Are You In Front Of Your Customers?

How many hours per day are you actually in front of your customers? Dare to take a sales challenge?

Go buy a stop watch. Time yourself and record how many minutes a day you are actually in front of a customer that can give you an order.

After the first day you will be amazed. For most sales people, the time you spend in front of a person that has the ability to order something from you will be less than one hour.

Shocked?

The good part is that this problem is easy to fix. Take the time you recorded with your stop watch and double it the next day. Set a goal for yourself each day, week, and month for "Time in Front of Customers that Can Say Yes." Make it a goal that will require hard work to achieve.

"But I am stuck in the office doing paperwork," you say.

Like most sales people, you probably have administrative work that needs to be done. And even though you will be spending more time in front of customers, this work will still have to be finished. Right?

But don't worry, you're putting forth hard work, remember?

Come to work early, and stay late. Put in an extra hour or two. If you are monetarily rewarded with a commission based on sales, you might even think about hiring someone to take care of administrative paperwork for you. You can also talk to your spouse. Maybe they will help you.

Face to face meetings will always be the best way to connect with your customer, but with everyone's busy schedule these are sometimes difficult to plan and time consuming. If you are running short on time there are other ways to position yourself in front of you customers on a regular basis.

Most companies send different types of marketing messages such as new literature, product brochures, and advertising mailers. These are a waste of time and end up in the trash can.

Try a different alternative to mailing your literature.

Find your customer a sales lead and fax it to him on your letterhead. Fax your customer a hand written note about them that they will actually read, benefit from, and pass on to others. Write a hand written thank you note for the previous business they have given you. Email them a few business ideas that will help them profit. Write a free newsletter that contains information of value.

There are lots of ways to position yourself in front of your customers besides face to face meetings. The most important thing though is to make it personal and valuable. Make it worth their time to read it and acknowledge that you sent it to them.

As a minimum, you need to be in front of your customer at least once a month with a message of value. Of course, don't overload them either. Meeting or talking with them once a week is usually enough unless you are taking care of a current project.

Go to the store today and buy a stop watch. Start recording your actual "sales time." Increase your actual face to face "sales time." Use the ideas above to increase your time in front of your customers.

The more time you spend in front of people that can say yes to you, the quicker your sales will start to increase.

John

Alternative to the Meeting

If you are frustrated with staff meetings every Monday morning, you might try a different approach. Try distributing a Playbook.

Put together a Playbook that contains the same principles you would discuss in an actual meeting and hand it out to your employees every week. Now, each employee can look over the book when they are ready and digest the information instead of sitting in the meeting room "dazed and confused."

Some of the topics you can present in your Playbook could be:

Sales Training
Product Training
Future Work Schedule
Calendar w/Upcoming Events
Sales Reports
Special Job Tracking
New Sales Opportunities
Clean-Up Work
Misc. Activities to Be Performed
Orders to Be Filled

Select topics that would best fit your business. Try printing a Playbook in lieu of having that Monday morning meeting. Or, if you just want to try it out, print a Playbook to supplement your meeting and ask for feedback from your employees on how they liked it.

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