Having spent over 20 years in sales and sales management at all levels and now working in Business Coaching, it is endemic within organisations and their sales personnel that there is a “milkround mentality”.
In it’s simplest terms it is the old gem of “we always do what we always have done” and let’s be honest it is much easier to work within your comfort zone, than to push yourself.
All businesses survive or fail as Brian Tracy says due to
High sales
Low sales
Business is all about sales growth primarily. Without sales there is nothing left to manage.
It is then critical to tackle any “milkround habits” you or your sales team may have. It could be the death knell for your business.
When I moved in to sales management I relocated to the UK and I had responsibility for managing initially 7 salespeople.
Not unlike a lot of sales teams they were lacking in focus and were creatures of habit. Sales were falling. They were losing clients and quite literally would have no business in 3 to 5 years if this trend wasn’t reversed.
There was no new business strategy. There was no vision of the future for anyone to be motivated by. There was just a blinkered view of the world, which was one of resignation that the trend was inevitable.
One of the first things I did was to spend 2 day field trips with the individual sales people. This was an eye opener to say the least. It was actually quite profound from my perspective, as I was literally speechless as I watched countless journeys taken where the sales person simply drove by numerous potential clients, potential prospects, potential business, in automatic mode. Like a heat seeking missile that has only one target, the existing client.
It was unbelievable, and so easily remedied.
I was quick to make prospecting a key goal for the team. Clear cut goals were agreed covering numbers of sales calls, numbers of appointments and numbers of new clients. Our remuneration package was weighted toward new client acquisition. Goals were set to identify the key prospects in each territory and include these in their 12 weekly journey plans.
The results were predictable and immediate. In the first year alone we increased our sales by 56% and generated 41 new clients.
Don’t read this and think that this couldn’t happen in our organisation because my experience is that the reality for most businesses is very similar to the above.
The “milkround habit” is easily established and quickly becomes part of the collective culture within many organisations. Nobody challenges the status quo, and questions the logic.
Maybe it is understandable in a way. After all, everyone hates cold calling. Rejection after rejection is hardly glamorous, and everyone knows that customers hate cold calling, don’t they??.
Most sales people just don’t have the courage to tackle this intrinsic part of their jobs and will avoid it at all costs. The costs are truly enormous to you as a business owner if you have team members like this.
Rejection is part of the deal in sales. Full stop. Nobody alive has ever or will ever be successful in sales without learning to deal with this issue.
All of the research has shown that it takes anything up to 7 contacts from initial introduction to convert a prospect in to a sale. 10% of all salespeople give up after 1 try, and revert to the milkround as quickly as they can.
You know all of the excuses, and that’s all they are is excuses.
Progressive companies and sales teams realise that the future of their business is predicated on having a continuous and relentless focus on new business and new clients. In our Focal Point programme we spend a considerable time on this fundamental point.
Having a strategic system in place, with measurable performance indicators can have a massive impact on your sales pipeline.
Not only do we focus on the cold call, or should you, but on many other ways to warm up a potential prospect, through generating referrals and testimonials, web and social media strategies to name just a few.
The key issue is to kick the milkround, today. It is pervasive and destructive to your business, sales and profitability and implement an ongoing sales strategy with clear cut goals for new business development.
Action Steps;
Assess your current attitude internally to prospecting for new business. Do you have a strategy that is measurable and clearly articulated?
Inspect what your sales team are actually doing. Analyse the actual time that they spend on new business prospecting. Set clear goals for these.
Best of luck
Ronan
Contact me on www.ronankilroy.ie and arrange a FREE 90 minute coaching session.
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