There’s an old joke that goes “What’s the last sound you hear before sales call planning starts?” The answer is “The car door closing in the prospect’s parking lot.”
As I work with my clients, I’m astounded at how many senior salespeople don’t do sales call planning, and today my friend Jack Malcolm wrote a blog that explains why. You can find it here.
What Jack says is that senior sales folk think they are so good they don’t need to plan. Here’s news to those of you that think that: You’re wrong. Here are a few reasons why:
- If you don’t know in detail what you’re trying to accomplish, you won’t know whether you had a good call or a bad one.
- Without a plan, you risk wasting your prospect’s time, and they will not put up with that for long.
- If you are not planning your sales calls, you can’t link them into your account or opportunity strategy – so you have no strategy.
Sales call planning is an easy thing to do, and gives you huge leverage in your sales calls. Every really good salesperson I’ve known over the years has planned sales calls – and most of the mediocre salespeople I’ve known, and every salesperson I’ve had to fire, have not.
Read Jack’s post, and if you recognize yourself, do something about it and start planning your calls.
