“Why I Love Getting Bad News”

 

Granted, it may sound a little odd, particularly from a sales person like me, in which case the following words may change the way you think about getting bad news.

You see, I’m a realist. We can always do our best; but nobody wins them all.

Bad news is great – But only when you get it early. Time is absolutely everything.

There seems to be somewhat of an obvious trend among sales people which tends to cause a lot of stress and unnecessary extra pressure at the end of the month.

FACT: We all put off things we don’t like doing.

For a lot of sales people it’s a confidence issue surrounding discussing key elements of a deal early enough or at all before asking for the order, which leads to inaccurate forecasting fuelled by avoiding asking the ‘tough’ questions.

By now you’re probably sick of me talking about qualification but this stuff is mission critical folks. You need to qualify Timing at the earliest reasonable point, whilst you have your customer engaged.

Why? It’s simple really. It’s the only way you can ensure your own expectations are realistic.

If you don’t, and the prospect doesn’t categorically tell you when they will place an order you’re going to forecast, your expectations are likely to be, well, something you’ve made up yourself. So they are most probably going to be wrong!

This means at the end of the month when you finally manage to speak again with a view to closing and you’re told it will be next week before they place the order, you’re left with a gaping hole in your target and no time to create more opportunities you could realistically expect to close in time.

What that means for us at TST is that it makes us extremely focused on devoting time to well the qualified opportunities that we know will close during the current month, and the rest of our time is spent proactively hunting new business opportunities that we can close in (x) timeframe in order to ensure we deliver our number.

It’s a disciplined yet extremely effective way to work.

We’ve talked before about how your objective should be the only important thing and for most of us in sales roles, this will often be our revenue target. So if you want to make serious money you need to work smart.

So how do you know when and where to focus your time?

Make sure you work good quality questions around timing and timescales into your repertoire. Asking ‘When will you place an order?’ and being told ‘should be this month’ is simply not good enough for you forecast that deal.

Remember to drill down three times where you can like the example below because we all know it’s too easy to just accept it when we get told what we want to hear on a regular basis.

1) When will you place an order?

2) Just so I understand what kind of process does that go through to get signed off?

3) Is there any risk of this slipping into next month?

Then just simply be smart with your time and focus your efforts on deals that will close this month. Prioritise. More importantly pick up the phone and start creating new opportunities before it’s too late!