Knowing vs. Doing in Sales: Implementation is Key

Knowing vs. Doing in sales is all about implementation. Implementation connects the knowledge you have to the results that you’re going to get. And without that key element being implemented again and again and again, you’re never going to get to the results, the sales, the possibility that you have in your entire career. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing knowing versus doing in sales. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. I love this topic because I think so many of us are just doing what we think we should do, but we’re like, squeaky wheel gets the grease. And so, are we really focusing and fine tuning and honing our sales. David: Right. And doing what we know. Jay: Yeah. David: Because a lot of us can get trapped in input, rather than output. And I know I am guilty of this myself because I am a chronic learner. I am always reading books and studying stuff, watching videos, learning from courses, I spend a whole lot of money educating myself every year. What’s the newest, the latest, the greatest, the things that I should be paying attention to? And sometimes when we get too focused on input, we don’t engage in the output necessary to get the results we’re looking for. Jay: Yeah, I’m exactly the same. Like I have all this technology. I’m always trying to hone my systems, but like we hear garbage in, garbage out, right? I spend so much time on that, maybe I should be spending time on actually closing sales, meeting with clients, you know, those types of things. David: Yeah, and keeping track of what we’re doing, keeping track of our output, I think is really important, and a lot of us lose sight of this. I’ve actually created tools in my training programs that allow people to start to capture that. Because when you boil it down, the things that we need to be doing on an ongoing basis involve bringing new prospects through the door, getting them qualified in or out as quickly as possible. Engaging in presentations with the people who are worthy of presentations, making offers, closing sales, all those things are key. And a lot of that is just about engaging in conversations with people. So simply by tracking what we’re actually doing on a day to day or week to week basis, we can have a crystal clear idea of where things are going wrong in our business. But if we just sort of think in the back of our mind, “Oh, well, yeah, I know that, or I’m doing all that,” we can really be misleading ourselves more often than we think. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And when you talk about tracking, I’m looking for the perfect software to track or things like that. And often a notebook, you know, start simple and work your way up. A spreadsheet, something and just reviewing your daily activities can be a very powerful thing. David: Yeah, whatever you’ll actually use is your best contact management system, whether that’s a full blown CRM software system, or whether you’re just good at being able to keep track of your appointments and notes on a calendar or in some sort of notebook. As long as you have it all in one place and you know what’s next, that’s huge. Knowing what’s next for each prospect and client. When do I have to reach out to them and what am I going to be reaching out to them about? If I know that somebody has an event coming up in November and I need to be in touch with them by early October, I want to make sure that I’ve got a note for early October that says, be in touch with this client, early October, about their event mid November. So that when I reach out to them, I’m not just calling and saying, “I’m just calling to check in” or “how’s everything going?” No, I’m calling, “Hey, listen, I wanted to give you a call. We were talking about this event you have coming up in mid November, wanted to see where we are with that,” so that we’re able to continue the conversation where the last one left off, which is also pretty critical. Jay: Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I tell you about an experience we’ve just had, the past few weeks, because we upped our game in tracking and kind of identifying the different categories and the conversations. We’ve identified two new products that our customers absolutely need. And we’re excited to offer that. And we would have never caught it, if we weren’t tracking the calls and taking notes and those types of things. David: Yeah, it’s so important to be able to listen to clients, but a lot of that doesn’t happen when we’re not taking the daily or weekly actions necessary to make sure that that’s going forward. Years ago, I put together what I referred to as a continuum of knowing versus doing. And in the lower left corner of the grid, people who know nothing and do nothing. It’s like, I don’t know what I’m doing. As a result, I take no action. And people who know nothing and do nothing in sales are actually not doing any harm...