Start with Personal Goals

Starting with personal goals, have your team break them down into three categories: short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. Within each one of those categories, identify goals as urgent, somewhat urgent, or not urgent at all. This process will help salespeople narrow down the types of goals they need to focus on first and foremost.

Typically, when people think of goals, they think in terms of things they want to have or accomplish, such as eliminating debt or paying for a wedding. More challenging goals that also need to be considered are those types of goals referred to as “freedom to choose” goals. An example might be the ability to work four days a week or take a month off to do ministry work in a third-world country. Those goals also require financial freedom. Regardless of the type of goal, there is normally some sort of financial requirement needed to achieve it.

Get Focused and Define What Matters

Next, become laser focused. Identify from all the goals listed which are the 12 non-negotiable goals, along with their associated financial requirement to achieve in 2026. These goals cannot be missed, no matter what. Salespeople must achieve these goals. Now, what behaviors will be required to make these goals happen? Break them down into steps and set deadlines. A goal without a due date is just a wish.

Translate Goals Into a Work Plan

Those are the first two steps to achieving sales goals. Now it’s time to translate these individual personal goals and their financial requirements into a business work plan. It’s called a work plan because to achieve success, you must have a plan and work the plan.

Here are the work plan components:

• Success Formula
• Market Niche
• Prospecting Strategy
• USA (unique sales approach)
  
  

Build Your Success Formula

The Success Formula is the math that helps salespeople understand the amount of activity in each step of the sales process that must be executed to reach their sales goal. Action steps likely include outreach attempts, conversations, appointments, opportunities, proposals, and closed deals. Keep in mind one very important idea: the goal must be set and agreed upon by the salesperson as a means to accomplish the personal objectives identified. It must be a number driven by their needs, not the needs of the company. That number is typically higher than what the company requires, if set correctly, due to its foundation in personal goals.

Identify Your Market Niche

The best way to identify your Market Niche is to look at the top 20% of your current book of business and identify the common demographics. That is who you serve well, and the objective is to find more of them. What must be done better or differently to position yourself as an expert in a particular area? This step is often the difference between top performers and mediocrity. In most businesses, the top 20% of clients generate more than 70% of revenue, while the rest of the book consists of a variety of smaller accounts. To refine this into your work plan, identify approximately how many accounts you want at each level. This will provide clarity on how many sales are needed at each level to reach your goals.

Strengthen Your Prospecting Strategy

Your prospecting strategy is key to reaching your sales goals. The best way to meet a new prospect is to ask current clients for introductions, but multiple strategies are necessary. Identify at least three prospecting strategies that will be consistently used, such as active LinkedIn connecting, asking for introductions, developing centers of influence, or attending target-rich association meetings. The list is long, so focus on three, get to work, and execute. Prospecting must come first and should be scheduled on the calendar.

Define Your Unique Sales Approach (USA)

Your USA, or Unique Sales Approach, to the marketplace is critical. How will you stand out? Here is the test of an effective USA or elevator pitch: when a prospect hears it, do they respond with one of the following?

• Tell me more about that.

• That’s me.

• How do you do that?

Your USA should include a value statement that explains how you help other companies or individuals. Nothing resonates more with prospects than that.

Eliminate What Holds You Back

Most of us believe that to reach your sales goals, we need to start doing certain things but sometimes the first requirement is to stop doing certain things. To complete your workplan, identify those things that you are doing that are killing your business and your ability to be more effective – then stop doing them!

Ask yourself - what are the top three things you need to execute because you believe that when you do, they will have the most dramatic and positive impact on your business. It is up to you.

Build your work plan and start executing today! ↓

But if you stop to think about your flight, or business, in longer terms, you know that over the year you will probably hit a lot of turbulence. If used properly, your business dashboard, like the control panel of a 757, could provide the critical information you need to make the vital decisions required at those critical moments. In other words, it would be nice to have a system of alerts to give you warning before you are on the verge of crashing.

Are You Monitoring Your Top Sales Priorities?

Have you looked at your top sales priorities dashboard lately? What does it tell you? What alerts or warning systems do you have in place to let you know when you are losing altitude and attitude?

How do you know if all systems are working properly and that your sales aircraft will get you safely to your destination, on time and on target? What should you be monitoring and doing every day (priorities) in your "preflight inspection" to make sure you improve the probability of getting there and reaching your sales goals?

