You know what makes a salesperson unstoppable? Momentum. You know what makes a sales team unstoppable? Momentum magnified. Momentum will take your team to new levels and will leave everyone else in the dust. Once your team catches that spark, that fire, that invisible force that drives more sales and more success, you hit a whole new level. I have been there and felt the magic of momentum. In my very best year of selling software in 2015, I sold nearly twice the number of systems than anyone else. I remember even skipping out on a company meeting because I knew I had too many sales going on that required my immediate attention! I had momentum.
Where does this magical force come from? I found two things that I was doing that created momentum and at the time, I didn’t even know it. 1. Taking immediate action and getting busy like there wasn’t enough time in the day. I’m talking about maximizing every minute of the day with sending out follow up emails, calling as many customers as I could lining up appointments, getting out in the field and doing meet & greets, organizing customer roadshows, following up with other customers and getting presentations scheduled, sending out proposals, and following up with customers that were in a sales cycle and constantly moving them forward with next steps. I was busy. Busy with good, solid, productive sales activity. I was taking action every day and that was leading to a high level of activity which was leading to more opportunities and more sales. This helped me establish such a large volume of deals (pipeline) that I could pretty much bank on at least 2, 3, maybe even 4 deals coming in every month. That equates to a sale almost every week to every other week. Not bad!
The above is one part of creating momentum (taking action and having consistently high levels of activity). Before I move on to the second part, I also want to share that when you are truly busy with activities like the above, and you have a lot of spinning plates, your customers will also sense this and will be more inclined to do business with you. Somehow, and maybe it comes across in your tone of voice, your customers will realize that you are a busy salesperson, a successful salesperson. That attracts people that want to do business with you. I remember when I would speak with clients about setting up follow up meetings, I would discuss options for a time to meet and I would rattle off all the meetings or places that I needed to be over the next few days and then would back them into a spot that I could make time to meet. Little things like this probably signaled to my customers the thought that I was crazy busy, a hard worker, and out there making it happen. Who wouldn’t want to do business with someone like this?
That invisible energy, that force, really propelled me to the top. I was doing at least 3x the work as other salespeople and making 3x more than them! That is what momentum can do. Now on to the second part. This is more for the sales leaders. Your job is to exploit this kind of momentum to all of your sales team. When you see a salesperson producing a high output of activity, you need to highlight this and put a spotlight on him or her with your whole team. At your next team meeting, highlight everything that this salesperson is doing exceptionally well and why it is working. Give them kudos, they deserve it and others will want to get that kind of attention too. I would also do one more thing in addition to this. On my sales team calls, I would recap all the wonderful progress that we made this week or during the prior week, collectively as a team. “Joe had four customer demonstrations, Paul gave one of the best answers to handling an objection that I have ever heard and saved the deal. Sarah set three new appointments in one day. Ken brought home a nice-size deal that moved ahead with nearly all of our services! The product team has announced the release that we have all been waiting for is finally coming next week. Guys and gals, we are on fire!!!!!”
Constant positive reinforcement. Avoid negative doom and gloom talk and tone. Focus on all the things working well and your belief that the team is going places. Your belief in them and in your team’s progress and ability to be wildly successful will cause momentum.
Be a momentum maker and enjoy the massive gains that come with it.
-Happy Selling!