Do you know where to focus your sales activities to get to the next level?

Most companies were successful in the beginning because of one or two main clients that represented 80% of their sales.  Their second stage growth then came from employers from those first two clients that moved to other companies and pulled that company with as a supplier.  But what happens when that organic growth stops and your company has to go find new customers to achieve that third stage of success?  Would you be able to develop a plan, create new habits, and commit to the right sales activities that drive your sales funnel growth and sales funnel movement?

For every sales effort, there is an identifiable key sales activity that drives the growth and movement of the sales funnel.  It is that one activity that if you repeat it over and over, success will follow.  Example of 1% sales activities would include:

• Presenting to ideal prospects and key strategic partners about value you can add to their business
• Having lunch with key centers of influence to understand how they integrate with clients
• Speaking at a business networking event full of people representing businesses that are in your wheelhouse
• Meeting with a new ideal prospect to learn about their business and understand where you might be able to help them add value to their clients
• Making introductions for others to help grow their business
• Writing blogs to share your experience with the world

I refer to these activities as the “1%” since when they are completed, the other 99% of activity follows automatically. My personal 1% is having 3 meetings per week; One meeting with a business owner to learn about their business, one meeting with a center of influence or a service partner in the market to learn about what their challenges are, and one meeting where I am introducing two people that I know should be working together.  If I have those three meetings per week, I know that my sales funnel will stay full through referrals, and that I will be scheduling meetings with potential clients to learn where I can help their business.

When was the last time you reverse engineered where your sales success comes from? Do you know what your 1% activity is? Do you know who you need to perform that 1% activity with? What do you need to clear from your schedule to make sure that 1% happens every week?  Please feel free to contact me if you need help identifying what your 1% is and creating the right habits to make sure it happens.