Good enough is never good enough in sales

Every year, you will lose 5, 10, 15, 20% of your customers!    You put in the correct number for your company or territory.  Either way, suffice it to say you will lose customers every year.  They retire, pass away, switch to a competitor, or stop raising the crop/livestock your product is for.  Pick your reason, but customers leave us. 

That’s why complacency will eventually bring down your territory.  Said another way, there is no tenure in sales.  Tenure normally refers to when a professor is granted a job for life because they have been there for ten years.  In sales, we never get that with our customers.  We are only granted a sale because we add value to our customer.  The minute our customer doesn’t see that value, the selling relationship is over.  Maybe not that day, but soon our customer will stop spending money with us if they don’t perceive a value.

Signs of Complacency

• The #1 sign: Poor prospecting habits.  It sounds like, “I’m too busy taking care of customers to call on prospects.”
• The #2 sign: Taking your customer for granted. It sounds like, “Oh, they are fine.  They have been a customer for years.  They’re not going anywhere.”
• Dropping the ball: Failure to follow up.  It sounds like, “Oh dang it, I forgot to get back to you on that.  I didn’t write it down and it slipped my mind.  ”
• Procrastinating or just not doing the tough parts of selling: accounts receivable collections, filling out reports, entering CRM information, developing your selling skills, etc.

Overcoming Complacency

• Keep a healthy prospect funnel:

    Healthy prospect funnels flow just like a real funnel.  You are continuously adding new prospects as other prospects either turn into customers or drop out of the funnel. 

• Never drop the ball…ever!

    Develop a system of relentless follow up skills.  If for some reason you do drop the ball, fix it and don’t repeat it.

• Small-daily-compounding efforts to grow your territory

     Once we are in the depths of complacency, it can seem daunting to try and climb out.  Sometimes that climb is at the urgency of our sales manager.  This can prompt us try and fix the problem overnight.  We make too many changes, over load our schedules and end up frustrating the situation even more. 

     Start and maintain daily habits that are sustainable.  If you have a full capacity territory, then prospecting 4 days a week is probably not sustainable.  Neither is managing 200 prospects.  I once coached a salesperson who told me they had several hundred prospects.  My challenge to them was, “How can you possibly track 200 prospects in a B2B selling situation?”  Focus on daily sustainable changes to your selling approach.

Complacency Versus Being a Workaholic

One word of caution about this article.  If you are a high strung, type A person who is always working and can never switch it off, this article is not for you.  Take a break. 

Complacency is often a slow growing sales killer.  It creeps into your life naturally over the course of several years in sales.  Initially, we work hard and hustle to grow our territory.  After we have some level of success, we relax and take a breath for a moment.  We “stop and smell the roses”.  All of that is great.  Just don’t stay on break.