A few years ago I was doing a pipeline deep dive for my team and I saw that my top rep’s pipeline was way too low.
photo by Sergo Rao @ unsplash
This rep (let’s call him JC since that’s his name) was one of the few “natural salesmen” I’ve ever met. He had the hustle, the attitude and the skills that you want in every sales rep on your team. He was so easy to manage, that our 1-on-1s were usually spent discussing top deals and catching up.
But for the first time, his pipeline wasn’t enough to hit his number. I pulled him into my office for a quick chat. I asked him what was up. He said he was spending time on closing deals, working with his field rep to plan an event and dealing with customer service issues.
Together we looked at his activity metrics. Sure enough, for the past 30 days, his phone calls and emails were really low. His untouched leads had piled up. He wasn’t prospecting. I said.
“JC, what’s the deal? You know what you need to do – why do I need to even talk to you about this?”
His smiled and replied,
“Everybody needs a kick in the a$$ once in a while. I’ll get on it and fix this.”
He did. His prospecting activity picked back up, his pipeline grew and he finished with a good quarter. Since then, I’ve always made sure to keep an eye on the prospecting activity for all of my reps.
JC was right.
Sometimes, everyone needs a kick in the a$$. Even me with 20 years of sales experience.
Right after I started Inside Sales Dude, I landed several good consulting projects that kept me busy for nearly 8 months. During that time, I wrote a bunch of blog posts and launched my weekly newsletter.
Since the work came to me, I thought, “I don’t need to prospect for consulting work. I’ll just continue to write blog posts and the work will come to me. This is great!”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t true.
Because I hadn’t done any sales prospecting activity, I had no real pipeline and my consulting business dried up.
Business was so slow, that I even wrote my “final” post last week and announced I’d be starting a job search.
As I started working on my resume, it became painfully obvious to me that I had become too distracted writing my blog at the expense of creating quality pipeline.
Ouch.
Instead of looking for a job, starting this week, I’ve begun real prospecting activity for my consulting business.
You know the drill – create lists, identify suspects, and work prospects.
It’s the basics.
Sometimes we all need a kick in the a$$ to remember to do them. Even me.
Good luck and good selling,Steve
