The One-Two Sales Punch
Table of Contents
Every sales leader has, at least once, had a poor-performing sales team. Hopefully, that is not you right now.
Even if a sales team is doing just OK, or even pretty good, every sales leader knows they can do better. It is not a simple thing to move a sales team from where they are now, to a place significantly higher.
Great sales performance is a function of productivity and proficiency.
Productivity X Proficiency = Sales Performance
If you were to have someone who works harder than anyone else at sales, but they had no sales skills, here’s what their sales performance equation would look like.
100 x 0 = 0
It’s heartbreaking when you have reps who are giving it their all come to you discouraged and disillusioned, asking why they are not getting results.
If you were to have the reverse, the most skilled salesperson in the world who is also the laziest salesperson in the world, their sales performance would look like this.
0 x 100 = 0
How frustrating is it to see a seller who’s got the gift, but who is so lazy that they are missing out on what could be amazing numbers.
So, it takes both. Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just work hard and expect to see sales results. In the same way, you can’t just rely on your skill to get you the numbers you desire. It is the interaction of skill and work ethic, or productivity and proficiency, that makes phenomenal results.
You are about to learn critical information you need to achieve outstanding sales performance. This includes a skill that will increase your sales proficiency and a tool to increase productivity. That skill is the Schedule the Next Event Play, and the tool is ScoreCard, both from Griffin Hill. Together, these ensure that your interactions with prospects have clarity and that your sales funnel is constantly building momentum so that you can shorten your sales cycle and hit all of your sales goals
CLARITY
Schedule Next Event to Always Lock-In Meetings
The most common problem we see with sales reps is that they fail to close a reasonable percentage of prospects that enter their pipeline. Granted, most don’t have enough entering the pipeline, but that’s a problem we discuss elsewhere. Even when enough prospects are entering the pipeline, most salespeople are not moving enough of them through to the end for that revenue-boosting close.
Well, why aren’t they?
After decades of working with sales teams, we’ve found that the problem is that sales leaders and reps lack visibility in the pipeline. And they are not using a systematic, proven method to keep prospects moving through the pipeline.
Fortunately, there’s a relatively easy fix...
What many sales team leaders don’t understand is that scheduling the next event drives momentum in your sales pipeline. It is the most important play throughout your sales system.
At the end of every meeting in your sales process, you need to schedule the next event.
Every time you schedule the next event, you should do each of the following:
- Establish a purpose.
- Set a time.
- Set a date.
- Set a location.
Let’s look at each of these in more detail.
1. Establish a purpose: “Let’s get together to talk about your __”
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- Remember to state a specific topic for discussion.
- People are interested in themselves, so focus the purpose on them “your goals,” “your plan,” “your product.”
- Many people skip this step, which causes the meeting to lose direction as it’s finished
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2. Set a time: “What time are you available?”
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- Set a specific time when you and the prospect will be free
- Avoid statements like, “I’m available that morning.” This creates more work for you and the prospect (missed calls, emailing back and forth, leaving messages).
- Send a calendar invite to get on their calendar.
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3. Set a date: “What day are you available this week?”
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- Nail down the specific date when you and the prospect can meet.
- Avoid statements like “I’ll call you sometime next week.”
- Once again, get on the calendar with a calendar invite.
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4. Set a location: “We’ll meet at your office.”
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- Make sure that it is clear who will be doing what. “I will call you.”
- If the conversation will be happening over Zoom, Microsoft, or Google, make sure the online location is clear and that the prospect has access to the links needed to get on as you are finalizing the location (not 20 minutes before the meeting start time)
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Ambiguity and uncertainty are your enemies. Ambiguity, while scheduling the next event, counteracts genuine interest by placing the burden of communication on the prospect. You shouldn’t create work for your prospects to meet you.
By scheduling the next event, you eliminate a major falling off point from your sales funnel. With this skill in place, there should be no reason you ever lose someone with genuine interest due to scheduling.
This is the “secret” behavior that top salespeople have ingrained in their process. This is the fix to getting your reps to get more of their prospects staying in the pipeline to finally emerge as paying customers.
Don’t be fooled by how simple this may appear. It may seem obvious. It may sound too easy. The fact that it takes very little time and is easy is an important part of why it works: if it weren’t, it’d be almost impossible to get salespeople to do it!
We’ve seen this work over and over again. When sales leaders make this a priority and get their teams executing this new schedule next event behavior, they see closes and revenue go up in as soon as a few weeks, if not in as little as a month or two.
