I am an early riser which means that I am normally the first one in the office. I am also a lurker. Every so often I watch a rep as they come into the office and get settled for the day. What have I noticed? The poorest performing reps have the following habits

• they sit down (normally for a minute or two) and then turn on their computer
• they get up and get a cup of coffee
• once back to their desk, they check their personal email account
• from there, they check out ESPN, MSN or Yahoo to find out what's going on in the world (News flash - companies are reducing staff and the stock market is in the toilet)
• and finally, an hour after they walked through the door, they pull up their CRM and gaze at their screen with a very perplexed look.

Why the perplexed look?  Simple - they have no plan.

At least twice a week, I get a call from someone trying to sell me on their sales training program. Most recently, the gentlemen who called me suggested that he could help me increase revenue by 25-50% if I sent all my sales people to his seminar. Sounds good to me I thought...maybe too good. When I asked how he could get these results from people after a two day seminar, he told me it was simple - he'll teach them state of the art negotiation techniques. I politely told him to call me in 6 months when he could show me a few case studies.  

He pressed a little further and I explained that I am growing tired of people over complicating the sales process. You see, I firmly believe that 90% of the time success in sales is predicated by how well a sales person does with the basics.  For example:  Are they making enough cold calls? Are they logging activity in the CRM? Are they asking the right questions at the beginning of the sales process? Negotiation is a key part of the process; however, unless you get enough qualified prospects to that stage, you have nothing to negotiate.