Frustrating, isn’t it?  To see a sale collapse without warning, to find your pipeline unexpectedly less robust than expected, have contacts evaporate?  Although it may feel like things are more unpredictable and fluid than ever, I can help take the guesswork out of account planning and sales execution by examining and eliminating the five stubborn key points of failure – and helping you supercharge your close rate.

As a #1 producer across both startups and enterprise level organizations who has attended multiple President’s Clubs, I have successfully mentored dozens of colleagues in various seasons of their careers.  What follows are the “pain point patterns” that have emerged which – with just a little attention – quickly flourished into areas of quantifiable successes and as an added bonus – delivered the less quantifiable but desperately needed peace and life balance we all seek.

When guesswork is removed from the planning process, and the process is instead infused with intentionality, every aspect of your process flourishes. 

No matter your age or stage, you will find inspiration and solutions in this series.  How do I know?  Because the tenets are universal and the concepts, while not complicated, form the underpinnings of best sales practices, no matter the size of the organization or the size of the deal.  

Let’s go!  First up:

Don’t Give Up Hope – Just Know It’s Not a Strategy

#1 – Hope is Not a Strategy (New York Times Bestselling book by Rick Page)

If we’re being honest, I was forced to read this slim volume early in my consultative sales career and couldn’t resist the urge to make fun of what I believed at the time was a patronizing title.

In short order, Page won me over with the digestible “6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale.”  The rounds of it is that if you don’t have a plan – underpinned by actual data –  you are in the land of hope and not thinking strategically. If you find yourself saying things like “I think x, y, & z, and hope a, b, & c happens…” then you are not only unlikely to achieve your objectives, but will likely not realize it until it’s entirely too late.

By way of contrast, if you apply some simple, readily available data and easy math to your thoughts, you will be able to convert your hopes to predictions, and your predictions into commissions.

Annual average metrics such as win rate, contract size, opportunity age, average contracted deal size, prospects per contracted deal, outbound sales activities, and others will help you build your fact-based plan to win more often than not.

While the need to plan is an uncontroversial idea, Page strips an onerous and unwieldy concept, making it approachable and granular.

In my next post “Plan to win the year”, we will dive into ways we can begin to build a data driven sales plan and the math that will enable you to win the day, month, quarter, and year.  

The “Six Keys to Winning the Complex Sale” was just one of many digestible bits – so even if you need to skim, scan, and otherwise manage your time for maximum impact, this book is a win.

In my next post, we’ll look at the nuts and bolts of planning.