Hey there, today I want to talk about the second P in the sales growth blueprint, Ferraris, McDonald’s and one strategy that has earned an Adviser I worked with over $200,000 in the first year he used it and literally millions of dollars over the past decade as he has continued to use it. But FIRST… I want to start with a huge thank you to all of you that have downloaded the FREE eBook on my sales growth blueprint and an extra big thanks to those that have gone the next step and purchased the training programs on the Blueprint. If you haven’t downloaded your free copy of the blueprint you can get that here and if you love it please share it.

 

The second P in the blueprint is all about PROCESS efficiency. Now before you roll your eyes and complain that I’m not talking about closing and objection handling I want you to think about this.

What if you could make as many sales as you do right now – only working 3 days a week instead of 5? What if you could get home with more energy for your family OR all the other stuff you love doing… but just find you’re too tired to do at the end of the day? What if you found it easy to fill the pipeline instead of having to grind out call after call or email after email just to get in front of someone?

The point I’m making is that a key goal for every salesperson and every sales organisation should be making it EASIER to achieve sales. You need to place greater value on your time and on your energy and constantly look for and act on opportunities to remove the friction out of all your sales processes.

 

You see, when Ferrari hires a driver like Kimmi Raikonnen, they know they have a fantastic driver with incredible skills. So what they focus on is removing as much friction from the race car as possible to enable Kimmi to drive the car as fast as it can go. But here’s the thing – to do that effectively, Kimmi needs to be involved. He needs to be paying attention to all the little things slowing him and the car down AND he needs to be constructively providing feedback on where the friction is, so that changes can be made and efficiencies can be gained. So the first thing you need to consider is… where is the FRICTION is in your pipeline?

 

You may have seen other vlogs where I discuss the four drivers of sales revenue in your pipeline. Number one is the quantity and quality of leads entering your pipeline – where are your opportunities to become more efficient in that area. A simple example could be making it easier for third parties to recommend you by giving them a clearly defined description of your ideal customer or giving them a set of case studies, they can share to prove it’s worth talking to you.

The second driver is the efficiency of qualification and deal velocity within the pipeline. If you haven’t seen it the IDEA Model I share in our Conversion webinar gives you a 12-point checklist of questions to ask and strategies you can use to radically increase the probability people will do business with you OR tell you, they won’t do business with you. The thing a lot of us forget is qualifying people OUT of the pipeline is a great way to improve your efficiency.

 

The third driver is the efficiency of conversion and conversion margins. How efficiently and effectively are you negotiating margins? There are so many strategies for managing price buyers and taking control of the price conversation and I cover those in our objection handling series. A simple example is having a conversation with the prospective customer about why they have purchased quality over price BEFORE you talk about the price of your solution. But this is one of literally a dozen things you can do to improve how efficiently you close and the margin you close at.

And the fourth and often ignored driver of sales revenue is how effectively and efficiently you are at retaining clients AND generating referrals from those clients and other third parties.

 

I mentioned that Adviser earlier that earned over $200,000 in his first year of using a simple strategy. All I had him do was include an extra agenda item on his annual client reviews. The 4th bullet point on the agenda said “Introductions – who can you introduce me to?” By sending clients a notice that he wanted to discuss referrals in the annual review, he secured over $15M in funds under management from referrals that came out of that one simple strategy executed again and again in annual reviews that he was doing anyway!

 

I hope I’ve convinced you that there’s room for more efficiency in your sales processes and the key here is to become more aware of the things that are slowing you down. And instead of putting up with them, commit to doing something about making small improvements each week. There’s so much content we have that can help you in this area so please reach out to us if you need help.

And I’ll leave you with this thought. As you may already know I was a McDonald’s team member as a kid and I feel blessed for everything McDonald’s taught me about the power of process and the value of efficiency. So here’s the thought for today… What would a McDonald’s hamburger look and taste like, if their process efficiency resembled yours?

Have a think about that and make sure you download and share the Sales Growth Blueprint if you haven’t already got your FREE copy. That’s all for today. Remember – you’re meant to be living the BETTER sales life.