Make Time to be Proactive

Taking time to be proactive in sales is a must. Yet too often sellers are too busy doing their jobs to prospect, filling the top part of their funnel. With everything that is asked of sellers like maintaining existing accounts, helping with collections, proposal development, travel, and the myriad of other tasks, somehow the job of being proactive tends to get left behind.

Yet nothing may be as important to your success as some quiet time prospecting new accounts, or doing some additional proactive work in your existing book of business. Inbound activity is nice, but rarely is that level of activity enough to make our number. Instead, the organization is relying on you, the seller, to keep the phone lines burning up and making net new appointments to keep the funnel full.

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It happened again last week! I was conducting a pipeline call with a rep. He was frustrated that a prospect had gone dark. After a few great meetings he was not returning calls or emails. I suggested that the rep send an “Are You?” email right then, during our call. He did and guess what happened. The prospect emailed him back while we were still on the phone. This, after weeks of ignoring repeated calls and emails. That’s why I wrote the book. The emails work – all the time! If you have prospects that have “gone dark” – and who hasn’t – the book is for you. There is also an email for following up on leads, and another for planning killer sales calls. What are you waiting for? Those deals won’t wake up on their own!

The book, Click “Send” and Sell! Three Unconventional Emails with Extraordinary Sales Success is available at just about every electronic outlet, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, and Kobo. It’s also available for your iPad at the iTunes store.

No eReader? No problem! Click HERE to download and print the book in any format you want.

So why is making time for proactive work so difficult? It’s an easy answer – we are all being reactive to the immediate needs of our customers and the organization, and very few of us actually likes to prospect. That’s just an honest assessment of the situation. You are probably no different. Of course there are exceptions – many of you spend your days on the road cold-calling prospects. Or, maybe you spend most of your time on the phone calling new companies. But most of you are working an existing book of business and the organization is expecting you to grow that book by bringing on new accounts. If you let email manage your time you are in for a rude awakening.

Making time for proactive work takes effort. I would suggest a couple of simple things that you can do to help you spend time prospecting. First, turn off email or at least turn off that notification of new emails that pops up on your screen every time a new email arrives. There is a setting in MS Outlook that allows you to turn that off. Along with that, mute your computer so you don’t get an audible notification of a new email arrival. It’s just too tempting to check that new email and that inevitably interferes with your proactive time. Email is a great tool, but it is also one of the most distracting of activities that keeps us from being proactive. Turn it off and give yourself a fighting chance.

Second, I would set an appointment on your calendar for proactive time. That way when people view your calendar to make appointments, they’ll see a big, fat block of unavailable time that can’t be scheduled for internal meetings or conference calls. Set that time aside for your proactive work and commit to making some number of calls, appointments, demonstrations, or whatever you do to keep the top part of the funnel full. Make the appointment recurring and commit to a weekly regimen. I once read a great book by a sales trainer who makes ten cold calls every day no matter what. He is the president of the company, a bestselling author, and frequently travels. Yet, no matter what, he makes ten cold calls every day. That’s discipline.

Making time to be proactive can be challenging, but there are ways to create an atmosphere that keeps the distractions at a minimum. Do whatever it takes and spend the time necessary to keep your pipeline full.