Choosing Results to Focus On

by Miller Heiman

You need to identify which activities are most likely to get you to the goals you have set. Inevitably this means making choices. You must choose to perform certain activities at the expense of others. To do this you need a focused effort.

Shortage of time

The obvious reason is shortage of time. Even if you had no social or family life and spent every waking hour doing business, you’d still be unable to accomplish everything you would like. Because you’ve got various (often conflicting) day-to day responsibilities, part of your attention will inevitably be deflected from your most important goals.

Primary selling goal

In addition, resources other than time are also limited. If you could devote unlimited funds, support services, and personnel to nailing down your goals, you might reach certain goals in record time. But the rest of your business would be gasping for air. When we speak about concentrating on your primary goal, we don’t mean tunnel-vision devotion to one goal, but rather relative concentration of effort. You’ve got to spread your resources optimally over various selling activities.

Selling time

We define selling time as the time that you devote to individual targeted sales objectives—pieces of business that you expect to close within thirty to sixty days.

Investment time

Because you plan to be in business longer than thirty to sixty days, it’s equally important to manage those activities that relate to long-term sales investments. These are account-related activities whose impact is not tied to only immediate sales.

For example, almost every top salesperson we know spends some time and resources on the following:

--Calls to establish new relationships.

--“Probe” calls to gather information about an account’s manufacturing, inventory, or other operations.

--Exploratory meeting to determine a company’s divisional or regional needs.

--Call’s to determine a prospect’s level of satisfaction with current vendors.

Confusion

Often the seller convinces himself of herself that such activities are example of “selling time.” They’re not. Because these calls do not target specific sales opportunities, you’re not really selling when you’re on them. They’re actually examples of time investment, because the pay-off for doing them is non-specific and down the road.

Such social and exploratory interactions may be every bit as valuable as real sales calls. Any expenditure of time and resources that helps you position yourself better for the long-term Account—whether it happens in a manufacturing plant or over a glass of wine—can make strategic sense. But the time availability for these investments is stretched too, so we’re back to the question of resource allocation. Once you set your sales goals, which activities will get you there?

Which opportunities?

The question is, from which of the available opportunities am I most likely to get a high return of sales over a long period of time?

That’s the smartest way to look at it. Unfortunately, many salespeople, in determining where to place their limited resources, attempt to cover as many “opportunities” as possible.

Playing your hunches about which account opportunities will pay off—or, even worse, spreading yourself paper-thin over every opportunity, no matter how slim—is merely a variation on the theme of “I’m guessing.” And it’s to important to be left to guesswork.

Here’s the tragic (or maybe comic) part of the scenario. You don’t have to rely on guesswork to make your choices. Unlike the gambler, you have information that allows you to reduce the risk of the resource investments you make.

Lead from strength

In focusing resources, you should always lead from your strengths. When we speak of “focus”, we mean that ideally all investments of sales resources should leverage from what you and your company does well, and should be applied against those problems your customers have where your unique strengths can best provide solutions.

The question to ask yourself is, what activities can we perform that would highlight for the customer the uniqueness (or relative uniqueness) of our strengths? Because the best product or service in the world won’t sell itself, you need to focus on demonstrating your uniqueness to the customer. Then test your decision by asking yourself, will following through on this decision contribute to the achievement of your goals?

Loss of payoff

A hit-or-miss approach seldom pays off in good business. In a highly competitive atmosphere, the failure to focus your resources on your best opportunities inevitably leaves you open to account erosion and to the uncertainties of a “strategy” built on chance.

Focused investments are not guarantees of success. But one thing is guaranteed: if you chose to spread your resources thin instead of focusing on them, you’re taking a big gamble with your and your company’s health.

Article Credit

Reprinted with permission from the Selling Advantage, Volume 3, Issue 75.

Miller Heiman is a Nevada-based Corporation that helps businesses develop sales processes. You can reach Miller Heiman, Inc. by calling (800) 526-6400 or visit our micro site at www.millerheiman.com/Siebel_Project/index_mhi_micro.htm for more information about our products and services