Member Article

The importance of sales momentum in business

“Regaining momentum takes three times as much energy as sustaining momentum,” according to US business author, Dan Pink. So, what does ‘momentum’ look like in your sales team? Incoming phone calls from prospects, emails from satisfied clients and recommendations on social channels would be a good place to start.

Then, perhaps more importantly, what can you do to ensure it never falls away? In sales, momentum is crucial to success, because without guiding customers through the buying process quickly and effectively, closing new business will become a long, drawn out process. Efficiently moving customers from one stage to the next is an effective strategy for sales success, and its momentum that drives this forward.

Break the Inertia

If you feel yourself entering a slow period (perhaps proposals are out but you have no responses yet, or your number of leads have dropped), stay proactive. It’s key to breaking the inertia. There are so many different ways to generate leads and rapport within your industry, how many are you utilising? When you feel the momentum slowing down, identify three different ways to generate new business and keep the cycle moving. Increase your impact where you seem to get worse results. It’s important to monitor progress when delving into new strategies and identify the tools and approaches that work most effectively.

Follow up

Picking up the pace by shortening the down time between meetings and appointments is another good way to build momentum in sales. How can you become more time-effective and remove gaps between clients? It requires organisation and focus. One of the durhamlane Sales Mantras is Quality x Quantity x Consistency = High Performance. It’s a useful formula for keeping time-effective and removing the kind of downtime that will lower sales performance.

Richard Lane, partner at durhamlane, explains: “We spend our time being busy, but are we being busy with the right things? Sales people need to learn to value their own time. durhamlane’s Sales Mantra #5 is the perfect equation to building a winning personal success process. Quality – always work at the highest quality possible for any given situation. This doesn’t mean you need to be a perfectionist, but make sure you do what needs to be done to the best of your ability. Quantity – Get really busy. Down time means lower sales performance. Consistency – If you can master Quality and Quantity then add Consistency to your efforts then you will be heading for real success. Let’s face it, we all have on and off days. Winners manage to repeat the good times over and over to create long-lasting success.”

Made a successful sale? Then it’s the time for another sales presentation. Keep things moving and on track by having a defined plan of next steps to take after each part of the sales process.

Keep motivated

Be confident, and once you start gaining momentum, your optimism will be apparent to prospects and clients. Your motivation will increase the more positive results you see, and the more positive results you get, the more your motivation increases. It is a virtuous circle. How do you stay motivated? Perhaps you need to read the kind of books that will inspire you to take action, or perhaps you need to develop your own sales ability to feel motivated to getting great results. Whatever it is that motivates and inspires you to, despite the situation, keep pushing and stay committed to the cause, expose yourself to it - from books to films, music to learning.

Gaining momentum is like a snowball rolling downhill. It gets bigger and as it gathers pace, it gets faster. Likewise, the more sales you make, the more will come your way. So be confident and follow these tips for positive results.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by durhamlane .