The Core Activities Behind Top Sales Priorities

Here’s my suggested short list of top sales priorities:

Prospecting, talking to people, scheduling appointments, conducting qualifying (and disqualifying) appointments, presenting, and getting decisions.

Just like each engine of an aircraft, each of your top sales priorities should have a gauge (a standard of performance) and an RPM or required ground speed (a set time frame) necessary for safe lift-off and landing of your aircraft at the proper destination.

Daily Actions That Support Your Top Sales Priorities

Let’s break these down into action items you can do today and this week to impact your top sales priorities:

1. Respond promptly to inquiries. Sixty-three percent of buyers expect a same-day response.
   
   
2. Pick up the phone and make the call. Do it consistently every workday. Schedule this prospecting time on your calendar and do not let anything get in the way.
   
   
3. Stay committed to follow-up. It often takes 14 attempts to reach a contact, yet most salespeople stop after three or four.
   
   
4. Ask for testimonials, reviews, and introductions from your best clients. When people are searching for services, reviews and introductions are valuable credibility points.
   
   
5. Fall in love with the word “no.” It helps you avoid wasting time with unqualified prospects.
   
   
6. Use tools like scorecards to identify higher-quality opportunities early. Download our free Prospect Scorecard here.
   
   
7. Make sure you are talking to decision-makers who have the authority to say yes or no.
   
   
8. Close the initial call with this question: “Is your problem just a problem, or is it a priority?”

Having a thoroughly monitored dashboard of top sales priorities to help you execute a safe landing, your goal, is a must.

Ready to develop stronger relationship-building skills across your sales team? Download our free eBook The Relationship Selling Guide for proven strategies and frameworks, or contact Anthony Cole Training Group to learn how our assessments and coaching can transform your team's ability to build rapport and close more business.

#1 Outsourcing the Responsibility for Recruiting Talent in Financial Services

They outsource their recruiting and the responsibility. Recruiting is something that financial services firms must own. Be cautious of outsourcing the work and the responsibility. That makes it too easy for people internally to throw up their hands and transfer failures associated with the hiring process to the outsourced firm. In order to recruit better talent in financial services, companies have to own the process.

#2 Lack of a Consistent Recruiting Process

There is a lack of a consistent process for constantly searching. Most, if not all, banks and insurance firms make the mistake of looking for candidates only when they have an opening. This leads to many problems:

• They are held hostage by producers with “large books.” Managers feel they cannot do anything about them for fear of losing the “books” since they do not have any replacements.

• They feel desperate to fill a chair with a warm bottom when there is a vacancy. A body, any body, is better than no one sitting in the chair.

• They do not replace underperformers because there isn’t a pipeline of candidates to choose from. The underperformers stay around too long; others know it and realize that they don’t have to perform that well to keep their job, so overall team production continues to decline.

#3 Poor Candidate Qualification in Financial Services Recruiting

Financial services companies are not getting quality candidates entering the process. The traditional model of recruiting today involves the placement firm trying to convince the financial services company why a candidate should be hired. Companies should, on the other hand, work extremely hard to disqualify candidates because there are specific skills that apply to that sales job and many or most candidates do not have those skills.

Bottom line, the company has to assess at least two things:

1. Does the candidate have enough of the right strengths to be successful?
2. Will they sell versus can they sell?

Here’s some information on how to find out if your candidate will sell.

#4 Poor Communication About Sales Role Expectations

There is poor communication about the specific role and expectations of this new hire. Too often, everyone is so excited about getting the seat filled that no one takes the time to get into the details of the day-to-day requirements of the job. This leads to early misunderstandings about the role and, eventually, failure on the part of the new hire to meet the expectations of the company. Failure to “negotiate on the 1st tee” leads to misunderstanding and failure to execute on the sales goals.

#5 Inadequate Onboarding for Sales Professionals

The onboarding process is inadequate in the area of selling. Most companies are ill-equipped to effectively onboard new salespeople. They spend time introducing them to the “culture” of the operation, the mechanics of the job, and how to get things done. They introduce them to HR, their support team, marketing, and their partners. And, yes, there is discussion about goals, sales activities, and how to enter data into CRM. And then… the new hires are on their own.

Banks and insurance firms think that they have hired their next sales superstar and then, 12 months later, they cannot figure out what went wrong. They look at the numbers and discover that the new hires are producing “just like everyone else in the middle of the pack.” The process many have in place currently to recruit and hire salespeople perpetuates this problem.

Need Help Recruiting Talent in Financial Services?

