Going into a new year, it is always a good idea to address the techniques you are using to hit your sales targets.  Many sales people return from the Christmas break full of good intentions but after a few days, momentum is lost and they fall into the same old routine.  Now is the time to assess your existing tactics, be honest and make changes! The following tips are designed to help you rethink your approach and make solid changes and not try to do too much too soon.  At this time of year people try to lose weight, the sensible ones will take it steadily and gradually lose weight , the foolish will try to lose two stone a week and get fed up when it doesn’t happen.

Tip number one: always be prepared to adapt your approach to suit the client and the selling environment.  A sales person must be flexible.  When selling you must try to match not only the client’s needs but also their buying style and manner.

The second tip is “remember sales structure and technique”.  After the first tip this might sound a little bit of a contradiction.  Sales people worry that by using a solid structure they might become robotic in their selling style.  Actually a solid sales structure enables a sales person to be more flexible.  In sport, top performers all have fantastic technique, they have a core of solid skills that enable them to adapt and flex, when necessary.  Golf is a good example of this.  Golfers have all manner of different scenarios to battle with; it is the top technicians that can play effectively out of bunkers, water, trees!  As a sales person’s experience grows they tend to drop their structure and technique and this leads to problems, normally in the form of objections.

The third tip for the New Year is; through questioning, find needs not information.  Information does not help a sales person as much as needs.  Too many sales people question a potential client but do not create or establish needs.  This means that there is no urgency created and the potential client only sees what is being sold as an option not a necessity.  Be brave, focus on problems and needs.

Tip four; after questioning the client, gain agreement that you have indeed not only created but understood their needs.  This agreement is vital because the buyer is accepting that that they have a need that needs a solution.  Too often a sales person will assume what the client needs and sell against that assumption.  Assumptions are created by a sales person thinking that this client will be like the last one they spoke to.  Tip four (b) treat all clients as individuals.

Tip five: use what you find.  Once needs have been created and agreed, sell against them.  Too often sales people present a lot of information about their products or services but do not relate it to the client’s needs.  Always explain how the product will help the client.

Tip six: Revise or update your product knowledge. I am always staggered by how little even experienced sales people seem to know about their products or services.  Test yourself, think of as many features of your product or service that you can.  I think that you should be able to come up with at least fifty.  Too often sales people use only a handful of features and this makes it hard to create a tailored presentation that matches exactly the needs of the client.  If it is too general it will probably only match some of the clients needs and this will lead to objections.

Tip seven: set yourself activity targets.  Financial targets tell you how much revenue you need to bring in, activity targets tell you how to get there.  Activity targets could be number of calls to make in a day, how many meetings to attend in a month, how many new clients need to contacted in a month.  I would be confident that if a sales person was hitting their “activity targets” they would almost certainly hit their financial targets.

So given that the average sales person is only likely to attend one or two courses per year, what else can the sales person do to develop their skills?  Training often provides momentum, and sales people often return from a course full of enthusiasm and new ideas.  They are keen to put into practice what they have learnt and try to use new ideas.  In short, the course has done its job.  No one or two day course will change behaviours completely but it can start the process.

At the start of most years, many people join gyms and head off to their first workout with great gusto and enthusiasm; they meet an inspirational instructor who talks them through what they need to do in order to get fit.  After the first session they leave, excited and ready to become a fit, healthy, powerful, Adonis!  What happens next? Most people struggle to put into action what the instructor suggested.  They slip back into bad habits.

As do sales people.  After leaving the course, the temptation to return to what they used to do is strong.  To use what they have learnt, they must adopt a strong mentality.  Same as the gym goer, if the lifestyle around the gym sessions does not change the progress will be slower.  I know that people say that going to the gym means that they can drink as much as they like and eat loads of cream cakes, but that seems to be a “treading water” tactic rather than a progressive tactic.

So my advice for you as a sales person is: go on a sales course, learn some new ideas and techniques, come back raring to go!  Then think about how you will adopt the new ideas and stick to them.  Try to break habits.  Sales people often return to tried and tested methods more through habit than anything else.  People do things in a certain way because they have always done them that way.  A sales person should always evaluate what they are doing.  At the end of each week, write a list of what worked, what didn’t and what you could change.  Try wearing your watch on the opposite wrist to what you are used to, see how it feels.  After a week or so it will feel more comfortable and after a month or so, you will wonder why you ever wore it on the other wrist.  This will remind to try to use something new.  Try a new route to work… basically, try anything that breaks the routine, this will help you to adopt new techniques and give you the mentality to stick to them.

At the end of the month or the quarter, evaluate again.  Ask yourself, honestly, how are you doing?  What did I do this month that was better than last month, different to last month, worse than last month and therefore what can I change for next month?  To get fit, you could go to the gym or run round the park but to get really fit and make permanent changes to your health, your lifestyle will have to change as well.  I know it’s not quite the same thing but you can see the connection, I hope.  Sales people must adapt their approach to make real sustainable changes to their performance.  Constant evaluation, habit changing tactics and the setting of personal objectives are three things that could be done to make ongoing changes.  Einstein’s definition of insanity crops up on many training courses, sometimes not always relevant but I think to most sales people it is applicable:  “when a person does the same thing over  and over and expects to get a different result”.