Hoping I can keep this short tonight. The last four weeks have been a bit of a struggle for me. For the year I'm ahead of the game (quota) moving in the last quarter of the year.
Thus far I've been doing okay, but that okay came to an end with a half a dozen stalled deals along with losing a few. Yes, I lose also 
But in my eyes losing is always a part of winning.
I took a good long look at my funnel and thought WTF? Where did it go? Well I was fortunate to close many orders over the last two months. The appointments, the documents, the chasing of documents, phone calls, email, follow up emails all took their toll on prospecting. I didn't have a lot of extra time to make the calls and stops required to keep the funnel full.
Mind you, I have a lot opportunities pending, however I can see that some aren't going anywhere, others have stalled and the picture of the future wasn't that awesome. Thus I needed to bring the future to the present @Ray Stasiezcko
When the going gets tough the tough get going. I knew it was time to pick up the phone and make things happen, because waiting for things to happen was not an option.
While taking to the phones last week I remembered what my Director of Sales Enablement had been preaching for the last few months. I know at times we tend to forget some of the basics that got us to where we are today. That one tip was to ask for referrals. Yeah, I remember learning that way back when, but somehow that memory faded into the past and I hadn't used it in years.
Well last week I used it. I didn't use it for every call, but made mention of asking for a referral about 75% of the time.
I remember the call I made to an existing account (this is where you want to use it). The principal of the company was not in, in fact he was on vacation. I left a short message with the receptionist and stated that I would send him an email.
At least that's what I wanted, but I changed to sending him an inmail (linkedin). My reasoning for choosing the inmail was simple, since he was on vacation I'm thinking his in-box is going to be flooded and I would be one of the last emails he would look at. Thus I knew sending an in-mail would give him an alert via Linkedin.
My message was simple, "Hi Bob, it's been more than a year since we last spoke, how has the wide format been doing, any questions, any issues or anything that needs to be addressed? BTW, would you happen to know of anyone that might be interested in a wide format like yours?" Simple right?
Today I took a call on my cell from a number that I didn't recognize. Turns out it was a business friend of the principal that I in-mailed last week. He's interested in a new wide format along with a color MFP! We scheduled a meeting for later this week. Now that's a decent add to the pipeline.
One thing I repeat over and over as long as your work had you never know what tomorrow will bring you. In this case I also am grateful that our Director of Sales Enablement kept pushing that button.
-=Good Selling=-
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