Preparation is a vital aspect of your entire sales process, but it isn’t just about the planning of a campaign or writing a sales pitch. Preparation starts with you, from the moment you start work to the end of your day. This is all to do with your mindset: how you approach every task of the day, and how you can get the most out of these moments. Adding habits to your roster can pave the way for cementing successful sales behaviours in everything you do, and will have a positive effect on your team and company as a whole.
So, we’ve collated some tips on successful sales behaviours to put you on the right track to a stronger business mindset.
Six Successful Sales Behaviours to Boost Your Business
1. Time-Chunking
Preparing yourself from the day, each day, means making the most out of your time, however you need to spend it. As small business owners with plenty to do, I don’t have to tell you how difficult time management can be. All I can do is suggest—if you’re not already—that you prepare your day by introducing a technique known as time-chunking. This is when you separate your tasks of the day by the time it takes to complete them—and stick to it.
Naturally, this encourages you to have an overview of what you’re wanting to achieve in the future as well as the present. Time-chunking ahead of yourself will help you compartmentalise in your head, allowing you to designate what’s ‘important’ today and what doesn’t need to be take up as much mental space. If you’re not fretting about tasks you need to do but with no plan for, your focus will be much easier to grab onto, and keep, while you’re working.
An important aspect of this is that you’re consistently realistic about how long it actually takes for you to do this task. This is so you can concentrate for as long as you need, and not feel guilty about not completing your task if you’ve set yourself too little time. ,
2. Worst First, Best Next
It’s the last thing you want to do today; the most unpleasant task, the least rewarding job. But you’ve kept putting it off, and off, and now you’re stressed that it’s not getting done when the deadline is getting close.
This is, again, about mental space. The most difficult jobs take up a lot of time, energy and thought; the longer it goes on, the more it gets tinged with the knowledge that you still haven’t done it. That stress can affect other aspects of your business, from your mood to the quality of your work for the rest of the day.
The solution? Do it first. Get it out of the way. Push through the unpleasantness and break free! This will positively affect your motivation; not only have you completed a task already, but you’ve completed the task you wanted to do least. This sets you on a good path throughout the day where you already feel rewarded and therefore buoyant. You’re more likely to put your all into your next jobs, which can only help.
3. Measure Progress on Numbers, Not Wins
It’s quite easy to get demotivated when the tasks get long and laborious. The successful moments—completions, positive phone calls, confirmations of things to come—are the light at the end of the tunnel. But the truth is, there’d be no light at the end if it weren’t for the shade of the tunnel anyway. Those longer moments are an integral part of the process, and because of this, training yourself to appreciate the process will stave off that demotivation.
An example of this is making sales calls. It’s inevitable you’re going to get rejections, but after a while you’re going to get positive responses. How many dials does it take to get to a positive response? Instead of singling out the responses you want, remember that the rejections are part of the process. Every no you get next is a no closer to the yes you’ve been waiting for!
4. Record ALL Your Stats
This is related to the previous point, but you’ll be better at setting expectations and your motivations. We like to be able to visualise what we’re working on, in order to tidy it up in our heads too. But you don’t necessarily need to project manage to achieve this. You’ll have indications of progress across all aspects of your business, not just the statistics that make good selling points.
Integrate this statistical approach into how you plan your steps forward. How many emails does it take until a prospect engages with your website? That’s a statistic you can use with your team for motivation.
Building up this bank of statistics will give you the bigger picture: what you do, how long it takes, and the things that work. Knowing these can help you set those realistic goals, which then goes into your planning, and when you get it right, that boosts your motivation and efficiency.
5. Connect With Your People
Who are ‘your’ people? Not just people in your circles, but the people you make important bonds with. In a personal context, this means the ones you’re close to, who you can lean on. In a business context, this means your team, your partners, the people in your network that you have built long-lasting relationships with—and also, the customers and clients that have become advocates for you and your company in general.
It is likely that you’re going to need some outside support, however that takes form. In terms of sales, they can provide insider knowledge you might need, or provide testimonials, stories or real-life situations you can build on to better structure your sales approach.
But it goes deeper than talking to someone because they have the right knowledge/job for the subject; articulating how you feel about a certain task, or working through a problem, with someone else can take off some of the pressure. Finding yourself a mentor who will guide you, even just for half an hour of advice, will put you on a path towards deeper knowledge and experience. You’ll be surprised by how many people enjoy helping others.
Knowing you can do this will allow you to better lean on supportive people, and be there for them in turn. In both of these contexts, the benefits are visible: it makes a big difference to how you approach your day, so you can work in a much more settled environment.
6. Keep Asking Questions
Curiosity keeps us alive. So does challenge. Having a routine when it comes to your sales will give you comfort and predictability, but in asking questions there is a new chance to understand, captivate and succeed, changing your routine into one packed with informed, successful sales behaviours.
This is because we’re given opportunities to learn! Gathering information makes us more prepared, more confident, and more adaptable to the situations that may arise. It also allows us to look at what we’re doing with a different perspective, so whatever you’re working on feels refreshed. This can be the saving grace, particularly for those lengthy tasks that need your stamina to get them done.
Ask yourself questions. Check if your methods are working, and how they can be tweaked if not. Don’t be afraid ask other people, especially if it means a learning opportunity. We grow from reaching out, and this still rings true in the context of sales behaviours.
Going outside the box also gives an advantage when talking to prospective customers. You have your script and you know it works, but have you considered all the questions that a customer might want to ask? Or, even, the questions you might want to ask? This can be a hook to get the prospect thinking about your business in a new way—seeing you as the solution to a problem they hadn’t considered before. Listing all the possible questions can help strengthen your selling, as you’ll be more prepared than ever to handle what the prospect throws at you—or what you throw at them.
Restructuring our approaches to integrate successful sales behaviours has a huge value in our day-to-day work lives. For a small amount of effort, your efficiency improves, your motivation is easier to hold onto, and your perspective on your work will change for the better. But that first step is being aware that you can effect that change (as an example, we talk about a way to train your brain by using your RAS, which you can read here). Nothing has to be out of reach if you nurture your mindset to help you succeed.
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