Guest Blog: Nancy Nardin, Smart Selling Tools
Asking good questions
Listening more and talking less
Selling Solutions rather than products
Being willing to walk away when it’s not a good fit
These are all essential skills of a top sales performer. But you can do a mediocre job at each of those and still be successful in sales. I bet you know someone who fits that description. You wonder how they manage to hit their numbers month after month. I’ll tell you how.
The truth of the matter is, two separate sets of skills are needed to be a top dog. First you have to be great at prioritizing and executing on the hundreds of tasks you tackle each week. And secondly, you have to be great with prospects. But you don’t have to be great at both. 
I’m saying this to make a point. An estimated 70% of a sales rep’s time is spent on non-selling activities. How you spend that 70% of your time is therefore very critical.
Here’s a mini-checklist of questions you can ask yourself:
- Have you taken the time to save your best proposals as templates?
- Have you created a cheat sheet with your best material to use when you’re on the phone?
- Have you created a list of your best prospects and a plan of attack for each one?
- Have you thought through what products your current customers should also buy?
- Are you working on the urgent and important matters first instead of those you have more fun doing?
- Have you made note of most time-sucking tasks and looked for ways to be more efficient?
- Are you good at delegating?
- Do you have a good system for remembering (and doing!) scheduled tasks?
The better you get at using your non-selling time, the more time you’ll free up for selling.
The more time you can spend selling, the more you’ll sell.
What other questions should be added to this checklist? What do you do to make the best use of your time? Do you have tips and tricks to share?
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