What is your Sales Game Plan?
Think of your favourite (yes Canadian spelling) hockey team (GO Jets Go). You watch all the games and are a huge fan. Let’s say their 5 on 5 game is good, Penalty Killing is near the top of the league, but the Power Play is ineffective and not only doesn’t score, it takes momentum away from your team. The Power Play has sucked for a while now and nothing seems to work. But they keep doing. The same. Dam. Thing. Man that's frustrating, right?
As a fan are you may be screaming at the TV for the coach to ‘do something’? (I don’t do that by the way). Maybe fire the GM? Or change it up and put so and so in front of the net. If it’s not working, why don’t they do SOMETHING? Anything?
As the coach, if you knew the PP was hurting your success, wouldn’t you look to update and improve your power play?
Additionally, what if they didn’t track this part of their game (analytics/KPI’s) and don’t even realize the extent the Power Play and is hurting the team’s success? That would be irresponsible to the players and the fans - Especially the fans.
Wait a minute - does this sound like your sales game plan?
While I have your attention, ask yourself the following questions:
What is your sales strategy?
How do you measure your effectiveness?
Do you understand what is working?
What is not?
How often do you review your KPI’s to assess and adapt if/when required?
What does your sales funnel look like? (Does it look like a funnel?
Are there stagnant opportunities? (No come on, really?)
Are there deals that have been ready to close for a while now that haven’t?
Are there a bunch of accounts in early stages of the sales cycle and only a few that look favourable?
If these questions were difficult to answer, or you didn’t like the answers, should we fire the coach?
Of course not. But it does drive home the fact that if we took a page from sports in terms of our approach to sales we could probably be even more successful.
Here’s another example to hopefully drive this point home: Think about the amount of time sports teams invest preparing and planning for their games. Football for example takes an entire week to review game film, devise a game plan specific to the next opponent, run drills at practice, more drills, pre-game preparation etc.
Why?
To maximize the opportunity for a successful outcome. In our case that may be a sale, but it may also be another meeting. It may be an opportunity to get in front of more decision makers to even better understand how you can help them. It may be the opportunity to submit a proposal for the first time with this account. Those are all wins that lead up to the big prize – a new client.
How many of us show up to our calls and meetings prepared with a well-defined sales game plan?
No? Okay, that’s it! FIRE THE COACH!!!
Kidding again of course.
But, maybe you could hire a Sales Coach to work with your team. One that has the experience to guide team players and management on developing a sales game plan that will lead to increased success. Someone who could put processes and structure into place that will lead to building that capacity internally so that you can eventually run your own game plan.
Somebody who is funny, witty and with boyish good looks and charm for days. I know a guy.