Think sales activity to increase sales despite the tight economy.  Get planning!

In this economy two things will determine your sales success more than anything else – the sales activity goals you set for yourself and your team, and the extent to which you follow through on those activities.

In the first post in this series, “Coaching Salespeople in a Tight Economy” we looked at the effects that the pressure caused by the media’s catastrophizing treatment of the current economic squeeze can have on salespeople – now we’ll look at how you can plan your way past these effects.

Coaching salespeople is the most direct way for sales leaders to impact sales productivity in a tight economy.

Successful salespeople are active sales people.  We all know: more carefully focused activity = more sales.  The fuel that drives this activity in sales people is optimism and positivity – and these are amongst the first things to be affected when the economy tightens or stalls.

In this 2-3 post series I’ll share the conversational ‘track’ I use to coach my salespeople to understand and acknowledge what’s going on – and to get focused back upon what’s important: activity.  If you manage sales people then this post is about how to coach them back to activity that will ensure they get on top of the challenges that tight econonies present.  If the only salesperson you coach is yourself then use this approach to keep yourself on track.

MailChimp, my mail supplier, dropped the ball and broke some of their code – I’m assuming it affected tens of thousands of subscribers.  But they did such a job of handling their minor ‘Fontpocalypse’ that it’s worth a serious look.

I’m assuming that each of subscriber like me got the same message – which is an objective lesson in dealing with it properly when you screw things up royally.