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June is…the beginning of a new season.

It’s summer…and summer traffic is often unpredictable, and customers/clients can be distracted by vacation plans and being away from home.
You might have vacation plans scheduled, too…which means you need to make goal in LESS time.
What? Yes. 
And as we discussed in an earlier post, it’s about the strategy…what is the number you have to hit? How many sales do you have to make at what average sale? And what actions are needed to achieve those sales?
You do this by taking the actions that incr…

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June is…the end of the first half of the year.

Here we are…halfway through the year. At the completion of June, it’s a good time to review performance for the first six months and see what worked and what didn’t work… or was missing from your strategy. 

Since the first half of this year has been different from the first half of last year, what has changed that you need to adapt to? The trend that is driving this year is different from last year – and we can adapt and build a new strategy or we can complain and bemoan the changes. The choice…

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June is…what follows May

If your showroom is like other showrooms, April was soft, and May followed April in a similar fashion. Neither month are historically strong but that isn’t much solace when you are expecting to see a certain number of opportunities and they don’t come in the door. 

Remember that there are THREE ways to drive business and traffic is only one of them. Review your other areas for business: close ratio (increase the number of opportunities you close of the opportunities you get) and average sale …

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PerformNow and One by One

If you are a regular reader, you know that I have a commitment to sales managers and how they effectively execute their job and elevate their team performance. My “Sell it or Schedule it” has a sales manager training component and I easily spend as much time training and coaching sales managers as I spend training and coaching salespeople.

It’s with that commitment that I have joined forces with David and Wayne McMahon and their PerformNow Sales Manager Performance Groups. There are…

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The Final PR Word

P R
For Sales Professionals, everywhere…..
This is the last of four blogs in the series on PR words. How did the last blog about the buyer’s PRocess impact what you know about where your client/customer is in their decision making…and what you are able to complete and achieve with them today? Our final P R word is….

PRoduct(s)
  • Based on what we have learned about their problem, what matters most to them, and where they are in their process, what are the best product solutions for them?
  • H…

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The Second PR Word


This is the second in a series of four blogs about P R words. What did you gain from the last blog to learn more about the PRoblem that your client/customer is facing? Let’s keep looking at our next P R word….

PRiority
  • What matters MOST to them NOW? 
  • What are the key and essential elements of the problem they are trying to solve or the vision they are trying to realize?
  • What are the motivating aspects of this process and decision that is driving them now? 

This part of the sales i…

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The 4 PR Words

Nope, it’s not about public relations. This is the first in a series of four words beginning with P R that are critical to ask and to know. 
P and R are the first two letters of FOUR words that impact the sales interaction and the outcome. These are questions we should be asking them and ourselves about what is in the mind of the customer/client and what is driving their decision-making. Let’s look….

PRoblem
  • What is behind this purchase and decision?
  • What is the ‘current reality’ that th…

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New Habits

Now that you have picked an imperfection to work on (and if you haven’t, please do…tardiness is clearly one that can always be addressed if it’s an issue for you), how is it going?

What are the structures you put in place to help you? Did you put alerts on your phone to remind you to do something (practice a new action, get out the door!) or recurring actions in your calendar to start to build a new skill? 

Building habits takes intention, prompting, repetition, patience, adjustment…and celebr…

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Opportunities for Growth

Imperfections exist, and acknowledging and accepting that fact is helpful in order to move with them and through them. 
When we accept them as part of the package, we can own them without defending, excusing, or avoiding…they just are.

From that point, we can expand our view and ask: How is this habit and behavior affecting me? How does it impact others? What do I gain from it and what does it cost me?

And we can choose new actions. 

If you are in a sales leadership role, and you have …

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Asking for Referrals

I must admit, as a salesperson this is one of my weaker areas. I GET a lot of referral business but it’s not because I ask for it. I can only imagine what would happen if I intentionally asked a happy client to refer me to someone they know who might use my assistance. So, don’t follow my lead on this.

However, I do work with people who are good at this and are generous to share what they do that works, which is what I will share with you.

ALWAYS give two business cards and say: “Here is…

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