New Year sale’s list

Welcome to 2009!  I’d like us all to start off the new year making a simple sales list.  This list should have two headings “What I did good” and “What I did bad”

Try to think of some sales tactics that you did which proved to win you business.  Maybe you sent a reminder email between phone calls and people were more likely to take your call, or perhaps you finally started recording sales call details in a CRM, or whatever.  The point is to think about what you did to help build your sales funnel or at least make your job easier.

Secondly, and this list should be easier, make a list of things that didn’t work.  Maybe you were offering discounts right off the bat and it didn’t help your close ratio, or you might have even tried to start at the bottom of an organization in your selling efforts, again, whatever.  The obvious statement here is not to do these things again, but more importantly try to understand why they didn’t work.  For instance, maybe you’re already very competitively priced and slashing prices won’t help close more deals - in fact it might make your offering look like a cheap alternative, and that’s never good.

So make your lists, check them twice and put them in your drawer.  Pull them out once a month and review and add to it.

Best of luck in 2009 as we start off our sales efforts.