How do you make your decisions in sales? Reactive or thoughtful? Impulsive or informed? Decision-making in sales can be the difference between success and frustration. This applies to business owners, sales managers and sales people alike. If you do not measure your sales efforts, you will tend to be reactive and impulsive. Assessing opportunity cost involves making choices and dealing with consequences.
Thoughtful and informed decisions are borne of data collection. Such decisions mitigate the anxiety and desperation that can build up in sales, especially over a dry spell. Yet, if you had been monitoring your selling trends, you would be relaxed in the knowledge that, “The first quarter of the year tends to be slow in our industry. We take the time to look for and engage prospects, (in essence do marketing), knowing conversions will start from April.”
Decision-making in sales: Managing your emotions
If you do not measure your sales efforts, decision-making in sales becomes erratic, making it difficult to manage your emotions. You become a slave to the roller coaster of emotions inevitable in selling. You describe one rejection, as fatal as the stinging of a thousand scorpions. For example, you stop cold calling stat. “I still have another 93 calls to make but sijiskii. Huyo customer ameniudhi sana” The 7th prospect on your list told you off and hang up on you. So, you have given up on calling for the day, and lethargically do so throughout the week. That energy carries over into your calls, leading to more rejection. The spiral continues until you convince yourself, “It’s not working; selling is difficult.”
Yet, if you had been tracking your calls, you’d realize that such rejection happens once in every 300! And with this knowledge, you learn to overcome such rejection and move on. Some, salespeople physically shake off the bad vibes. Others take a walk around the block. Yet, another I know simply dismisses it with, “Poor fellow. He’s sounds so strung up. Oh well, his loss.” She does not personalize the ‘rejection’. After all she continues, “His just one person. I have hundreds of others to call.”
Sending quotes blindly
If you don’t measure your efforts, your decision-making in sales lacks a foundation, and you cannot determine progress. You don’t know what works and what doesn’t. You cannot optimize your time. Quote and hope, for example, becomes your modus operandi.
“Send us a quote” the email or call requests. You trip over yourself doing so, and even add it as a potential sale in your report. It never converts. Now consider how it would go with a sales manager that has been measuring the sales conversions to that reflexive response to, “Send us a quote”
Sales Manager: (thoughtful and informed): “What do we know about them?” “What are we pricing?” “How does it fit into the buyer decision process”
Salesperson: (excited but desperate) “They just called and said we send a quote right away. They already know what we do. We will lose the business if we don’t.”
You see, the sales manager knows that the last 100 quotes sent on a dime, died on arrival. In fact, he can count on the fingers of one hand those that have converted and tell you exactly how that happened. “Whereas 2 of the 5 converted, in all 5 we first engaged with the prospect to understand their needs. True, they know who we are and there isn’t much difference in our products from the competition. But this one intervention differentiated us from them. In fact, in one instance, they even told us, that the competition just sent the quote, but we took time to interact with them first. Today, I discourage my salespeople from sending quotes mechanically, and not at all if the prospect declines to engage.”
Decision making process in sales
And there’s another reason why you shouldn’t send quotes blindly. Sometimes, a procurement department isn’t even considering your offer seriously; they just need to fulfil an internal policy of obtaining three quotes. If you send your quote without questioning the intent, you might just be helping them tick a box. No engagement, no discussion, no understanding of their needs—just a number on a piece of paper that was never going to lead to a sale.
The reasons shared make perfect sense when you stop to think about it. Just sending a quote ignores all the steps in the sales cycle, moving straight to closing, pap! You quote and hope and cling on to the exception that converts as the norm – proof why quote and hope works. It isn’t and doesn’t.
If you haven’t already, review the last 12 months of quotes you have sent. How many converted to sales? And interrogate how many of them were sent reactively with no thoughtfulness informing the decision. Let me know your findings.
Decision-making in sales What will you do about it?
Sales is a numbers game, but not just any numbers—the right numbers. Are you tracking your sales activities? Are you making thoughtful, data-driven decisions? Or are you running on impulse, reacting emotionally, and hoping for the best? If not, it’s time to take control.
So, what will you do to improve your decision-making in sales today?
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