If you need help or more information on recruiting better talent, we have many resources available for you. You can start with our eBook on the topic:

How to Hire Bankers Who Will Sell

Register for our upcoming live webinar to learn why top lenders drive up to 10x more revenue than bottom performers and uncover the four qualities that define diamond-level relationship managers! You’ll gain practical insights on developing stronger producers and access a free tool to benchmark your team’s relationship-building skills. Free registration, recording provided.

Ready to develop stronger relationship-building skills across your sales team? Download our free eBook The Relationship Selling Guide for proven strategies and frameworks, or contact Anthony Cole Training Group to learn how our assessments and coaching can transform your team's ability to build rapport and close more business.

How to Differentiate in Sales

1. Identify and Create a Sales Process
2. Practice and Improve Your Sales Pitch
3. Follow Up on Open Deals
4. Be a Great Listener
5. Embrace Rejection
6. Learn from a Mentor
7. Review Your Strengths and Weaknesses
8. Identify What Motivates You
9. Be Able to Walk Away
10. Prioritize Your Wellbeing
    
    

1. Identify and Create a Sales Process

First and foremost, you’ll need a repeatable sales process that you and your sales team can implement within your CRM. Based on the #1 sales evaluation, “elite” salespeople utilize a consistent, stage-based selling system. Having a sales process keeps salespeople on track with the stages a buyer goes through on the path to a decision, and it helps remove inefficiencies from the sales cycle. By implementing a consistent sales process, salespeople will see better results in a short period of time.

2. Practice and Improve Your Sales Pitch

Much like your sales process, sales reps need to hone, craft, and practice their sales pitch. You can start creating a better pitch by doing more research on your prospects, putting yourself in their shoes, and asking great questions about their business and challenges.

As a salesperson, you must invoke confidence. You can do this by practicing and perfecting your sales pitch. We call this your Unique Selling Approach, and when you share it, your prospect should react with “That’s me” or “How do you do that?” Sales leaders must help their people practice this so their USA is natural and conversational and helps them differentiate in the sales process.

3. Follow Up on Open Deals

A good sales rep follows up on open deals. As a salesperson, you will have more success following up on your existing prospects if you strategically determine how to add value to the potential relationship in your follow-up plan. It’s estimated that nearly half of salespeople never follow up on a prospect, and only 10% follow up three times or more. This is a problem, as it’s estimated that 80% of all closed deals occur between the fifth and twelfth outreach.

Following up also shows the prospect that you’re organized and considerate enough to reach out again. Most people will appreciate your follow-up, and by reminding them of your previous conversation, you can stay top of mind with prospects and differentiate yourself.

4. Be a Great Listener

Having an open dialogue is critical in nurturing your prospects and giving them a voice. Make sure you’re really listening to what they’re saying, as it can help you close more deals. By listening to better understand your prospects, you can identify what your prospect wants, how they want it, and why.

Listening to understand takes concentration and the ability to remain undistracted by what you can offer as a solution. If you can truly understand what your prospect wants and needs from you and repeat that back to them, you will differentiate yourself and build confidence with the prospect. Sales leaders, this is a critical skill to focus on and practice with your team.

5. Embrace Rejection

In sales, you will always be met with rejection. Accepting this fact, and learning from your no’s, is key to becoming a better salesperson. The best way to deal with rejection is by debriefing after a sale is lost to fully understand why the prospect did not buy from you.

Sales leaders and salespeople should set structured time to debrief, find out what was not done or revealed, and ensure those steps are not missed next time. This will help you build confidence and improve your sales process by gathering better prospect information.

Elite salespeople are quick to get back on track and maintain robust sales pipelines. Rejection in sales is simply part of the job that helps them move on to the next opportunity.

6. Learn from a Mentor

Learning from a mentor is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself in sales and become a better salesperson. Having someone who can show you the ropes and provide constructive feedback can drastically improve your sales abilities. If your company is looking for professional sales training, guidance, and leadership, check out our Sales Growth Coaching program.

7. Review Your Strengths and Weaknesses

All great salespeople take time to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, focusing on leveraging what they do well while improving weaker areas. Purposely identifying opportunities to improve in prospecting, communication, or closing deals can increase the number of desired outcomes.

Sales evaluations can provide salespeople with insights into areas they may not recognize, helping build confidence and refine their selling approach. Successful salespeople are continual learners who intentionally gather information about their own performance.

