Sales People: Do You Know The #1 Secret to Your Closing Success?

Having been in Sales forever and spending most of my time talking with Sales People I have noticed one characteristic that differentiates Great Sales People above all others. Most would say it is hard work or grit and yes they need to be there, but most sales people are both hard-working and gritty. Other would say it is industry knowledge, storytelling skills or trustworthiness. The list of characteristics and skills is long and endlessly debatable.

The one thing that separates the top performers from the rest of the herd is Focus. Not just any kind of Focus but the Focus on the deals that can close and what it will take to get them to close. This may seem obvious to you but let me ask you to list your deals that will close this quarter? I'm guessing you will get 3-5 of them, and then things get cloudy.

Why is Focus so important? We live in a world of distraction. We carry in our pocket the most powerful sales tool ever invented and yet is can also serve as our largest time waster. We have endless meets and internal demands on our time.

So how do we stay focused on those precious few deals that will close? Most managers would say it is the CRM but yet the CRM is muddled with what we wish would happen vs. what will happen. This is why most sales managers whiteboards are filled with the target deals for the Month/Quarter.

Some Sales People still use spreadsheets which are simple but they are very primitive, and the data in cells can easily be written over. Post-its are also a common focus tool they are easily movable and being stuck to our monitors or wall make them very visible.

What works for me is Pipedrive. It fits the task perfectly for visibility, editing and representing where a deal is. Pipedrive was built for Sales People vs. just for Sales Managers. The focus is on what stage is your deal in and what is the next stage. Of course, you define the stages and drag and drop the deal as it progresses. What I love about Pipedrive is that it is so simple to use and I get to see my pipeline the way I think about it. It focuses me on what I have to do for each deal instead of running reports to try and figure out what to focus on.

If you are looking for an easy way to manage your deals and stay focused check out Pipedrive.

Please share how you stay focused and what your feelings are about the importance of focus in sales.

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Brian