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.

I do not know one person who enjoys cold calling. It is awkward, frustrating, and emotional. Most people are just plain bad at it. For those of you in this group, here are a few simple tips that you can use to improve your success rate. 

1.       Do Your Homework – Know who you are calling, both the person and the company. This will help you avoid the most common ailment afflicting sales reps today - foot in mouth disease.