The next step in your “Strategic Sales Master Plan” is identifying your top critical factors.  Overall there are a lot of critical factors that can impact your business and its success.  Typically those factors are related to time, talents, treasure, and manpower.  In general; critical factors are broad categories like customer service, finances, etc.  Our focus here is the 5 most critical factors when it comes to SALES.

All you need to do at this point is understand each critical factor and how it impacts your sales success.  Right now you don’t need to identify specific ways to fulfill each critical factor because that comes later.  Here are the 5 critical factors.

Significance

The first critical factor is significance.  Significance is what makes you findable by the right people for the right reasons.  Your ideal future clients won’t be able to find you unless you can answer the question…

Who wants to know you and why? 

For example, a commercial Realtor might say, “Owners and people looking to own a 12-plex or larger apartment building come to me because I’m an expert when it comes to helping them increase their profits from the properties they own. They know when they buy or sell a building with me they will earn more.”

Significance is what makes it easier for the right people to find you.  When you hold significance whether you…

• Make calls
• Network
• Run ads
• Send direct mail
• Capture leads through your website

The potential buyers who come to you are far more likely to be the right people.

Typically when people have a website they have one of two experiences.  They get almost no traffic to their website, or they get a ton of traffic to their website yet neither results in clients.  This typical experience is a result of their lack of significance.  The right people can’t find you, meaning whether you get a lot or a little traffic those visitors leave without connecting with you.  It’s not the amount of traffic you get that counts.  It’s not the amount of suspects you get from those other prospecting efforts that count.  What counts is the relevancy of those visitors and suspects you attract.

Connections

Connections is the next critical factor.  Connections represent the first step in the relationship and sales process.  Most people mistakenly think the most important action is the action they take.  The reality is the most important action is the action a potential client takes.  Once you have significance more of the right people find you and more of those people are willing to take an action.

Once they find you it’s up to you to present those potential clients with the motivation to take the first action.  That action makes your first connection.  When a potential client takes that action they are, in essence, raising their hand and telling you, “Hey, I’m someone like that and that’s what I’m looking for too.”  A potential client would be telling the commercial Realtor I either own or want to own an apartment complex and I want to make sure I profit from the experience.

This first connection is the key to setting the stage so you are the one sought after rather than the one doing the chasing and begging.  This critical factor makes certain you never have to chase after people who don’t want to talk to you, or beg for an appointment with people who will never become your client.

Relationships

Relationships are the next critical factor.  Relationships are what help you build the trust and appreciation required to have an open and honest sales conversation when the time is right.  Even though many people treat relationships like they are something that just happens that’s a big mistake.  Building relationships is a predictable and repeatable process.

You have the power to control every step in the process.  The magic comes when you understand how to automate that process so you can initiate, nurture, and maintain a relationship with a limitless number of ideal potential clients and existing clients.

The relationship process eliminates the skepticism that creates those stilted difficult conversations about working together that happen as a result of potential clients viewing you as a typical sales person.

Transformation

The fourth critical factor is transformation.  Transformation represents the successful progression through the sales funnel transforming a complete stranger into a paying client.  It’s a smooth step-wise process for both you and your new client.  The transformation process honors and respects the stages of buyer readiness, and helps you focus your time on the people who are ready to buy now while nurturing the people who will become ready buyers at some point in the future.

Expansion

Expansion is the last critical factor.  Expansion is the result of significance combined with leverage.  The outcome of expansion is referrals.  Expansion produces referrals from both clients and business partners.

Most people treat referrals like an unexpected gift.  Expansion helps you develop a process that predictably produces referrals.

This will be an easy step for you.  Take out your “Strategic Sales Master Plan“  and fill in the 5 critical factors with the words:

1. Significance
2. Connections
3. Relationships
4. Transformation
5. Expansion

Then start thinking about what you could do to produce those outcomes in your business.  Just think, nothing more nothing less.  Allow your mind to explore things you may never have done before.  Question the way you’ve approached these things in the past.  What might you do?  What have you done that you shouldn’t be doing?

Coach Cheryl

Do it Yourself

Do it with a Little Help

Do it with Guidance

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under sales coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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