A 2009 Sales Performance Optimization Survey done by CSO Insights reported that only 58.8% of sales people were meeting their quotas in 2009.
If only half of your company’s sales force is hitting their numbers the important 
question becomes, how do we increase sales? The average number of phone calls and meetings has already increased significantly throughout recent years but even with this increased effort sales are down.
So what do we do? Work SMARTER.
CSO Insights came to this conclusion while evaluating their survey results.
“ The real objective is going to be how to make great calls: motivating stakeholders to meet with you; creating a sense of urgency that moves evaluating your solutions to the top of their priority list; differentiating yourself from the competition; selling value rather than discounting prices; creating a compelling business case to get the project approved now. This will require your salespeople to be more effective at selling than they were in 2008.”
- CSO Insights
While an increase in calls and meetings is always a good thing, don’t forget to adequately prepare for them. If your going to put in the extra effort to make the extra calls and book more appointments make sure you get the most you can from each of these interactions. Make sure your selling value not price, find out your customers needs and tell them how you can solve them to create urgency to buy, and make EVERY call a great call with 110% of your effort.
Work SMARTER in 2010, and watch your competitors fall by the wayside.
