It’s Half Time! What’s your Score?
7 Tips How to Get Your Sales Action Plan back on track and still Crush 2017.
Its half time into 2017, you’re lagging behind your sales plan, and it’s becoming a growing concern. Are you glad it’s half over, or are you anxious because it’s already half over? Unlike most sales people who blame the weather, economy, politics, distractions, traffic and whatever else they can think of, you’re looking for ways to get back on track to still crush 2017.
I share these 7 tips with you at a very opportune time as I’ve just surpassed selling over 100 Lexus vehicles at half time on a target of 95. That’s 100 premium vehicles sold and delivered in 6 months, or average 17 per month vs. an industry average of 10 including much lower price ranges across different brands. Oh, and that’s while public speaking, lecturing in two colleges, blogging and hosting a weekly podcast on sales mastery. So, what have you been doing for the last 6 months?
- How do you up your game now to go ahead in the second half towards winning the game and exceeding your 2017 goals you ask?
- How do you regain control of your own results and destiny?
- What mistakes have you made in the first half?
- Have you identified your deficits and your areas of opportunity?
- Based on your initial 2017 goals, where are you sitting right now relatively speaking?
- Did you even draw up a game plan to start the year, OR are you one of the; I’ll sell, do, and earn as much as I can types?
You should be able to tell exactly how many units or dollars you’re ahead or behind, and what your percentage of target relatively speaking is. If you can’t tell where you stand like most of the bottom 80% low to average achievers, there’s your first problem. You do not have a clear sales action plan as a foundation or reference. You’re either scrambling to get things back on track, experiencing a greater deal of anxiety and frustration in the process, or have given into the concept of I’ll do as much as I can and see how the rest of the year goes.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Take action now with the following 7 steps and still crush your 2017 targets! You can still win this game!
Here are 7 tips that top sales performers and I use to get back on track and achieve better than expected results;
- Re-evaluate and see it for what it is; whether you’re ahead or lagging behind on your year to date targets, it’s important to constantly have a handle on where you stand. I see this as a huge issue with many sales colleagues as they may talk about an action plan, but never actually implement and follow one that’s sustainable. To achieve any goal, you must first relax, think about your strengths and weaknesses, envision it, and build a foundation from which to, monitor daily, weekly, monthly in order to have a chance of achieving it. A sales plan is a crucial tool for all salespeople, but few have or use one.It’s now time to think and dream much bigger than you planned before in order to win this 2017 game!For my personal sales goal of minimum 200 vehicle deliveries this year, I have a clear plan broken down monthly including seasonal variances and other basic matrices factored in. Your plan can be a simple excel tracking sheet with your average and YTD projections. At the end of Q1 I was tracking 4 units behind my average monthly goal, which if continued would leave me 48 units short, or achieving only 76% of my annual target. I will have none of that, and knowing where I stood in February and March gave me all the answers I needed to revise my game plan to get back on track towards crushing my 2017 target.
- Start your day off at least 30 min. earlier with a brief review of your day’s goals and objectives. Get that quiet planning time in ahead of the constant deluge of distractions coming your way once the regular workday starts.
- Have a constant growth mindset towards your goals. Feed your mind on innovative and effective ways of pushing thru and exceeding your goals.
- Absorb the best tips and growth ideas from other successful people.
- Create your personal sales plan including strategies and tactics to solve up to 10 times the problem, to achieve much bigger results, i.e. make 10 X the follow-up calls, 10 X times the contacts or emails. In sales over 50% of prospects are not followed up at all, so achieving 10 X in most cases is Not as massive a number as you may think.
- Think Big! As the Nike commercial says, Just do it! The alternative is failure. Thinking big creates bigger goals that pulls you and define your purpose. It’s easy to be devastated after a bad week or month if you don’t have a greater purpose or goal pulling you through to your end result. Your big goal must be clear enough that a bad week or month does not cultivate lack of focus from your main goal.
After having a below average February I did not let it define me because I already knew I would crush March thru the first half of the year and held myself accountable to the results. According to Tony Robins now it was time for me to practice more disciplined daily rituals, and “turn my should’s into must”- After your evaluation in step 1 is complete, establish a renewed more aggressive sales action plan to not just achieve, but to surpass your previous goals. In short, think bigger than you were before.
- Your personal sales plan should include strategies and tactics for acquiring new business, as well as growing your existing book of business.
- With this bigger goal for the second half of 2017, break down your immediate to short term goals first for July, then your long term year-end goal.
- Establish what resources will be required to make sure this happens for July and how can you replay that success plan for August thru December?
