Ep. 232 Daily Habits of Top Sales Performers Part 2

Joe Pici goes into a deeper dive on the 12 essential habits for success in sales.

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Get ready for an unfair advantage over your competition. This is The Sales Edge podcast. Where globally recognized sales expert and trainer Joe Pici helps you sharpen your skills for booking more appointments and closing more deals. And now here’s your host Joe Pici.

Joe Pici (JP):

Welcome to the sales edge podcast number 232. And as promised, this is the second part of a two-part series on The Daily habits of successful sales professionals, So we’re going to go on a deeper dive. We took a shallow, look at it last time, but today we’re going to get into some depth. So this is Joe Pici, your host of the sales Edge podcast 232 we want to thank our sponsors Pici and Pici Inc. which is our speaking coaching training consulting, company really specializing in helping. Our clients get in front of their target market close more business, recapture lost revenue, and attract, and retain, quality clients. And also sell more virtually.com. That is our membership website platform whereby every Thursday night, I’m out there live. Doing a one hour coaching or training. So four times a month. Also downloads e-courses more coming, great surprises coming. So today as we move forward into the second part of the successful habits of, you know, those sales people that are playing to the top of the chart. And that’s Just a quick recap. A 30 second run through those 12 specific habits, you know, it was the first thing you wanted to do in the morning, where you want to, revisit what you wanted to accomplish that day. That we, what kind of numbers do you want to post to second thing was, you know, what are your timelines deadlines benchmarks for everything you do? And the third thing that days you want to take a deep dive into, why? Why you want? What you say? You want what it is that drives you?

What get you out of bed in the morning and so you’re burning desire. Then we went into the non-negotiables. We went into the actual core of selling and the first one was lead generation. Now we’re going to take a deeper dive into each of these but the importance of how many ways you generate your leads. Okay what is your best way of generating leads? And the second one is your messaging or your value proposition and and what you say, what’s on your website, what’s on your LinkedIn profile? What is on your business card that compels people to want to have that conversation. The third one was your outbound phone calls, how many you’re making, and what you’re saying, and what your script says, the fourth one in this section, which is number seven is your actual core story. Sales presentation, you’re discovering meeting the next one, is the requested proposal and let me go in here. Requested means they want one, not, you’re going to send one and we’ll get into a little bit more depth here in a couple minutes. The next one is your follow-up, your continuous follow-up. What is your system of follow-up? Then we move into closing the deal, the call, the action, getting the business. So speak bringing everything to a culmination of A decision. The next one is priority and time management that would be number 11 and then we wrap the whole thing up with priority and time management. So let’s go to number four. These are the internal core. These are the non-negotiables will talk about lead generation. This is the lifeblood of your business. This is the heartbeat. This is where everything happened. The more link you have in business.

The more business you will have as my wife says no leads, no business, the lifeblood of your sales success is based on the amount. And the quality of your prospect leads, the more quality you have in your funnel, the higher chance of success you’re going to have now. Some tits. I created a few tips here for you on the whole lead generation thing too. Often sales professionals are Just made to. Also do not need a, they do not need what you have. And so we chased those people, they don’t want what you have, they don’t need what you have. They can’t afford what you have. We recommend a pre-qualification vetting of your perspective clients. A lot of that has to do with your messaging but where you’re going to find the leads running around doing Point, countless and pointless. Meetings is not going to get you what you want and can cause Is burnout you don’t need presentation practice. I certainly don’t you need paying clients. Another tip is you want to create highly, targeted Prospect list for business, identify the locations, the industry’s the sizes, and business models for your best clients for individuals. Look at specific demographic, information, including age, and come locations, and Our information. So you want to you want to have the eye of the tiger here. You want to have razor Focus, you don’t want to be a general practitioner. Now in doing your homework you want to use social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter to connect with them and collect anything that will make your sales presentation. More informed these platforms also help you scratch off. Some of the unqualified prospects. You want to in the beginning. Be everywhere. Eventually you’re going to hone it down, but in the beginning, when you’re first getting started, you want to be everywhere. You want you want. Leave from your company website. You want leads, you want to attend networking events and meetings participate in trade show doing join the appropriate organizations in Cambridge and be very active on social media. So in the beginning, you’re shooting with a shotgun. So eventually you find out

