My first post- January 18, 2015-

A great mentor reminded me that you need a solid foundation in order to achieve your goals.  This concept of foundation allows you to start from a position of strength in your structure. Could you imagine a house built on sand with no pilings? It’s sure to sink.  How about a recipe where you throw all the ingredients in without following the steps? Who knows how that will turn out? The point- a foundation is the core, and it has to be where you start. Let me give you an example:

As a cook I love to make sauces and dressings because I can create the extraordinary from something rather mundane.  Lettuce comes alive when it’s dressed in my favorite Caesar salad recipe, but that dressing requires a foundation. You can’t toss an egg and oil along with the other ingredients into a bowl and hope to have a great Caesar dressing. However, if you whisk an egg yolk for a few minutes it becomes frothy, and then you can slowly add a great olive oil to the egg while you continue to whisk. All of a sudden your mixture takes on a different texture, and you start to see the foundation of a great dressing. You’ve created a base.

Selling is not much different from cooking.  You have to create your foundation.  As the new year is upon us you are probably facing a new quota, a new compensation plan, possibly a new territory, and hopefully some new products are in your bag.  Where do you begin?

My advice is as follows:

1.  End State:

Start with the end in mind by deciding how much money you want to make this year, and assess whether that can be achieved by meeting your quota. If it can then you can start to look forward.  If you need to overachieve quota to hit your personal goals, then define what those numbers are.  This suggestion comes after years of selling. We are all given a compensation plan that tells us how much we can achieve if we hit the company targets, but that may not be your target, so consider yourself to be the owner of your desired end state. Sales is generally about setting your own targets and cooking up a recipe to achieve those ends.

2. Understand:

Once you know what your personal objectives are, take the time to layout your path to achieve your goals.

You have to know how your compensation plan works.  It may pay a premium if you add multiple years or hit quota early. It’s critical that you have a foundational understanding of the plan so that you can execute on your strategy.  In addition, think about the products in your sales bag and where you have opportunities otherwise known as “white space” or leads.  If you find the best products to fit the time sensitive needs of your biggest and best leads, then you are on a much faster path to achieving your goals.

In addition to understanding the plan, you have to know your market, targets, buying titles, how your customers buy and what their biggest challenges are. Some of these will be given to you, but in many cases you’ll have to do some research to truly learn about your clients.  Set up new alerts to track your clients.  Try a service like Google Alerts as a free source of incoming news about topics of interest. If you are fortunate to have access to a premium news service like LexisNexis, then set up your ongoing topical tracking on this platform. Regardless of the platform, take the time to become an expert in your territory.

3. Plan:

Planning is a critical component to sales success as it is the foundational element in any new year.  Once you know your sales targets start to map out your plan.  There are many areas of planning to consider, but some good starting points include the following:

• Identify your best opportunities and rank them (more about ranking in a future post)
• Identify the stakeholders involved in the buying process and the selling process.  Who is critical to your efforts?
• Ensure that your products and services can help your prospects execute on a key priority
• Define your path to gain access to your stakeholders
• Leverage marketing for air cover with great content and collateral
• Be thorough and get ready to hit the ground running
• Take time to reflect on what is working and repeat it, and stop wasting time on the efforts that have no impact

The foundation is laid, and you are off to the year armed with the knowledge and plan to succeed!