“My Thoughts Exactly” April 2011
The Professional For Life
Sales Consultants Daily Plan
By Mr. Gary Tilkin
CEO Gary Tilkin Consultants Inc.
Author: Professional For Life Development Series
It is amazing to me how talented the recent sales consultants I have met, trained, and developed are. They are intelligent, great conversationalists, and witty. They are really good people, to their inner most core. Yet, they are somewhat undisciplined and disorganized. The challenge here is those two (2) specific categories are critical for them to grow and prosper as “Professional For Life” sales consultants.
The key for their future success is a GREAT COACH. We all must be crystal clear on this one issue: to get these fine folks to the next level, all of us have to focus on creating the emphasis on executing a simple and consistent sales consultant “Daily Plan”. For their coaches, it is critical that they embrace this plan which includes, but is not limited to: team meetings (Forced Execution) in the morning, and daily inspection of their work/efforts (Film/Debrief Meetings) in the evenings to “Hold Their Associates Accountable” to their respective daily plan. For the sales consultant, it is critical to do their plan first thing and never let the day get away from them. For me, I must constantly remind ALL my “Professionals for Life” that “Successful People Do The Things That Unsuccessful People Won’t Do”.
Sales Consultant’s Daily Plan
The four (4) basic categories of the Sales Consultants Daily Plan are as follows:
Work With Customers:
The goal of any sales consultant representing any industry is to be Face-To-Face with a potential client at all times. To assist the associate, the coach has to emphasize the importance of having scheduled appointments daily. The true culture of any organization is to use positive re-enforcement when scheduled appointments are confirmed and the client does indeed arrive. The second emphasis category of our coaching team is to focus daily on the sales consultants Follow-Up activities, which leads us to the second phase of our daily plan.
Follow-Up Activities:
The goal of any sales consultant is to “Keep-In-Touch” with unsold prospects that fall into the category of Hot or Medium interest daily. This does not mean we contact these prospects everyday. It does mean we honor the client’s frequency requests and never give up on our “High Adrenaline” follow-up activities. We must always remember the phone is but one tool to follow-up, we also can utilize text messaging, e-mail and “Go See” activities. From a coaching standpoint, we need to utilize our organization’s CRM computer program to monitor the Follow-Up activity and spot check to insure follow-through. We must assist our sales consultants to develop this critical Business Behavior through our encouragement, observations and support.
Personal and Business Education and Development:
In any profession other than sales, the daily focus on personal and business development is a given. It allows someone who is average to become above average and some one good to become great. Maybe it is watching a YouTube™ video on how to utilize Microsoft Outlook™ more efficiently, a manufacturer’s product knowledge video or utilizing the Professional for Life Electronic Playbook. All these activities support and encourage Personal Education and Business Development. The coach needs to understand that neither this nor any other activity will happen without the coach’s constant insistence to focused, disciplined, and consistent follow-through of the Education and Development activities. Consider the Coach having their team doing wind sprints. Ask yourself: what do Tiger Woods, Larry Bird and Michael Jordon do to develop themselves daily?
Personal Marketing:
The Art of Personal Marketing is really the medium– to long-term strategic approach to total and complete professional success. Through its focus on specific daily activities, it achieves sales consultant Name Recognition which drives increased percentage results in customers arriving at your organization and asking specifically for the Sales Consultant. This creates substantially higher results for the Sales Consultant in all four Key Business Outcomes. The simplest two-daily activities breaks down to:
Two-A-Day-The-Presidents-Way: This is when a sales consultant gains complete contact information for two (2) future clients over and above the clients they met at the dealership. Therefore, the sales consultant could have to leave the dealership daily to gain two of these potential long-term prospects. The collection of these additional clients has a positive effect on the sales consultants “Pure Data Base”. We define the minimum standards for client contact information to be as follows:
· Full Name:
· Mailing Address:
· Cell Phone Number: Hoping for Cell, Business and Home.
· E-Mail Address: Hoping for both personal and business e-mail address.
Five-A-Day-Keeps-The-Bill Collectors Away: This daily update activity is simply reviewing the sales consultants current “Pure Data Base” for five (5) contacts with incomplete information, especially E-Mail addresses. This adds email addresses to the associates personal “Pure Data Base”. This activity also supports touching our owner base once a quarter just to keep in touch. As with all aspects of this activity, the coach’s support insures follow-through.
Conclusion:
The sales consultant “Pure Data Base” grows incrementally daily. This leads to monthly e-mail distributions highlighting the sales consultants over the dealership. This and all daily plan activities lead to Face-To-Face business meetings with our clients who ask for our sales consultants by name when they arrive. Final result, increased closing ratio, gross profit, client advocacy and associate engagement. The clients especially appreciate working with someone who developed some sort of relationship of trust over time. Simply stated, a “Win/Win” relationship and business transaction.
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