At Event Temple, we believe that as a salesperson you can't control your results. If you could snap your fingers and hit quota, every salesperson in the world would be rich. The truth is that few salespeople do consistently hit quota and many live in a constant state of stress as a result. 54% of people working in sales describe their lifestyle as stressful. Applying more pressure seems like it makes sense but it doesn't usually work. At Event Temple, we take a different approach to our sales philosophy. We believe that if you do the right activities, with the right priorities, the results will follow. For that reason, our entire solution and philosophy is built around the idea of pipeline management.
Set The Right Goals.
It's all about prioritizing the right deals, moving them to the next step in the pipeline and making your goals activity-based, rather than results-based. With our sales philosophy: when you teach your team that results come from the right actions done consistently and not purely individual skill, you create a scalable system that you can control regardless of the raw skill of your sales team. As a result, it makes you a better hotel company with more predictable sales results. Let's dive in to see how to do that.
You Can Only Control Your Actions, Not Your Results.
Throughout the years, I've learned that to achieve your sales goals, it is best to focus on the actions that are within your control, not the results. If you prioritize doing the right actions consistently, you will get the results. Sales success isn't based on a supernatural ability (though coaching can definitely help), but instead on consistent daily activity.
Some Simple Daily Actions To Track:
- Are you prioritizing the right deals?
- Call the ones most likely to book first
- Ensure outstanding contracts to get signed
- Responding to new inquiries within 10 minutes or less?
- Remember that sales is a numbers game.
- Are you calling enough people every day?
- Are you emailing enough people?
- Are you doing enough drop ins and in-person visits?
- Is this all pre-planned, clearly tracked and consistently executed?
Track Data, Adjust And Follow Through:
As I said before, consistency is key, but it is also important you log your activities and your results. In the sales world, these are called "Tasks" or "Traces". You'll want to log what you do every single day over a period of time, say 2-4 weeks. Then, carefully analyze your results. If you are a Director of Sales, we highly recommend you don't just incentivize sales reps by results, but reward and celebrate the right activities along the way. This kind of positive re-enforcement creates a high performance culture while giving the team little wins to celebrate along the way to even greater success.
Don't Just Look At Won And Lost Deals.
Though you might see some trends when looking at what deals you won and which deals you lost, our sales philosophy believes that your goal should be set on what you can control. Instead of focussing on the result, look at whether deals have moved to the next stage in the pipeline. Did that proposal get signed? Did you turn your conversation with a cold prospect into an in-person meeting? Did you follow up with your outstanding contract?
Work at getting to the "next step" in the process and the results will follow.
Pipeline Management Gets Results.
At the end of the day, if you prioritize the right activities, with the right prospects at the right time and then analyzed the data to see what worked and what didn't, you will begin to see trends. Sales is not a linear path and you will encounter challenges as you go, but if you follow this process and are objective with yourself as you analyze the data, you will begin to see trends. Your goal is to refine each step of the pipeline to make it more optimized. A small example could be to track your response time to new inquiries and drive it up. The chances are, results will follow.
To learn more about pipeline management, visit www.eventtemple.com
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