your sales rep) was just too lazy to follow-up. Don't hate; that is truth.

It might take something like this to get a reply:

  • Day 1 – Email

  • Day 3 – Email

  • Day 4 – Voicemail

  • Day 5 – LinkedIn Connection request

  • Day 7 – Email

  • Day 9 – Cold Call

  • Day 11 – Email

  • Day 13 – Twitter mention

  • Day 15 – Email

No more guesswork: Now you know when to reach out, how to reach out, and what specifically to say.

Stay hungry

Everything you do affects your sales process: technology, marketing, psychology, and finance. All of these play a part in the sales hustle.

Study the new sales apps. Take a writing class – or imitate great authors. Read a good book. Practice your spreadsheet wizardry. Whatever you do, keep fighting.

Here's the crazy math

We started off the year with a target list of 400 potential customers. I wanted to do business with 10 of them. That would yield epic results for us. We ran into a problem – a good one – after 17 selling days. We had reached out to 81 of those potential customers, talked with 53 of them, and signed a deal with 27 of them with more deals following. We achieved 1,300 percent better results than expected.

I think you can do the same. It's not easy. And certainly this article won't change everything all at one time. But it might be the best start you've had in a long, long time.

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