Kahle Way B2B Sales Blog

It continues to amaze me that so many salespeople shuffle into most of their sales calls with very little, if any, prior planning. I suppose that is why this is one of the practices of the best.

Most surveys of how field salespeople really spend their time conclude that the typical salesperson spends somewhere between 25 to 30 percent of the work week actually talking with customers. Just think about it – that time spent with customers is the heart of your job. Of all the things that you do in a typical work week, of all the tasks that you perform, nothing is more important than that!

Without time spent with your customers, your company would not need to employ you. Everything else that you do is either a result of, or in preparation for, your person-to-person sales times.

Combine that with the growing pressure on your customers to make good use of their time, and you have tremendous pressure on salespeople to manage an effective, purposeful and valuable sales call.

How can you possibly do that without spending time preparing for it? The answer is, of course, that you can’t. 

That’s why the best salespeople meticulously plan every sales call. That planning process brings greater value to the customer, and greater return to the salesperson.

What’s involved in planning a sales call? Typically, a well planned sales call has these components:

A set of objectives for the call. 

An agenda.

A set of questions, prepared for the situation

All the necessary material and collateral (literature, samples, etc.).

A variety of “next steps” the customer can take as a result of the call.

Time spent reviewing the account profile and/or personal profile previously compiled on this customer.

Sounds a bit arduous doesn’t it? Clearly this takes some time.
In my first full time sales position, my manager shared some advice with me that has stuck with me ever since. “Spend 20 percent of your time preparing for the other 80 percent.”

I’ve followed that rule ever since. It means that you discipline yourself to invest the necessary planning time for every sales call. Then, the time you spend in conversation with your prospects and customers will be valuable to them, and valuable to you.

To shrug it off and make a sales call that is unplanned, unfocused and unorganized is to waste your time and your customers’.

That’s why the discipline of thoroughly planning every sales call is a best practice. Those sales people who don’t strive for mastery of their jobs inevitably slide away from the discipline to do it the way the best do it. Consistent, disciplined behavior – that’s what separates the best from the rest.

To learn more about this, visit http://www.davekahle.com/bestof/topics.new.html, and consider the “Best of Dave Kahle” recorded seminars #1 Target Laser Sharp Sales Calls – A New Way to Focus for Better Results. Then, go to the Articles section of the website and read this free article: “One of the Emerging New Rules of Sales – The Value-added Sales Call.”

To study this best practice, take advantage of these resources:
How to Excel at Distributor Sales, chapter eleven 
Take Your Sales Performance Up-A-Notch, chapter thirteen 
“Best of Dave Kahle’s Phone seminars” numbers 45, 46, & 51 
“Up-A-Notch” video training kits, Module number four. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 10:19 am and is filed under Best Practices for Salespeople. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.