- Get ready now for some hard work, self-accountability, determination and focus!
Focus: Now that your BIG goal is clear and you’re holding yourself accountable, you must tune out all the outside noise with laser like focus. Get rid of or avoid anything that distracts or does not contribute to your achieving or exceeding your goals. According to the late Steve Jobs “focus is not about saying YES, focus is about saying NO”
- Say NO to constant distractions and solicitations of your time from coworkers’ and friends that drain your focus, creativity, momentum and productivity.
- Say NO to undisciplined habits like constant checking of social media sites that waist more time and provide no real value to your greater goals.
- Say No to doing too many tasks at once and focus on knocking off your goals systematically or one at a time by priority. Priorities by tackling the harder less desirable tasks first.
- Say No to having too many gadget’s smartphone, iPad’s and dingers going off around you.
- Say YES to a desperate obsessive focus and resourcefulness for achieving your July and August Goals.
- Say YES to finding out the best ways to spend your time that generates more productivity and positive results.
- Say YES to following more of the habits you’re good at that brought you success before. According to Jim Rohn “success leaves clues”, so seek out and follow previous success tips and strategies.
- Only Say YES to action’s that contributes to your achieving your goals and NO to everything else!
- Hard work. Be prepared to put in the time. These are direct examples from my achievements Jan thru June 2017 of over 100 retail Lexus vehicle deliveries;
- Set standards and not wants to have measureable results.
- Get to work on the right projects, objectives and clients relevant for the time.
- Work on your philosophy, attitude, and communication with those directly involved in your success plan such as your direct managers.
- Work harder on yourself than you do on your job to become more valuable to the company and most importantly to yourself.
- Work on offering value added solutions for your clients, and at cultivating relationships with them that bring you referrals and lifelong clients.
- Work on arriving early to organise every day and staying ahead in the game.
- Work on staying late, sending out that extra email, or making a few more calls.
- As Howard Shultz of Starbucks said, “you cannot take a breath” you have to eradicate the human behavior of relaxing” even when you’ve had a great month or two.
Take Action: “Rituals is where the Power is”. (Tony Robins). Results materialise with consistent rituals and action. The action comes as a result of planned strategy and direction as well as the tactics used to execute the plan.
Whenever I have had much better months than others I’ve looked back and accessed the actions that led to my success. Here are some action rituals I practice that will keep your momentum going through 2017;- Each evening access the success from that day to determine what you may have done better or how to improve your efficiency and results for tomorrow.
- Set daily goals; number of existing contacts to either call or email.
- Set daily goals; of new contacts to keep a consistent stream of inquiries coming at all times and to build your base.
- Commit to systematic and progressive follow-up ritual that provides value added solutions to your clients.
- Have a defined strategic and tactical approach before making the contact.
- Personal Development. Never give up on growth. Read as many books as you can. Studies show over 80 percent of sales people have never read one sales book. Most have never attended a training seminar or invested in any type of personal development but wonder why they struggle from month to month. According to Warren Buffet, “the best investment is in yourself”.
- Start building your personal development library of reference tools today. Invest time in informative, books, magazines, cd’s, videos, speeches etc.
- Don’t be complacent with what you’ve achieved, “Michael Jordan” Growth through learning will be your competitive leverage.
- Invest time in developing and understanding your personal plan to include having thorough conversations with your sales manager’s and colleagues about expectations, and how you plan to achieve those goals.
- Invest time in community involvement and networking: The key to your sales success is to build your own portfolio of potential clients through networking rather than just waiting for potential business coming through the door or from sales calls.
- Invest in your personal cost effective branding or marketing strategies to differentiate yourself.
- Failure; never take failure too seriously to the point of complete discouragement. I’ve learned through many failures some very valuable lessons, the first of which is sometimes failure is a part of success. You really only fail if you let failure get the better of you to overcome and try again.
- Learn from your mistakes and don’t see it any worse than it is.
- “Don’t be embarrassed about failure if you’ve tried everything, but see the adversity as a challenge. Use it as an example” Richard Branson.
- People are remembered for they succeed at, not what they attempt.
- Push yourself to a point of nervousness sometimes. “If you’re not feeling a bit uncomfortable, you’re not pushing hard enough”. Joel Osteen.
EVEROLD REID is a Lease Renewal Advisor at Lexus of Oakville with over 26 years’ experience working in retail automotive industry, advertising and real estate marketing initiatives across North America. Throughout his career, he developed a set of proven best practices that propelled him to become a consistent top performer in fast-changing and competitive markets.
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/everoldreid
https://twitter.com/TheReidMethod
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