A pot of gold...

(Published 21st November 2022  https://www.tsrn.co.uk/news/)

Searching for that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

At the end of each month, you know that you need to have brought enough business into your pipeline in the preceding months to pay all bills, wages, and expenses. Successfully meeting targets ensures you can cover all outgoings and have profit. They also guarantee a strong end to the financial year.

Within the world of sales, we find everything that a company can be, and a lot of the time many companies only being a small fraction of what they could be.

Well now, you might be saying, what has this all got to do with Rainbows and all this other nonsense Sonya?

The Cambridge Dictionary states that a rainbow is the following:

“An arch (=curved shape) of different colours seen in the sky when rain is falling and the sun is shining. The sun came out and we saw a rainbow”

So, if you are a sales team that is having issues with not hitting targets, could it be because of the above or in the words of Albert Einstein: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting different results. Yes, you may have your bread-and-butter clients, but if reaching higher sales figures is your aim, maybe it is time for a change.

Has your palette of ideas dried up?

Have you hit your quarterly targets for the last year, but you are having trouble securing higher-valued contracts, and clients? You know you supply good products and services. Somehow, reaching the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the blue sky seems impossible…

“Oh, the duality of life, I hear you cry” whilst sipping a gingerbread cream Latte. “Sonya, to be quite blunt, I just want my sales team to focus on targets. I know looking at what we are not doing is the key to moving forward. I know it means actioning what’s missing but frankly Sonya, it involves too much work.”

Firstly, I would like to say this has nothing to do with Frank.

I say this to you, and you might find it hard to hear: Wipe the cream from your upper lip, place your drink down, and have some faith and courage.

Could you be brave and an archetypal medieval warrior?

For the next few minutes, I would like you to imagine yourself as brave, as brave as the noble knights of old.

Just for now, you are Richard the Lion Heart….really you are. Now, I am not about to give you a history lesson about the second king from the House of Angevin which was part of the Plantagenet dynasty.

I would love to, but to be honest, that would take too long, and the wonderful Professor Mary Beard, I am not.

Having courage and being bold in your forward planning can bring all sorts of inexpensive, easy-to-implement rewarding solutions to a company that wishes to aim higher.

Yes, I know you are reading this whilst trying to drink coffee, battling with Excel and your new CRM software, and filling in your sales target summary from two weeks ago. No, I’m not going to do that for you! But I am hopefully going to press the button that says flight mode: take you from the flat lands of producing reports to imagining the magical heights of actualizing those new clients, also rainbows, and unicorns. Splendid!

Is planning the beginning of the crusade?

As usual, when you look to my writing for guidance it is not what you were expecting. But maybe what you are expecting is exactly what is not producing results. A sales trainer once said to me that the dizzy heights of growth cannot be caught without planning and action! Oh yes, that was me.

You see, are you thinking in terms of blue skies and colour?

Blue sky thinking and aiming higher could involve the following:

• An extensive file of creative ideas your team could try
• Time set aside for prospecting
• Mind Mapping good ideas
• Acting out a run-through with your team to see what the outcome could be
• Being clear about your targets and breaking them down into daily tasks
• Implementing some communications training and more if needed
• Recruiting someone with the skills to guide you through the process.
• Deciding to be brave rather than average!

You see, whilst many sales teams can see the rainbow. They never deliberately reach into the vastness of the sky. Your new invigorating sales action plan could provide the momentum that supports your planned actions. Therefore, let the sunshine enlighten you as you decide to be brave, reaching for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

And as for Unicorns, never seen one, but I have some Polyfilla ready just in case!

@ Tiggy Sonya

Find me here on Medium and here at The Sales Recruitment Network. Here for my sales communications blog and here for my Tiggy Sonya's Art, Music, Nature, and Book Patch