8. Identify What Motivates You

We all have motives behind everything we do. Identifying what motivates you can be one of the best steps toward becoming a better salesperson. Are you motivated to become a better version of yourself? Do you seek recognition for your work? Are you striving to achieve your ideal lifestyle?

By recognizing what drives you, you can create an action plan that moves you closer to your goals. This clarity can provide the motivation needed to improve yourself, and close more deals.

9. Be Able to Walk Away

Follow-up is essential, but it’s also important to know when to walk away. If you’ve made double-digit attempts to reach a prospect, or they remain standoffish, it may be time to move on. This can be difficult the deeper you are in the sales pipeline, but successful salespeople know when to let go and focus on the next opportunity.

If a prospect is not returning emails or calls, your time is better spent pursuing new leads. Elite salespeople differentiate themselves by knowing when to remove a prospect from the pipeline.

10. Prioritize Your Wellbeing

You must prioritize your work-life balance and mental health. You’re no good to your company or your prospects’ time if you are overwhelmed, burned out, or distracted. Sales moves fast, and that pace can be stressful.

Taking breaks, getting fresh air, using time off, and maintaining a personal life can help counterbalance job stress and prevent burnout. To be relaxed and confident in selling, you must stay healthy in both mind and body.

In Summary

Selling is not going to suddenly become easier. Leads are not likely to become more plentiful. So the question worth asking is this: What will you do to create your slight edge in selling? What small actions, done consistently week after week, will lead to meaningful gains in production?

Try one or all of these 10 tips for differentiating yourself in selling, and let us know how they work for you.

Register for our upcoming live webinar to learn why top lenders drive up to 10x more revenue than bottom performers and uncover the four qualities that define diamond-level relationship managers! You’ll gain practical insights on developing stronger producers and access a free tool to benchmark your team’s relationship-building skills. Free registration, recording provided.

Ready to develop stronger relationship-building skills across your sales team? Download our free eBook The Relationship Selling Guide for proven strategies and frameworks, or contact Anthony Cole Training Group to learn how our assessments and coaching can transform your team's ability to build rapport and close more business.

Here are two areas to consider:

Salespeople making assumptions.

• Your prospect says they are unhappy, thinking about, or looking into options, and you automatically start thinking they are ready to buy. A real live prospect! This can happen because you do not have a healthy skepticism of prospects. You get happy ears, believe everything they say at surface level, and fail to ask deeper, probing questions.
• Has your prospect ever said, “I’m the decision-maker,” and you took them at their word? Did you ask them who else might be affected by this decision?  When they have made decisions like this in the past, who was involved?
• Here’s another sales mistake in making assumptions. Your prospect talks about their current provider and the mistakes they have made, their bad service and price increases, and you think they are willing to leave the incumbent. Not so fast, they might just be looking for more information to make their current provider step up and improve, or get better pricing.
• What about when the prospect says, “This looks great, I really like what you’ve done here.” Do you think that they are ready to buy, and then surprised when they say “I need to think it over.” ? Did you uncover the monetary impact of their not making this change or other compelling reasons to act now or did you make the big sales mistake of assuming they were ready to buy with a few signals?
  
  

2. Prospects make assumptions too.

   How often do prospects make assumptions about you and how you do business?
   
   
   • Have they been brainwashed by marketing and social media that everything is about price?
   • Do they believe that all insurance brokers, bankers, and investment advisors are only out there to make commissions and don’t really care about them and their needs?
   • Do they figure that you are in the business of providing free information and quotes because that is what they have experienced from all the other mediocre salespeople they’ve dealt with?
   • Do they assume they can take their time because you will pretty much do anything to get the business?
   • Do they believe you are like all the rest? Because your pitch sounded like every other salesperson they have met with:
     
     
     • "We have great service"
     • "Our products are industry-leading"
     • "We care about our clients"
     • "Our pricing is competitive"

The next time you make a call or go out on an appointment, pretend this is the first time that you have called on a farmer, doctor, department head, or CEO. Do your homework ahead of time about their industry and company so that you know the right questions to ask to understand their potential concerns.  When they answer your first question, ask another about their answer.  Continue to probe further so that you get beneath surface-level answers.

That is how you will avoid this sales mistake about making assumptions. It is solved by finding out all the information about what that prospect needs or if they need anything at all! Do not assume anything about what they may or may not need – find out. In fact, your discovery conversation should have them telling you exactly what they need and when they need it, if you are asking the right questions. You must have the curiosity of a child but carry a healthy level of skepticism that perhaps your prospect is not a prospect at all.