Getting to Your New Year’s Resolution – What’s on your list?

The New Year is the time to take some time for reflection on change and resolutions for the upcoming year. The question is how do you come up with the resolution? Or do you reflect on the outcome you are looking to achieve?  You should focus on resolutions from two perspectives; one, properly define the goal (what is it deep down?) and two, incorporate the specific steps you must accomplish to achieve the goals.

How to get to the resolution deep down

What is a New Year’s resolution?  It’s something you commit to do to affect change to reach a goal.  When setting goals, it’s important to get to the primary motivation.  You do this by asking yourself what you are hoping to accomplish.  For example, losing weight tops the list on many individual’s plans for the New Year.  Ask yourself, what are you hoping to accomplish by losing weight? If the answer is better health then ask yourself what you’re hoping to accomplish with better health?  It works.  Ask yourself over and over until you get to the true motivator behind the goal.   Understanding the motivation behind completion is paramount to achievement of your goal.

Goals fall into 3 buckets

We do the “getting to the goal” / “what are you hoping to accomplish” exercise with every client.  It’s amazing how vast the goals seem in the beginning, but can always be narrowed down to two or three.  If thinking of business goals, they can be narrowed into 3 buckets: increasing revenue, decreasing costs and mitigating risks.  Personal goals, similarly, can be lumped into a few categories as well: personal improvement, personal achievement and increasing income.

Achieving goals over 70% of the time

Now that we’ve gotten to the motivation behind the goal, next month we will explore how to achieve those goals 70% of the time.  We will cite the fascinating study that replaces the mythical 1953 Yale study on goal writing.  Until then, get to the motivation behind your goals.  What are you hoping to accomplish in 2014? We will see you in January.

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Ready – Fire – Aim: Why Profiling Works In Sales

Although the word “profiling” has a negative connotation in the world of police activity and airport security, according to Merriam Webster, profiling in sales is not only permissible, it is paramount to success:  “Profiling – The act or process of targeting a person (or organization) on the basis of known traits, tendencies, characteristics or behaviors”.

A successful sales organization knows all about targeting customers; understanding who they are, what goals they are working toward, what industry wide challenges commonly prevent them from achieving their objectives, and what motivates them to buy.  These “traits, tendencies, characteristics or behaviors” facilitate an understanding of how a company’s product or service aligns with the marketplace and provides a sustainable business model for success.  In a business setting, targeting may work for marketing, but on the streets, reps need the specific criteria to go out there and win.

Identify the Criteria to Increase Success

Have you fine-tuned the profiling expertise of your sales department?  It’s not hard to define your target audience at a high level, but have you taken a granular look at who the ideal buyers are in your market?  Who are your reps calling on?  Are they picking out prospects randomly from an organizational line up, or do they know whom they are trying to identify?   Have you profiled the roles of those who can actually make or influence a buying decision in your industry or market?  Do you have your finger on the pulse of how those buying influencing roles may have changed or may be changing in the current marketplace?  Do you understand what they’re trying to achieve, what challenges they may be facing, and how to align specific nuances of your product or service directly with their particular roles?  The profiles of the roles of each person at the decision maker level may only be slightly diverse, but a rep’s clear understanding of the individuals, carefully profiled, can make all the difference in their success.

Ready, Fire, Aim Won’t Work; How We Help 

At Flannery Sales Systems, our Sales Process Definition Workshops provide an opportunity to collaborate with our clients, utilizing research and our joint industry experience and expertise, to sharpen an organization’s profiling aptitude.  Together, we document the profiles of the compulsory decision makers and buying influences required to facilitate a sale.  We help specify the representative objectives, needs, problems and challenges of the decision makers and those in a buying influence role.  Next, we help our clients carefully determine how specific components of their products and services align with their particular targeted audience profile.  In a messaging session, we help build a customized strategy for the rep to use when preparing for a conversation with the target audience.

Decrease the Cost of Sales with Clear Targets

Putting profiling strategies into practice speeds up the sale by providing valuable tools for reps to help them deliver a focused and consistent message, which qualifies the prospect sooner, shortens the sales cycle, minimizes defeat, and keeps the reps on their beat closing more business and doing what they do so well.  Profiling?  Not only permissible…a powerful strategy for success.

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