The last few years have been a blur for me. The chaos of the pandemic was followed by a surge of new business and this year, right when a sense of normalcy started to return, my wife and I sold our house and lived like nomads for a few months.
Fortunately, the time I spend with my clients is a refuge from the chaos. They’re fun, amazing people making great progress with EOS, to the point that many are ready to graduate; they’ll continue with EOS, but without me. That would be cause to celebrate but for one fact: I DID IT. I did the thing I tell my clients to never do. I got busy and comfortable and stopped selling, and now my sales funnel looks like a sales thimble and I’m wondering who will replace those soon-to-graduate clients.
Many of you are going to be in the same boat in a few months, but you’re ignoring it because you’re ashamed that you’ve neglected your sales engine, or you don’t know how to fix it. I have two pieces of advice for you: start small and start now. Here’s a four-step sales process you can build and begin in an hour:
Step 1: Identify and put on your calendar 3 activities that will generate awareness and build trust among your target market. For example, you might write one blog per week, attend one association meeting or other industry gathering per month, and commit to one speaking opportunity per quarter. Step 2: Mine the database of people that know and trust you each week. Commit to calling five existing clients and two prospective clients each week, and during two of those calls ask for a referral (existing client) or opportunity to propose (prospective client). Step 3: Script your calls and proposal meeting. My encouragement is to document, learn, and practice these in a highly scripted fashion and then let your style come in. It’s okay if it feels “wooden” at first – if you don’t nail the fundamentals, you’ll never be able to react situationally. Step 4: Track your activities weekly. Your scorecard might look like this:
Right now, you’re probably thinking one of two things:
1. “I don’t have time for this.” Really, you don’t have an hour to start building the sales that will fuel your business in 2023? I find that hard to believe.
2. “This is too simple.” Too simple if like too fast or too much fun, it doesn’t exist. Plus, it’s a whole lot more sophisticated that nothing, which is what you’re doing now.
Yes, I’m taking my own medicine and my funnel is slowly filling. I won’t be where I want to be for a few months, but I’m thankful for the rest and my dog’s thankful for the frisbee time. And one more thing:
the stress you feel from not having the right focus on sales will go away as soon as you start working the process, even before the results happen. And we could all use a little less stress.