Who they are and where they are, you really wanting to build rapport with your prospective clients, you want to get to that point where they know you like you trust you and you want to Market your company, what you do, who you are, as experts for us. We have somewhere between 17 and 20 strategies. In fact we have a giant ecourse coming out Anselmo. Or virtually in August and one of the trainings is 17 strategies of lead generation. And so, it’s very important that you have multiple ways of generating leads but then eventually you’re going to narrow it down to a few that generate the mostly. So let’s get to the next one. A very vital, very vital piece of being successful and that’s in your messaging, you know, first impression, The client is vitally important in so many times. I peep see people that they spout out features, they spout. What their products are all about. They overwhelm in, they literally confuse the client. The client, really sits there saying, what do you do? Who are you? So the first job of professional is to Captivate not to educate so you’re a pro. Watch your first approach. When you say, what you do you want them to be thinking how do you do that or tell me more? And so this is the what you always lead with Benefits results and solutions that your product or service provides and this is called a value proposition. Now, as we’re moving down, we’re going to go in deeper into your outbound calls. How many are you making? You know, I mean how many of you really make and and when you get a lead, please don’t sit on it. We live in an instant gratification and instant response world. That’s what technology has done to everyone. So if you get a lead and you sit on it, you may never get to that lead because someone else will beat you to the punch. When you contact these people, the first thing I want you to do is make sure, you know, Know exactly. What you’re going to say you don’t wing it.

I recommend strongly and we work with our clients were very much into scripting and a few keys are creating scripting who are you and the company you represent and then you lead there with your value proposition. So for example if I were calling you and be my name is Joe Pichi Pichi Pichi, we specialize in helping you recapture lost Revenue. Get in front of your target market and close more business. Business. So so at that point all of that is set up to find out, do they want a meeting because the more qualifying you are with your script, the better bang for the buck, you get for your meeting on gentleman, I talked to yesterday just sent a proposal out yesterday to a brand new person and and he said you were referred to me by somebody that told told me you Help me close more business and I said, well, let me explain something to you. We specialize in helping you generate quality leads get front of your target market and close more business. But let me assure, you closing business is not about closing business clothes. What’d you say, to get the meeting is what is relevant to your closing ratio. So now, let’s move into the next one, which is number 7, on the Hit Parade number for today, and that is your core. Rory, this is your sales meeting and I’m telling you it. The essence of a core story is to investigate the essence of a core story is to interview. You should have a template by which you sell from its to really find out what your client needs. Fix, is to find out what your client wants to accomplish, and it’s a find out. Do they have a timeline this introductory meeting? This first meeting should not be long and they Do 80% of the talking and I have a whole training on course story. At fact, we have, we teach people how to create their templates sales meeting because sales should be done from a process and not Charisma. Now, we’re moving into well, the proposal. And so many times, I see the mistake. Now, if you do good interview, and if you take notes, during the course story, then, if you put Down on the proposal, exactly what they said, they’re more likely to move forward. But here’s a secret sauce tip about closing ratios. I do not say I’m going to send you a proposal. I say Jo Would you like a formal proposal? Let me give a shout out to Joe Miller down in Texas. He listened to the first half of this and he said good stuff. Go deeper Joe’s a hot rod down there. In fact, he’s coming to our sales boot camp. We can’t wait to drink a cup of coffee with them, sexy, shout out, buddy. Looking forward to seeing you but the whole idea of the core story is to get information is to literally be able to. You’re one or two things that make your company unique and so from there would you like a formal proposal? Now I will say from there, you are now at the stage of moving into follow-up. I did a whole podcast on follow up and follow up. You’re going to find out is probably one of the biggest problems in the sales game.

There are statistics. Number one, Sensible sales, close it between the 6th and the 12th, contact 92 percent of sales professionals, don’t follow up at all. Ninety percent of sales professionals, will not call again. If they get a no answer or a, no, the fortune is in the follow-up. And so the follow-up, there’s different aspects of follow-up. There’s following up when you get a lead and the next step is follow-up. The follow-up is after you. On the meeting and this you call back its ongoing follow-up and tell you want to be a master at this. You want to measure it, you’re going to find that you’re going to make tons of money if you continue to follow up. And somebody said to me there, when do you stop following up? I never stopped following up. I never pester, I never chased, but I never throw them away. It took me 10 years to get Blue Cross and Blue Shield, he took me Me 10 years to get Coldwell Banker. The majority of people work with me and the first time I’ve contacted them was three years before. What if I just said one and done, what if I was transactional? What if I didn’t stay focused on follow-up and I always like to call and say, hey John, Joe Pici wanted to reconnect is this a good time. The reason I’m calling is What information do I need to provide for you to make a decision? Now, I’m going to give you a secret sauce. Here, January 1st. I made a decision, right? This down, this is gold and I decided I would never get off of any sales call after. I did my core story all of that, but I would never leave a call without knowing three things. Number one, what was the next step? Where we going to get back on the phone? What is the next step? Okay, where they were with this? What was going on with them? Where we were in our process and number three, did they have a timeline to execute with us by doing that? Literally, I’ve increased closing ratios about 15 more percent. So now, as we look to now in closing the deal, quite frankly, folks back to closing the deal closing, the deal is a natural progression if you’ve done everything right, Right? But you do have to ask, you do have to have a call to action. John, are you ready to get started? John how can we close the gap here on your decision? John when would you like to move forward? You don’t start with that. And you don’t, you don’t move to that quickly. But after you’ve done all the things we’ve talked about today, it’s time to stir because most sales people never ask for the money and

