Invest Your Time Where It Counts: Your Sweet Spot

Nothing produces results faster and with greater certainty than selling within your sweet spot.

Your Target List Is Necessarily Difficult

Some salespeople bounce from one lead to the next lead, hoping to bump into something that they can turn into an opportunity worth pursuing. These leads aren’t targeted clients, nor have they even been qualified. Instead, these salespeople are searching for someone that is receptive. In their minds, they wrongly believe receptivity means a hot opportunity.

Unfortunately, receptivity isn’t enough. These leads are largely unknown to the salespeople and their company because they live on a plane somewhere far below the sweet spot, where their real dream clients reside.

Unfailingly, the salespeople who pursue leads outside their sweet spot don’t have a target list of clients that they are pursuing.

They know who their dream clients are. They have all of the key contact’s information. And, invariably, they have called on these dream clients in the past—a past that includes having been told “no” more than a few times. So the salesperson has moved on, trying to find some lead where their chances will be improved.

This is a mistake.

Your dream clients use your product, services, or solutions. They buy what you sell, and they have the types of challenges that allow you to create a tremendous amount of value. They also have a provider with whom they have deep relationships, and they are difficult to penetrate.

They are also what make up your company’s sweet spot. These are the prospective clients you have been hired to pursue and win. These are the dream clients who, once obtained, will put you in the top 20% of salespeople and—if you work hard—will be as loyal to you as they appear to be to your competitor now.

You must work in your sweet spot.

The Long View and Reducing Resistance

Working in your sweet spot requires that you take the long view. You don’t often do well the first time you show up on your dream client’s caller id. They don’t know you. You efforts are suspect because those who have called before you claiming to be value creators were mostly time wasters.

This is why nurturing relationships and creating value ahead of trying to claim it is so important.

The fastest way to win your dream client is to start putting in your time earning your right to an opportunity. The more effort and the greater value you create, the greater likelihood it is that you will be considered when your dream client needs a better outcome. The only real trigger event is dissatisfaction, and you will either have made yourself known as someone worth considering or you will not have.

The salespeople who work in the sweet spot win those opportunities. The salespeople who avoid creating value and making themselves known before the dissatisfaction occurs are given exactly what they have earned through their lack of effort: nothing.