You should never, ever have to go back to basics. If you need to get back to the basics, you’ve done something wrong. Namely, you’ve stopped doing the fundamental things that allow salespeople and sales organizations to succeed.
Prospecting
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been selling, mastering the basics of selling means you will always need to prospect. You are always going to have to acquire new clients, which means you will forever need to open relationships and create new opportunities. Prospecting is as basic as it gets when it comes to selling.
Planning Your Week
Planning your week on Sunday and getting a running start into the week is a basic of good selling. It’s a good foundation for being productive no matter what you do. Having a list of prospective clients makes prospecting faster and more efficient, a key point in any sales training basics. Blocking time on your calendar to follow-up with all of your existing prospective clients is also a basic fundamental of good selling. It means you’re working with intention; you’re taking actions on purpose, and you’re not being reactive and allowing the world to work on you. You can only do this effectively if you block time and plan your week ahead of time.
Gaining Commitments – Closing
There will never be a time in sales where it is not necessary for you to ask for commitments. It doesn’t matter how often people suggest that you “never be closing,” or “always be connecting,” or something else that makes them feel better about themselves, asking is part of selling. Closing for the commitments you need helps your buyer come to a decision that moves them forward from their current state to a better future state. You do have to ask for your dream client’s business.
Overcoming Objections and Resolving Concerns
You can never stop learning how to overcome your prospective client’s objections, or more likely, helping them resolve their concerns. Your prospective clients are always going to feel some resistance, some fear, some uncertainty as to whether what you are selling is right for them and whether or not they’ll really get the result they’re buying. Dealing with objections and concerns are a basic part of selling.
Back to the Basics
Most of the time when people say they want to get back to basics of selling, it means that they’re no longer doing the fundamentals. Almost always it means they’ve given up prospecting. It likely means that they have ignored their sales process or have not executed what they know to be their best plan for creating and winning an opportunity.
Going “back to the basics” means you’re not doing quality work, not following up, not using your time wisely. No matter how exciting a new sales idea, a new sales process, or a new sales methodology might seem, none of them can replace the basics. The basics make up the fundamentals on which you build everything else. You need to adhere to the basics no matter how sophisticated your approach.
The best way to never have to get back to basics is to never abandon them in the first place.
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