How good it feels to show your executives the large spike in closes and revenue and have them ask you “Why? How?” as you sit there with a smirky grin on your face. How good it feels to see the proud, beaming faces of your reps and the emerging excitement, enthusiasm, and renewed effort born of confidence.
MOMENTUM
Use ScoreCard to Boost Productivity
Until 350 years ago, people believed that illness was caused by bad smells, the movement of the planets, interference from supernatural entities, or an imbalance in bodily fluids. They were just guesses at the truth because no one really knew what was going on.
It wasn’t until Anton van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope that humans were capable of observing the microscopic origins of infection. Using a prototypical microscope, Leeuwenhoek observed microorganisms for the first time from a droplet of pond water, revealing a world of living beings no one knew existed. When scientists and researchers began connecting Leeuwenhoek’s once-invisible microscopic world to other fluids in animals, nature, in the air, and on solids, those scientists and researchers began to predict illness, treat it with drugs, prevent it through vaccines, and isolate it with chemotherapy.
ScoreCard is to your pipeline what the microscope was to modern medicine.
It’s the game changer.
ScoreCard is a tool that works in conjunction with your existing sales pipeline to ensure that your team is building momentum in the sales cycle. But more important than that to most sales team leaders, it reveals the truth of what’s going on in your pipeline.
In order to make accurate judgments about the state of your sales, you need to be able to get accurate data from your pipeline.
Here’s a scenario:
Now you have to go to the executive team and explain in your quarterly earnings report the reason why earnings are down, and you thought you were set up for a big quarter.
Think this is only hypothetical? Think again. This is a recent experience from our former COO, Cameron Baird:
CRMs don’t track momentum, but you need to in order to make accurate predictions, goals, and forecasts.
ScoreCard changes the focus from activity and results, to flow and velocity by recording Schedule Next Event. Schedule Next Event is the ONE KPI that should matter in your pipeline. If the next event hasn’t been scheduled, then the case doesn’t reflect a high likelihood of success and productivity has stopped.
“Because we’re switching the focus from backward activity to forward momentum, we know how things are truly progressing in the sales pipeline.”
— Cameron Baird
Shifting your focus toward forward momentum allows you to increase that momentum, allowing you to make better decisions based on real data. Because of poor visibility sales teams over-inflate their goals. You can avoid this by always scheduling the next event, and recording it once you do.
ScoreCard is engineered to retrain your focus. Here’s a case from one of our clients. Ask yourself, as you read, how this reminds you of your sales team:
The relief that John felt as he started seeing the cash flow in, the points tick up, and his goal inch closer and closer is a feeling that every sales team leader deserves to experience. Energized focus, fully involved, immersed in the task at hand, and confident in your ability to achieve it. That’s what you deserve. Perfect flow.
You won’t know that feeling until you give ScoreCard a try. Learn more about the power of ScoreCard here
KNOW THY SALES SELF
Avoid self-deception with knowledge and skill.
“Self-deception leads to self-destruction,” is a favorite saying of our founder, Scott Baird. It’s because oftentimes, whenever he goes into a company with a consulting mindset, he sees self-deception as a primary cause of low numbers and stagnant growth.
When you do Schedule Next Event, not only do you avoid self-destruction, you can also expect the following:
- Complete knowledge of the momentum in your sales pipeline
- The capacity to identify performers who add to the speed and volume of your sales pipeline and performers who are slowing it down.
- The ability to accurately forecast sales numbers and push for higher sales goals.
These tactics aren’t new. We’ve tried and tested them repeatedly over the past thirty years, and they always work wonders. Here are some success stories from the sales team leaders who have shifted their focus forward with Schedule Next Event:
“In five months, we increased new sales 301% using the Griffin Hill sales system. I wanted more control of the sales process, Griffin Hill gave me a vehicle, a system to help me get that control and thus the predictable results I was looking for.”
— Shane Argyle, CEO
“I think their system is simple and yet powerful, I enjoy weekly coaching, a standard system of language that everybody has and the metrics tools. They also do a good job of making the invisible visible, which means you can then manage it. Using Griffin Hill we have seen 200+% growth year over year for over 6 years.”
— Ted Broman, Former Owner of IntegraCore
Using Griffin Hill, Equinox found 10 – 15% growth each year by using the Fulfillment and Follow-Up Routine. They shortened their sales cycle by 75%. After implementing Griffin Hill they closed more business in 4 months than they would in an average year.
The choice is yours, do you want to be the game changer? Or be stuck looking only at what has happened in the past.
You don’t need to take our word for it. Try out our system, see if it works for you, and then start experiencing the results. We promise they’ll have a phenomenal impact on your team.