They don’t get it. This is so point in time, somebody has to consultative Lee. Take the lead and ask for the business. And the last one, vitally important is priority and time management. When you look at your actions are so many things you have to do. Do you have a? Prioritized is everything prioritize top down. Now one other thing I want to ask you here is we’re moving on, are you measuring what you’re doing? Another ways that you have metrics for everything? All right what are our metrics? Let me give you a few metrics on the very Things we just talked about number one. What do you want to measure with? Respect to leads? You want to measure how many ways you’re generating leaves? Where are they all coming from and what are their top three lead generators you have. So what we do is we write down every every company and individual that spends money with us and we backtrack it and we say where did this come from? Was it a referral? Was it a cold call? Was it through Then, I mean, LinkedIn. During about 90% of our business leads right now. The second one you want to measure? Okay. What is the effectiveness of your messaging? What is the message? In other words, how do you measure value? Propositions are people asking you questions after you state what you do are people saying how do you do that? Can you tell me more if they’re getting the dull stare or their shrugging, their shoulders, or they have no comment then? When you’re not being effective, our value proposition is not affected number 3, in measuring outbound calls, okay? Number one, how many calls you you making daily weekly? Monthly and charge them. Do you have a place where your charting your outbound calls? Okay, now after that, how many of those convert into core stories? How many discovery meetings don’t Are you getting every month? This is of all the things we can talk about today. The most quantifiable and predictable. In the most important thing you should measure in your business is how many formal, core story initial sales meetings? Am I doing a month? The next one is, how many proposals are being requested and how many proposals are going out the door in my office. Every one of these categories. Has its own whiteboard. But the most important whiteboard I have is proposals, because once the proposal goes out, that the clock starts ticking, that’s where I measure closing ratios, okay? And so, you’re going to look at from a moment. You send out a proposal, I don’t mean closing ratios today. I mean, within a 12-month period, how many of his proposals went to market now in measuring our follow-ups? Number one,

Do you have a follow-up system? That’s the first thing to measure it. Can you write it down then? How many follow-ups are you doing a week? A month? And then how many of those follow-ups get to a decision? It could be no it can be not now it could be next month but a decision is being made which goes to the next one which is how many deals are my closing. How many deposits am I taking how many contracts in my yang, how many people are Buying a ticket to my event. And the last one, as you’re measuring priority time management, am I working in my highest revenue producing actions? These are all measurable quantifiable things. So, my recommendation is, if you take a podcast number 230, which was the daily habits of successful salespeople, and then you have to 32, you’re going to get A two-part series on what is going to take for you to take what you do to the next level. If you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re responsible for selling the product and service at your company and your business, whatever these are the most vital things you can do for short and long-term success.

This has been Joe Pici. Thank you so much. This Is the sales edge podcast. Take out your phone, put sales, edge in. Send it text to 55678, take you to a link in a splash page, a whole lot of stuff on there downloads and everything, but we want you to take a look at sell more virtually.com, consider being a member. Because again, for pennies on the dollar, I’ll be with you every Thursday night. We have interviews, e-courses. So thanks a lot. If this is a value of you, can you like it? Can you share it? And can you write a great comment? Have a great day.

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Thanks for listening. New episodes will air each Tuesday and Thursday. So make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and give us a five star review. The Sales Edge is sponsored by Pici and Pici Incorporated. A firm which provides training, consulting, and keynote presentations. Empowering corporations and individuals to attract and retain quality clients, for higher revenues and growth. Make more money in sales, speak with Joe in person by calling 407 947 2590 or visit www.piciandpici.com