One of my favorite hobbies when I am not conducting Sales Training, Coaching and Speaking is planting flowers and landscaping. In January, my wife and I moved from Indiana to Florida. We moved into a beautiful, newly remodeled home with NOlandscaping. We left our home in Indiana with hundreds of perennial plants and the front, back and side yards all beautifully landscaped from 15 years of planting new beds and gardens. It has been fun landscaping our new home here in Florida. I have already planted hundreds of new plants and flowers and created new gardens and borders. Last week I saw a post where someone was giving away hundreds of plants including a lot of large cactuses. All I had to do was go dig them up and move them to my house and replant them. Along with my daily Facebook and LinkedIn posts on Sales and Leadership I mentioned digging all of these plants up and replanting them.
plantplant/verbgerund or present participle: planting 1.place (a seed, bulb, or plant) in the ground so that it can grow.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of talking to a good friend and fellow John Maxwell Team member Chris Rollins, who is a great Sales Coach and Trainer. Chris and I have much in common and I always look forward to talking to him. Yesterday we were talking about the difference between Top Performer Salespeople and Average Salespeople. We were talking about how the Top Performers understand the need to be adding prospects and contacts on a daily basis. We talked about the need to continually be filling the funnel and that only by keeping the funnel full of prospects, will a salesperson be successful on a regular basis.
Chris said, “Jeff, last week I was following your posts on CPSI and making contacts and then I saw your post about planting over 200 plants and I immediately thought you were still talking about sales and filling the funnel.”
You see, to develop a beautifully landscaped yard and to become a Sales Top Performer both require the same plan. Both require you to begin by planning what you want the future to look like. You have to be able to visualize the end goal before you can start the process. After you have a plan for what you want the future to look like, you then must begin by figuring out how many plants or seeds/how many sales you must make to reach that goal. You then must plan on the fact that not every plant/sale will actually result in a flower/income. You must determine how many plants and seeds/prospects you must plant to get the number needed to produce the results you want. After you have determined the number of plants/prospects needed you must go after those plants/prospects sometimes by digging them up through hard work and sweat. Only after you have dug up the plants or seeds/prospects and qualified the best ones do you begin planting. As I did with the over 200 plants I dug up, I didn’t plant all of them. After qualify them, I eliminated many of them as not being worth the time or effort.
There were weeds mixed in with the good plants and weak plants that I knew wouldn’t ever produce the results I desired.
Last week after qualifying the best plants that would most likely give me the landscaping look I desired, I then dug the holes and planted them and began watering and feeding them. Prospect for sales is the same way. We dig up new prospects, we qualify which ones are the most likely to produce sales and we then begin to nourish and water those prospects until we get the opportunity to present our product or service in hopes of making a sale.
As Chris reminded me, whether developing a landscape or developing a career in sales, we must set a goal and then begin planting the seeds daily, watering and feeding them on a regular basis if we expect to reap the rewards we desire.
CPSI= The ratio of Contacts to Presentations to Sales to Income.
Are you planting seeds daily or just hoping for a harvest? The 20% of all Salespeople who make 80% of all sales are Top Performers because they understand that you must be planting seeds every day. Do you have a plan to be filling your funnel with prospects and your landscape with flowers? Both require the same thing.
Thanks again to my friend and mentor Chris Rollins for reminding me that to be successful we must all be planting seeds daily.
Jeff Raver is a John Maxwell Certified Speaker, Coach and Trainer and has been training and coaching Top Performers for over 20 years.
If you are ready to become a Top Performer contact Jeff at Jeff.Raver@BeginToWinNow.com for a FREE Consultation.
One of my favorite hobbies when I am not conducting Sales Training, Coaching and Speaking is planting flowers and landscaping. In January, my wife and I moved from Indiana to Florida. We moved into a beautiful, newly remodeled home with NOlandscaping. We left our home in Indiana with hundreds of perennial plants and the front, back and side yards all beautifully landscaped from 15 years of planting new beds and gardens. It has been fun landscaping our new home here in Florida. I have already planted hundreds of new plants and flowers and created new gardens and borders. Last week I saw a post where someone was giving away hundreds of plants including a lot of large cactuses. All I had to do was go dig them up and move them to my house and replant them. Along with my daily Facebook and LinkedIn posts on Sales and Leadership I mentioned digging all of these plants up and replanting them.
plantplant/verbgerund or present participle: planting 1.place (a seed, bulb, or plant) in the ground so that it can grow.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of talking to a good friend and fellow John Maxwell Team member Chris Rollins, who is a great Sales Coach and Trainer. Chris and I have much in common and I always look forward to talking to him. Yesterday we were talking about the difference between Top Performer Salespeople and Average Salespeople. We were talking about how the Top Performers understand the need to be adding prospects and contacts on a daily basis. We talked about the need to continually be filling the funnel and that only by keeping the funnel full of prospects, will a salesperson be successful on a regular basis.
Chris said, “Jeff, last week I was following your posts on CPSI and making contacts and then I saw your post about planting over 200 plants and I immediately thought you were still talking about sales and filling the funnel.”
You see, to develop a beautifully landscaped yard and to become a Sales Top Performer both require the same plan. Both require you to begin by planning what you want the future to look like. You have to be able to visualize the end goal before you can start the process. After you have a plan for what you want the future to look like, you then must begin by figuring out how many plants or seeds/how many sales you must make to reach that goal. You then must plan on the fact that not every plant/sale will actually result in a flower/income. You must determine how many plants and seeds/prospects you must plant to get the number needed to produce the results you want. After you have determined the number of plants/prospects needed you must go after those plants/prospects sometimes by digging them up through hard work and sweat. Only after you have dug up the plants or seeds/prospects and qualified the best ones do you begin planting. As I did with the over 200 plants I dug up, I didn’t plant all of them. After qualify them, I eliminated many of them as not being worth the time or effort.
There were weeds mixed in with the good plants and weak plants that I knew wouldn’t ever produce the results I desired.
Last week after qualifying the best plants that would most likely give me the landscaping look I desired, I then dug the holes and planted them and began watering and feeding them. Prospect for sales is the same way. We dig up new prospects, we qualify which ones are the most likely to produce sales and we then begin to nourish and water those prospects until we get the opportunity to present our product or service in hopes of making a sale.
As Chris reminded me, whether developing a landscape or developing a career in sales, we must set a goal and then begin planting the seeds daily, watering and feeding them on a regular basis if we expect to reap the rewards we desire.
CPSI= The ratio of Contacts to Presentations to Sales to Income.
Are you planting seeds daily or just hoping for a harvest? The 20% of all Salespeople who make 80% of all sales are Top Performers because they understand that you must be planting seeds every day. Do you have a plan to be filling your funnel with prospects and your landscape with flowers? Both require the same thing.
Thanks again to my friend and mentor Chris Rollins for reminding me that to be successful we must all be planting seeds daily.
Jeff Raver is a John Maxwell Certified Speaker, Coach and Trainer and has been training and coaching Top Performers for over 20 years.
If you are ready to become a Top Performer contact Jeff at Jeff.Raver@BeginToWinNow.com for a FREE Consultation.