Training for my sales marathon
December 3rd, 2007
That’s it – a new kind of discipline is necessary for me to increase our sales. Like a dedicated athlete who is training for a marathon, I am now putting myself into training for the daddy of all sales marathons. Just like an athlete would dedicate the same amount of time to pounding the pavement everyday, so shall I.
The first aspect to my training is going to be dedicating the 10 to 11AM hour to making sales calls EVERYDAY; and making appointments for Tuesdays and Thursdays each week. In addition, my training is to include sending 5 pitch emails every morning before the kids wake up, and writing a baby fabulous blog post at least every other day.
I realize that I can have all the “to-do” lists in the world, but they are useless without time constraints. I find myself saying “I need to call so-n-so” and then days will go by before I get around to it. No more, no more, no more.
Today was my first training session and let me just say that it was hard to make myself sit and focus on sales calls for an hour. Because I’m not organized enough yet. I need to have the list of leads ready to go at the beginning of the calling hour, along with a tracking sheet of what contact has been made, when, and the next action item – for each lead.
I also immediately realized how nice it would be to have a script. I kind-of-sort-of have a script worked out in my head, but I was stumbling over myself today. So I’m going to make myself practice that in the mirror, in addition to some standard responses to some typical questions and ‘nays’.
Sales is not my strong point at this point. I haven’t had formal sales training, but I still close the deal 80% of the time, so I know the goods are in me. Right now, I know little about setting sales goals and forcasting. So, I’m blindy setting a sales goal of a 20% increase in sales each month. I think I read that somewhere. I didn’t make it for November, which is what made me create my new plan of action and my new perspective on being a super-athlete training for the marathon of all marathons. I also didn’t FOCUS on making new sales in November, like I will now.
Next, I’ll find the hour to dedicate each day to designing!
Discipline. Focus. Action.
Discipline.
Focus.
Action.
Entry Filed under: Sales & Marketing
No Comments yet Add your own
1. c. wilson&hellip | December 3rd, 2007 at 6:13 pm
i’m trying to find a link to your product web site thru this blog I came across, but can find nothing to take me to it – help please?
2. amber&hellip | December 3rd, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Hi there – our product website is BabyFabulous.com
I just realized that the “About Me” page isn’t showing up on the blog, which is why everyone keeps asking me that!
We’ll have to get that fixed now that I know the problem.
3. Alison&hellip | December 4th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Inspiring post! I think I may join you! I’ll set some targets and see how I get on!
4. Robin&hellip | December 4th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Good Luck in your discipline. Keep us posted on how that works. I’d love to hear what works for you and what doesn’t. I am always interested in what I can do differently.
Thanks for your honesty. It’s very refreshing!
5. Jessica&hellip | December 5th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Hi there, I don’t know where else to send you a response…
I happened upon your blog site, and wow, what a fantastic blog! You have really given out great advice for others out there that are “down to earth” (read-not hoity-toity!!) and are just trying to get started and hold on. My husband and I have started our own company as well, and it’s refreshing to see someone else with doubts (be they only in your mind…) and fears, and ulitmately, successes. Hang in there, and keep up the good work!
6. Jamie Lentzner&hellip | December 6th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Don’t be too hard on yourself this time of the year, though I commend your ability to be that disiplined – I wish I was. Janurary you may want to beef it up, maybe two hours of calls – stores are flush with cash and I find are willing to spend! I try and space my design time and sales time between stores busiest season. Good luck on blogging every day oh how i tried to do that EVERY DAY for a week and it killed me!
7. Starting a Baby Boutique &hellip | December 6th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
[...] Jamie commented on my last post about me being too hard on myself (someday I’ll actually HEAR people when they tell me this, because it’s not the first time) but I really have to say that doing one focused hour on sales a day has enabled me to be a lot lighter on myself at the end of the day. I’m not beating myself up for what I didn’t do, I’m patting myself on the back for how much I did accomplish. Plus, I feel confident that when buying season gets here in a month, there are going to be a lot of new boutique owners who want to buy Baby Fabulous products – who wouldn’t have known about us if I didn’t start getting myself in shape for the sales marathon now. [...]
8. Jamie Lentzner&hellip | December 7th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Bravo! My husband is in sales and he makes sales calls EVERY day just to keep up on his pitch. I wish I was able to keep it up – around October I just had to stop following up.
I am sure you will have a great start to 2008!
9. Mompreneurs® » Blo&hellip | May 19th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
[...] focusing on sales as if I was training for a marathon. You can read about my training plan on my startupkidsline.com blog [...]
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