Exposing Sales Myths #8 – Fail to plan, plan to fail

Grant Leboff: Mark, myth number eight is about sales planning. You say that it’s not all in the planning, there are other factors, sales people spend a lot of time doing research and are not being at the coalface. So there must be a balance. You don’t just burst into a sales meeting without thinking it, so where does the balance lie?

Mark Blackmore: Whenever we say this to sales people, we can hear them inside quietly rejoicing; that thank goodness I don’t have to do any planning any more! The reason that we say that it’s a myth is because how many times, Grant, have you seen a salesperson prepare, get everything ready… maybe they will be on telesales, so before they hit the ‘phones they truly need to understand the customer. They always do start jumps, kind of warming up, sort of flexing, pick up the telephone… customer’s not there, so then they go onto the next one and spend another 10 minutes researching for the customer.

It goes back to; if the value proposition is truly robust – so they know the sort of reason why customers would want them, the sort of credible solution that they are offering, and why this is genuine perceived value – then actually, providing that it is actually suited to the sector, there isn’t too much planning that an individual should have to do on a company. OK? Because then, once you are actually into the call, you can start to generate more information. Now the higher up you go the more important those contacts are, we don’t want to blow those, so of course we need to be prepared, but there is a balance. I believe that in the early stages of contacting an organisation, there is a balance between the two and I’d rather a salesperson was optimising their time, not wasting their time on information that they are never going to use. I think they are procrastinating.

Grant Leboff: Does it change on the value order? So if you’re selling $1 million software solution, does your time planning change quite significantly then if you are selling a $300 product? Does it depend on all the value here as well, up to a point?

Mark Blackmore: Of course it does. The reality is if I’m selling $1 million contract I am probably not going to get a meeting with you day one and sell that by the end of today. So the reality is, do need to do due diligence in creating that opportunity? But do you know what, if I’m selling those sort of deals, I’m probably speaking to lots of people within the organisation. So am I going to do a huge amount of research on every single person, probably not. So even though the order value may change and the sales cycle is longer, the reality is that salespeople who procrastinate too much will actually be less effective, in my opinion.

Grant Leboff: So ultimately, in many ways it’s about time management. It’s about salespeople utilising their time in the best way possible. Do you have any tips for sales people to make sure that they get that right?

Mark Blackmore: Well Stephen Covey, of course, always talks about the four quadrants and the reality is, sales people are too guilty of being involved in the urgent tasks, but the not important tasks, so he’s trying to strip those out and maximise their time on the tasks that will generate revenues.

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