Do you remember the first day of your very first sales job? Maybe you joined a sales organization for a corporation where they supplied you with a methodology to hit your number, or perhaps you were a sales rep at a smaller business and given little to no direction. Either way, it’s safe to say that you were overwhelmed and maybe a little uncertain how to go about your daily sales activities to increase sales.
Harvard Business Review reported “an 18% difference in revenue growth” among companies that invested in defining a formal sales process than those that didn’t. When a framework isn’t supplied, salespeople are left fumbling around, digging through sales content, trying to figure out what tactics to increase sales will work best and help them reach their quota faster.
In episode two of my podcast INSIDE Inside Sales, experienced sales professional James Bawden said, “I don’t think I’m alone in the experience of coming into a sales role and knowing that things need to get done, but not having a framework already in place to help you achieve those goals.” If you have the chance to increase your revenue by nearly 20%, why wouldn’t you?!
Investing the time in creating a framework doesn’t have to be difficult. Below you’ll learn the three easy steps of James’ daily activity framework for success.
3-Step Daily Activity Framework for Sales Success
Prospecting is the most challenging aspect of the sales process for 40% of salespeople. This three-step framework is to be used as a personal check-in by the salesperson to make prospecting more manageable.
1. Identify which channels to use and how many outreaches to make per day. Dependent on your industry this will include a mix of the phone, social media, email, or any other means of communication that is preferred by your prospects.James found a baseline of 100 daily outreaches worked well for him. He also A/B tested this activity over a two month period by varying how much he used the phone versus email. So for one month, he tried a 50/50 ratio and the next month he switched to 70/30 to determine what led to the most conversions.If you have any data on what previous salespeople have found works well, pass that information on to your new reps.
2. Plan to prospect daily. It’s important to be consistent, and James recommended blocking out time on the calendar for prospecting activities every day. Book it in your calendar so nothing can stop you from doing this activity. It has to become your daily normal. Lead routing software can help boost productivity on the phone during these blocks of time. You also may want to share this blog post of tips on email subject lines to help your reps induce a response from the prospect.
3. Conduct a weekly quality assurance (QA) test. Sales leaders should challenge their salespeople to ask themselves the following questions:
- Are the efforts or actions worth your time?
- Are you contacting the right people?
- Are you accurately personalizing your outreach?
Instead of circling around quantity, focus more on quality — actions that will help you close more sales. Are you following the right sales cadence to produce results? Are you making enough follow up attempts? If additional information is needed, let your sales team know that they should skip a few actions that day and take the time to research!
[bctt tweet=”Activity for the sake of activity does nothing. – @EVSJames #sales” username=”ohpinion8ted @VanillaSoft”]
Pairing up your salespeople with someone else on the team could garner even better results from this framework. “People are 65 percent more likely to meet a goal after committing to another person” according to The American Society of Training and Development. With regular progress meetings, their chance of success jumps to 95 percent!
Holding oneself responsible for daily activities makes the end goal, i.e., the quota, more attainable. Encourage your salespeople to tweak this internal checking system and make it their own. Consider adding gamification to make it easier for sales reps to adopt the right daily sales activity framework. Competition for badges and rewards can make it easier to convince people to change.
Listen to this INSIDE Inside Sales podcast episode to hear more about attaining sales success with a daily activity framework.
