G2- Two Requirements to Close the Sales Opportunity Gap

There is a sales production target out there – somewhere. It’s different for every person and every organization but it’s out there. And for every person and every organization there is the actual sales production result that is being achieved today. That is the Sales Opportunity Gap. 

If you’re are looking for a better, more effective way to maximize your sales growth, register now for the upcoming live broadcast

“The 8 Strategies to Reach Your Company’s Sales Growth Opportunity Gap“.

As I have mentioned in recent articles, How Do Extraordinary Financial Planners Close The Sales Opportunity Gap and The Gap Analysis Between Your Best Sales People and the Rest, the Objective Management Group Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis is the guide that makes you the hero to close the sales growth opportunity gap. Those findings clearly lay out the current status of the sales team in these areas:

• Will to Sell and Will to Manage Sales
• Sales DNA, Sales Management DNA
• Sales and Sales Management skills
• Systems and processes that support sales growth
• Alignment of sales, marketing and business strategies between the senior executive and management
• Consistency in value proposition, elevator pitch and brand promise
• Recruiting systems
• Pipeline management and forecasting

These items are critical to understand if you ever hope to strategically and intentionally grow sales in your organization (or for yourself).

But this alone is not enough. Goals and Grind (G2) are also 2 requirements to get you from where you are to where you could be.

I'm reading Bob Rotello’s “How Champions Think in Sports and In Life”. I am in the middle of the chapter: Goals, Plans and Process. Lots of people talk about goals, goals setting and having a plan to achieve said goals. And there is lots of information out there about how important it is to have an accountability system in place to make sure you execute the plan. But the thing that struck me about Bob’s chapter is the discussion about the GRIND.

 from Getty Images

GRIND: The grind isn’t tricky and it’s not talked about enough when it comes to discussing how to achieve a goal. The grind is the day-in and day-out stuff that you have to do to leverage your God given talents. The grind is the hard stuff, the stuff where we have a tendency to procrastinate.

The grind in Sales?

• Making the prospecting effort
  • Email – easy
  • LinkedIn connections – easy
  • Making the call and face the rejection – the grind
• Pre–call strategy sessions
• Post-call debriefing sessions
• Practicing your presentations over and over again
• Improving your product knowledge
• Going to training classes to improve your sales skills
• Practicing your sales skills
• Inputting data in your CRM
• Going to sales meetings
• Having 1-on-1 coaching sessions with your manager

This is the grind. This is the stuff day-in and day-out that when executed properly leads you to your definition of success. This is what leads you to accomplishing your goal. Without the grind your goal is just a dream.