This past Friday I had the opportunity to share the stage with Jeb Blunt, Miles Austin, Mark Hunter, Mike Weinberg, and John Spence. These five gentlemen are part of a mastermind group that came together a little over a year ago.
When I mentioned to this group that I owned virtualsaleskickoff.com (2016 virtual sales kickoff coming soon) they agreed that we should do a virtual event for salespeople who may not have ever attended a sales kickoff meeting. That event went so well we decided to do a live event. So last Thursday we arrived in Washington DC, and Friday we presented to a couple hundred people in a small, intimate venue.
We called this the Customer Acquisition Symposium. We each started with a Ted style, 25-minute talk. And then we each did a 1 hour and 15 minute workshop. All of the speeches and workshops were designed to help the symposium attendees acquire new customers faster.
Speed Kills
I learned something from every speaker. But the one big take away from me was the importance of tempo when it comes to leading sales and growing your business.
Tempo is a big deal. It indicates the speed of a rhythm. A faster tempo is a faster rhythm, and a slower tempo is a slower rhythm. Because it was so much talk about creating opportunities with prospective clients and inside existing clients, I recognized that the tempo of your business and your growth is determined by your prospecting.
If your prospecting work is done infrequently and sporadically, then that is your tempo. It might even be hard to find a rhythm because so little prospecting is actually being done. Infrequent and sporadic prospecting can only lead to infrequent and sporadic opportunity creation and equally infrequent and sporadic opportunity acquisition. You’ve determined that by setting the tempo.
If your prospecting work is done with a faster tempo, frequently and consistently, then you can expect that the creation of opportunities will also match the frequency and the consistency in which you do that work. Again, you determine the tempo.
Most sales organizations have sales leaders and sales managers who are focused on late stage deals. They want deals that they can forecast now, and they coach deals in the later stages. But that means that they are coaching the tempo being set by the sales force and not setting the tempo themselves.
A salesperson or an entrepreneur determines their tempo by the frequency and the consistency of their prospecting.
What is the tempo of your business now?
Does the frequency and the consistency with which you prospect create enough opportunities?
What do you need to do to increase the tempo?
