As we look out onto 2025, I was thinking about quote a quote from my dad, Gary Pines, about sales: “Being a sales professional is about making friends in an organized and disciplined manner, to provide value to each other.” If you haven’t done some form of an 80/20 exercise, I would do that ASAP.
Assuming you have done an 80/20 exercise, you should know which of your customers will be responsible for the largest % of your success in 2025. My suggestion is to determine the ten most important contacts to help achieve the goals you have set for 80% of customers, and then figure out how you can help them reach their goals- not the other way around. Obviously, in many sales roles there might be multiple contacts at the same company that are important stakeholders, or there could be someone outside that customer’s company that can help you influence.
Now that you have determined the ten most important relationships for your most important customers, you should set a plan for what you will do. Here is what the plan could look like:
- Get an in-person meeting if possible or Teams/Zoom meeting if in-person isn’t possible. If you aren’t able to get one, that should be your goal.
- Strategize for the meeting by:
- Evaluating how well you know your customer personally and professionally. I like to use the acronym FORD. This concept comes from a Ted Talk by John Dujulius called Meet As Strangers Leave As Friends, and he gets into FORD just after the 3:30 mark. FORD stands for family, occupation, recreation, and dreams (FORD). If you don’t know all four, then find out what you don’t know in your next interaction. Part of being organized as a salesperson, is then adding the FORD information to your CRM or wherever you keep “rolodex” info.
- Talk to the co-workers that have been or will be involved in the relationships. They might have ideas that you would not have considered.
- Consider the RAISE model when determining how to elevate your relationships (Refer, Advise, Inform, Support, and Employ) You can read about that model in this Time To Win.
- Always keep in mind their goals and objectives.
- Prepare implication questions to ask them the next time you see them
3. Once you’re in the meeting
- Ask questions about their FORD.
- Make sure you help them with a minimum of one part of RAISE.
- Always keep in mind their goals and objectives.
- Ask implication question(s) not just factual questions. Make them think.
- Leave with action steps which should often include a date/time and place for next meeting.
4. Post-meeting:
- Remember: “Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.” -Alyce Cornyn Selby (expert on self-sabotage). Don’t do it! These are the people you have identified who can make your year successful. Don’t let that other thing delay your path to success.
- If there were others on the meeting, make sure to recap/debrief immediately after. Assign action steps and when those will be completed.
- If no other teammates were on the meeting, review your notes and immediately determine how and when you will be taking the next steps.
- To do B and C immediately after the meeting, it takes the discipline of scheduling 15-30 minutes to do that. At GKB we call that a “parking lot meeting,” and it’s easy not to schedule or skip. However, if we don’t take immediate action steps, other things come up, the information is no longer as fresh, and we end up wasting our customer’s and teammates’ time.
- Update your CRM
- Send thank you/recap notes to contact and include all relevant parties on your thank you.
Having an organized strategy when it comes to important relationships with your most important customers, and then executing that strategy, will put you in position to win in 2025!
