Are You Solving the Wrong Problem?
Don’t fear the miss. Use it as a coaching opportunity to get stronger for the next quarter. But make sure you are solving the right problem.
Don't forget to check out last week's top tip: Why You Should Lose an RFP on Purpose!
For more strategies like this, check out my sales tip video library on YouTube...
If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:
Let's get real. We don't all hit target 100% of the time. We make mistakes. We have slumps. We fall short. And you know what? It's okay.
I actually don't care that there are some times that you might not hit your targets. What I do care very passionately about is that you know why you might not be hitting that target. For example, do you have a closing problem or an opening problem? Do a prospecting problem where you're not good at handling objections. Do you not write proposals that resonate with your customer base? Or maybe you're not getting to the right decision maker? Those are all solvable sales issues. We have to solve the right one that's causing the problem that might be causing you to not hit target.
A customer once asked me to solve their sales problem and he said they had a closing problem. But when we looked at the data, I realized they had an amazing closing ratio 75%. What they had was an opening problem, and there simply wasn't enough deals coming into the pipeline to have them hit their target. If he had had me solve the closing problem and we hadn't looked at the data, he would have wasted his money. I don't know that I can move it a closing ratio from 75 to 80%. But I can solve an opening problem because that's what the customer had.
You know, this is why I'm so passionate about CRM. Your CRM is your game day tape. It's your sports stats. It's your wearable, your heart rate monitor, your Garmin device, your health tracker. It's the thing that gives you the data that can help you get out of that slump, or stop you making that mistake quickly because it identifies the root cause of the problem. So use that data effectively to identify problems that you might be having, identify strengths that you might also be experiencing, and using that to improve on your day to day business.