Evaluate your focus for more sales

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Evaluate your focus for more sales

As many of my regular readers know I have spent much of my career studying and working with some of Europe’s highest performing sales people and if there is one thing that stands them apart from their competition and colleagues it is their ability to focus on the right things which will bring them more success.

Many sales people will think or believe they are focused and many will be right but the type of focus I am referring to is an intense level of focus which when channelled in the right way it is extremely effective.

What we focus upon impacts on selling in two ways, firstly the activities we focus upon will impact on the quality and or the quantity of the opportunities we come across, the other area is what we choose to focus upon within the sales process.

Core 20 %

Let’s look at our focus towards activity, where we choose to focus our efforts when it comes to activity can make a huge impact of whether we succeed in hitting our target or not. Many of us have heard of the 80 -20 rule, the principle that 80 % of a sales persons revenue comes from just 20 % of their activities but it’s more than that this 20 % is the core of your activity.

High performing sales people take a very simplistic view of activity, they evaluate which of their activities bring them the best results and they simply increase their focus in that area. If cold calling works well for them they spend more time cold calling, if focusing on developing existing clients brings them more success they focus more on their existing client base, simple when you think about it but amazingly successful.   

Focusing on the wrong things

The second area that focus has an impact on is within the sales process itself, when we focus on the wrong area it can have a massive impact on the end result of the sale. It is never more relevant than on the subject of price, many sales people believe that price is important to the client and so they spend their time focusing on price and more often than not they lose the sale, not because they weren’t the cheapest but because that wasn’t what the client wanted to focus on.

One of the most fascinating discoveries I made when studying these high performing sales people was how infrequently they were involved in price negotiations within a sales situation, the reason they chose to focus their attention elsewhere on other more important areas within the process, on value, on the needs of the client and how well their solution met that need and how it delivered value.

By focusing on the right areas they not only made more sales they made more profitable sales, simple but very important.     

Real Sales Tip
 

My sales tip this week is this, look at your own activity and discover what your key 20 % is and increase your focus in this areas and rather than settling for just 20 % try to increase it to maybe 30 or 40 % imagine what that might do to your sales figures.

Written by Paul Routley FinstSMM

Paul Routley is an award winning trainer and one of the country’s leading authorities on modern sales techniques.

With over twenty years’ experience in sales and sales management, starting out in sales at the age of 17 and working his way up from trainee sales person to sales director, working for some of the world’s largest and most well-known companies along the way.

Paul has held a number of sales manager and sales director roles throughout his career and has a proven track record in creating and developing extremely successful and effective sales teams in every industry he has worked within.

As a trainer he brings a tremendous amount of experience and invaluable knowledge to all aspects of sales and selling within a variety of industries with a particular flair for telephone selling and a grown up approach to cold calling.
Paul’s training courses are always memorable and renowned for not just being educational and enlightening but also inspirational, motivational and entertaining.

During his career Paul has lived and worked in more than twelve European countries including: Germany, France, Sweden, Estonia, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and Ireland

Paul is one of the UK’s leading sales trainers and also a fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management

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