Is It Time To Quit Screwing Around And Get Back To Basics?

It’s football season, and as every winning coach will tell you: If you want to win on the field, you’ve got to master the basics, which means, you’ve got to repeatedly execute the tried-and-true actions that are fundamental to the success of the team and to your position. Once these become habits, and a routine is established, the results you achieve after each play become more predictable. In time, you can incorporate more sophisticated tactics and strategies as you face more difficult challenges.

With some teams, however, a phenomenon commonly shows up late in the season. Due to overconfidence, frustration, or boredom, basic actions and skills that previously led to steady success are disregarded in favor of more sporadic and/or grandiose plays. This can result in unpredictable, and sometimes disastrous, results.

In business, as in sports, the basics are essentially the same, and so are the pitfalls. As you approach your late season, (the end of the 3^rd fiscal quarter) take a look at your production numbers and ask yourself if they’re steadily increasing, or if they’re all over the map. If they’re all over the map, it’s time to get back to basics.

Here are 6 fundamental practices every revenue driver should master. While none of these activities are Earth-shattering, they are pretty much guaranteed to increase productivity if you execute them on a consistent basis.

1) Keep Score

The function of a scoreboard is to keep track of your progress, play by play, and to keep track of who is winning the game. Using the same principle with your revenue-driving efforts, set simple goals at the beginning of each day such as how many outbound calls you want to make, how many initial prospect meetings you want to complete, or how many proposals you wish to make, and record your progress throughout the day. Before you go home, measure your results against what you set out to accomplish. Continue tweaking your performance every day, nudging the ball forward, and keep track of your overall progress.

Note: It’s human nature to improve upon that which is measured—especially if you care about the score. The Four Disciplines of Execution is a great resource if you want to dig further into this particular concept.

2) A Team of One is Not a Team

Everyone performs at their best when they’re supported, encouraged, inspired, and motivated by the right people, but sometimes the right people simply aren’t available. You can see this lack of support in self-employed individuals, in small companies with only one person responsible for sales, and in larger sales teams in which the top producer is generating revenue at a significantly higher rate than everyone else (with no source of motivation for achieving the next level).

To remedy this challenge, seek professional peers in a related industry or within your organization who are also driving revenue at a high level. Set up regular times to discuss strategies with them, to share effective practices and techniques, and most importantly—to set goals and hold each other accountable for your revenue-driving activity.

Note: If you want to up your revenue game, check out our 10 module LIVE Difference-Maker Selling Class in Williamsburg, VA on October 4, 2016. For more details, contact me here.

3) The ONE thing

Before you check email or make your first sales call, take a moment to identify the most important income-producing activity you intend to tackle that day. This would be the one non-negotiable item that you’ll knock out no matter what the day might throw at you.

Note: There is a critical difference between an income-producing activity and a task which simply lands on your to-do list. Click here if you need more clarification.

4) Who Is Dead and Who Is Alive?

Most sales professionals have a system in place for tracking their prospective clients; however, it’s easy enough to lose track of which prospects are still active—especially if you haven’t interacted with them for a while. September is the perfect month to reach out to the prospects in your database and determine who is genuinely interested in your services now, who wants to be contacted after the first of the year, and who belongs in your dead file.

Note: If you work in the business-to-business market (more so than the business-to-consumer market) and you’re hoping to land a 2017 contract, your window of opportunity is closing. September and October are the key months when most budgets are submitted and approved. The time to get on the phone and fire off your follow-up emails is NOW!

5) Network Shakedown

Whether it’s online or in person, it goes without saying networking is one of the most vital and effective ways to meet highly-qualified prospects, but it can also be time-consuming. To optimize your efforts, you need to evaluate the effectiveness of your referral partners, strategic alliances, and networking groups, to determine who fits your criteria for “best use of your time” and then cull accordingly.

Note: This process is a two-way street. If you are not receiving adequate referrals, it might be due to your lack of providing referrals and/or neglecting to maintain professional relationships. You would be wise to additionally make use of the September-October window by assessing your outgoing referral efforts.

6) Get Out There!

It’s easy enough to get trapped behind a desk with administrative duties, or to get bogged down with servicing existing clients, or to get tied up with crunching numbers. You will do well to resist this temptation. These activities do not yield new clients! Landing new business is the goal—and you need to get on the phone, send out more introductory emails, make new appointments, offer webinars, book yourself for speaking engagements, and be sure to attend networking events on a regular basis. Bottom line: You need to do whatever it takes to place yourself in the presence of new, prospective clients!

The timing of this article is not random. Assuming you’re reading this blog post on September 14^th, you have two full weeks before the end of the month, followed by the entire month of October, and three more weeks in November, at which point, the holidays arrive. (Oh, joy.) Perhaps you’ve been telling yourself you’ve got four months before the end of the year, but in terms of hitting your 2016 business goals, you’ve actually only got nine weeks!

Again—if your numbers have fallen behind, there’s no need to frantically scramble in an attempt to reinvent the wheel. Just keep it simple, and get back to the basics!