5 Rules for Sales Growth in 2021

Rule # 1:  You don’t have to like to prospect for business, you just have to do it.  I know a young man named Brian who sells business services to small and medium business.  At the end of last year, I asked him how he did in the pandemic.  He said he had a good year, and that 2021 was set up to be a great year.  When I asked him why, he told me he had a robust pipeline of new business prospects that would drive him over quota.  

How did he create this pipeline, I asked?  “My company requires that I spend 5 hours per week, on the phone or zoom meetings prospecting for new business or doing discovery calls.  I have to log each call, the length, and meeting notes.  This effort set me up with a string of great prospects.”

So, you like to prospect, I asked him.  “No, I hate it,” he said.  “But the company requires it, and once I got started doing it, I realized it was the key to success, so I do it.”

If you are a hunter, and don’t commit a significant amount of time to new business development, you will not achieve your professional or financial goals.  If you are a manager, you need to require it.  

Rule #2: “Get off the highway Lucky, there’s no business on the interstate.” My first sales manager, Steve, told the story that his first boss always asked what route he took coming back to the office.  He implored Steve to drive down different local city streets, looking for and finding prospects.  Driving down the interstate was a great way to get somewhere fast, it was a lousy way to find retail prospects in the media business.

Too many sellers today are focused on too few prospects.  Steve told me this lesson, while driving down a road named ‘Warehouse Row’ in Albany.  It was literally the road less traveled.  We saw a truck loading equipment into a warehouse, stopped to find out what was moving in, and were the first to meet the newest and largest advertising customer in the market the following year.  No matter what business you are in, going down the same path as everyone else will not yield you better results.

Build your plan for business development by looking for business in places you are not looking now.  What verticals, customer types, and categories are emerging and might need your product or service.  Where can you look for business, both physically and online, that you haven’t looked before.  “Get off the Interstate, Lucky….”

Rule #3:  You can compare the price of a product; you can’t compare the price of a solution.

I went out over the weekend and bought a half inch drill bit.  I didn’t need a half inch drill bit.  I needed a half inch hole in the wall.  

Stop selling your products.  Sell your solutions.  Understand what problems your prospect might have, and sell the value of using your products to solve their problem.   If you lose business to a lower priced competitor, you are doing something wrong.  You are selling your product.  Sell them on what the product will do for them, then commit to have you and your organization b\ deliver that success, not just the product.

What size hole in the wall do they need, and how can you help them make it?  

Rule # 4:  Price is never the real objection.

You need to ask, during the discovery or client needs analysis meeting, what is important to the prospect when buying.  Ask early on.  They will often say “price.”  They are already negotiating.  You should respond, “Assuming that everyone came in at the same price, what other things would you look at to make your decision.”  Then write down what they say.  Could be business terms, advertising results, delivery timelines, or quality of the final product.  Whatever they say, is what really matters. 

These are the real buying criteria.  Don’t focus on price.  We all want a great price on everything. Focus on the real factors of differentiation.  The value of your product.  Build value throughout the sales process, and the price objection will melt away.

Rule # 5:  The only sustainable advantage is you.  There is almost no barrier to entry in most industries.  The product field is filled with look-alike products.  Selling on price is not selling at all.  It is answering Requests for Proposals (RFP’s).  That’s bid work, not sales.

If you truly want to be in sales and make a lot of money, you need to invest in yourself.  In the past 2 years, I have completed 2 online courses at Cornell, and read a half dozen books on marketing and business.  How are you investing in yourself? 

As a seller, I once had a client call and ask me why he shouldn’t cancel doing business with us, to go with a cheaper competitor.  I answered that he could do that, but he would lose me and my advice in that process. The cheaper competitor was selling ads.  I was selling a partnership that delivered results.  

He stayed with us.

And finally, how are you marketing yourself?  Do you hide behind your companies marketing, or do you invest in marketing yourself?   Three free ideas:

·      Start a blog about your industry that your prospects might care about.  You can do it on LinkedIn.

·      Start a newsletter about your industry and send it to your customers and your prospects.  Make it useful to them, not a ‘brag sheet’ about your product.

·      Include referrals or quotes from your current happy clients on your Newsletter.  

True sales professionals win when others are losing.  They don’t lose deals on price; they understand how to position their value to prospects.  They invest in themselves.  

Success is not attained by doing what others are doing.  Do something to differentiate yourself and your personal brand.  

Get off the Highway Lucky.  There’s no business on the Interstate.