If you are a sales professional, how important is momentum to you? I’m sure you have experienced times where you have had gobs of momentum and are closing everything you touch. I am also just as sure that you have had times where it feels like you can’t catch a break. Where does this mythical energy come from, how can you catch more of it, and how important is it to your survival?
Well, in my opinion, momentum is the lifeblood of the sales professional. The number one reason people leave a sales profession is they just don’t have any momentum and they haven’t had momentum for a significant amount of time. As a previous leader of sales professionals, I felt like I was always in a battle to find and keep momentum for my team members. If someone went without momentum for a long enough time you just knew the end was inevitable. It was the people who could make and keep the momentum that would survive and could bring about a long-standing practice.
So how do you keep momentum the longest… The answer is perpetual motion. Every time you have an appointment, you set an appointment. Every time you close a sale you set up another sale. Every time you change a prospect to a client you gather more referrals. It’s when we fall out of sync with those activities that we give up our momentum.
Have you ever thought about your closing ratio in relation to momentum? When you have momentum, you are closing business constantly, your delivery of the presentation is stellar, often you are probably closing 90% of everything you touch, and you are getting referrals every time. When you don’t have any momentum, setting appointments, closing business, getting referrals is the toughest job ever. The worst feeling you can have as a Sales Professional is you have a rent check due, not enough money in the bank, and one appointment on the books. Have you ever been there? How much pressure do you put on yourself and the prospect when they are the only person on the books? You are approaching your business like a Hail Mary pass in football? One giant heave and you better hope they catch it!
So, take a step back, what is your prospecting plan? Do you have a cookbook on your most profitable prospecting methods, and do you max out the methods that yield the best results? Do you block time every day to prospect? Do you come in late and prospect when your calendar is drying up? You are in the fight of your life to make and keep momentum. How seriously are you taking this issue?
What do you do when you are in a momentum slump? How do you break out of it? In my mind momentum is like a spiral in the image above. You are either spiraling up or you are spiraling down. The only way to go uphill in a spiral is you must attack the loss of momentum with so much force that you are able to push your energy up that spiral.
It is not easy to make momentum and it is not easy to keep momentum. How much could a professional selling system change your ability to make and keep momentum? Through a variety of training and leadership programs that we offer at Lift, we have tools to support the Sales Professional, Emerging Leader, and C-Suite executives. All these people need to know how to harness momentum as just one skill out of many to be successful in their respective roles. Would you like to learn more about how we can transform your business’s ability to make and keep momentum? We have an event on January 22nd to take a dive into our “Process for Success” and how it can transform results! Here is the link to register: Register for Process for Success at Lift Consulting
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