In this article, we discuss the one percent principle in selling. If sales is a game of numbers, then at times, the numbers can be misleading. For most people, the thought of one percent doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you think about how that one percent difference affects the grand scheme of things, the difference is staggering.

Just 1 percent could lead to 12 babies being given to the wrong parents daily, two unsafe planes landing at international airports hourly, and worst of all 5.5 million cases of beer being produced flat. If you think about the one percent under these terms, that tiny difference in percentages can have huge consequences.

In terms of time, the percentage equals about 14 minutes and 40 seconds of your day and a lot can happen in that short span of time. Adding that much time to your sales day will equal about one and a quarter hours to the week and about 75 hours each year. We often underestimate or overestimate our time and make poor use of the golden hours when customers have the time to speak with you.

Related Article: How to Use Time Management to Become a More Successful Sales Professionals

Inaccurately gauging the use of our time is the root cause of missing deadlines and making mistakes. Time misuse leads to rushing to finish a proposal or project the day before it is due. Missing deadlines for accounts and making mistakes causes lost opportunities. If you spend adequate time developing new business activities and growing your sales pipeline, you can double your sales numbers in less than a year.

The One Percent Principle In Selling

The best sales reps keep up with the percentages and how they apply to their selling success. Top sales representatives understand that selling is about equal to 60 percent listening and 40 percent talking. Why? While it is important to inform your customers about your product’s features, benefits, and solutions to their problems. You won’t be able to accurately express these concepts without understanding how you can help the customer. If you’re more concerned with talking and less concerned with listening, then you’re operating backwards. Your objective is first to find out if what you have to offer is right for your customer. If you and your prospect are both on the same page, then chances are, your customer will find value in your product and a sale will be made.

 

Related Article: Effective Communication Skills for Sales Professionals

Cut The Fat – How To Condense Your Sales Message

When it comes to talking, it’s important to condense your sales messages down to the most important details. You will save valuable time for you and your customer. The 1% principle essentially means focusing on the customer and not on yourself. If you’re not talking about the most important things, then chances are your rambling about unimportant details. Your customer will see through this and most likely lose interest. How can the 1% principle help you when dealing with customers?

Develop the ability to frame conversations from “look at how great my product is” to “how can we help each other?” When consulting with customers, try and look at it from their perspective. Understand their needs and objectives. Putting more emphasis on listening, rather than talking, allows you to better communicate with your customers. Better customer communication helps the customer by answering their questions and providing real solutions to their problems.

 

How The One Percent Principle in Selling Helps Build Better Customer Relationships.

Your ability to successfully utilize the 1% principle during the sales process inherently rests on how well you build a meaningful, trustworthy relationship with your customers. How do you do this? By focusing on how to solve their problem and not so much the details of your product. That comes later when you’ve listened enough to your customer and identified their needs, concerns, and questions.

When consulting with customers, focus on identifying factors such as:

• Why would the customer need your product/service?
• What kinds of problems will your product/service solve?
• How will it make their lives easier or their business to operate more effectively?

 

Utilize The One Percent Principle in Selling to Improve Sales Performance

Small steps can bring on big improvements. When it comes to improving sales skills and training, it can be difficult to refine your sales skills if you spread your focus on trying to get better all in one sitting. However, in order to eat an elephant, you must take one bite at a time. The 1% principle can be a powerful tool for making continuous improvements during your sales training. Sales representatives should put all their focus and efforts into making small improvements, continuously training and learning one inch at a time. The one percent principle in selling provides a practical way of taking on tasks that seem too big to handle all at once.

The Power of Small and Continuous Improvements

Sales is a game of inches. When you add up those inches and start to focus on making small, realistic adjustments, you’ll be more focused on taking care of the essential aspects of a task or situation. Whether you’re trying to qualify a prospect, trimming down the most important details of a proposal, or looking to improve your sales skills, utilizing the 1% principle in selling can help you to focus on isolating the most important details and making small, 1% improvements toward your goals.

Do you like what you just read? Visit our resource center and download any or all of our 17 Executive Sales White Papers to help improve your sales skills training and build a successful sales career.

Coffee’s for Closers

“Put. That. Coffee. Down! Coffee’s for closers.” Let’s take a look at the sales lessons from Glengarry Glen Ross that you can apply to your own sales career.

Do you remember Alec Baldwin’s iconic scene from Glengarry Glenn Ross? Baldwin’s vicious and searing monologue as the fiercely intense salesmen is without a doubt, one of the most infamous scenes in movie history; and with good reason. We’ve all probably experienced a coach or manager like Alec Baldwin’s character Blake. Some would call it brash and a bit aggressive, but to call it that would take away from the dire and motivating message it was meant to deliver; If you want to be great in anything, you have to be focused and hungry.

Some of the most memorable and meaningful moments in our lives come from the situations we overcome that would either make or break us. Have you ever been in a situation where your very livelihood hung in the balance and you only had a short time to save it? Well, this was certainly the case for the salesmen of Glengarry Glen Ross. There are many important sales lessons from Glengarry Glen Ross for business-minded individuals who want to make it to the top. Whether it’s learning how to stay disciplined and motivated, or learning how to control a situation, the film’s sales lessons are worth reviewing. So put that coffee down and take notes!

 

Here are 5 key sales lessons from Glengarry Glen Ross that will keep you on your toes!

 

Always Be Closing

A major sales lesson in Glengarry Glenn Ross is knowing how to be there for your prospects. It pays to understand their major problems, their doubts, and any questions they might have. Successful sales representatives have a way of guiding and helping their prospects to the finish line. Try and get into the minds of your prospects. You will land and close more leads.

Know What The Shot Is

In the movie, Ricky Roma (played by Al Pacino) says, “Never open your mouth until you know what the shot is”. It’s important to understand the weight of our decisions and the impact an informed decision has on being a stellar sales representative. Knowing the shot means understanding the context for any deal you close. Getting a good read on your prospects is one of the most important aspects of closing sales.

Related Reading: General Negotiation Tactics To Help You In Sales & Life

Have a Clear Goal

You can’t get to where you want to be if you don’t know where you’re going. If you don’t know exactly what you or your prospect wants from a deal then you are not informed. How will you know what you’re working towards? Closing deals mean establishing clear goals and expectations before entering any meeting or agreeing to any deal.

“Coffees for Closers”

Similar to “Never put off for tomorrow that which you can do today,” This is simply a great reminder to push through and finish what you started before taking a break. Challenge yourself and be relentless with the objectives you set for yourself and your team. You will feel better each time you accomplish another one of your goals. Wrapping up any micro-goals you set for yourself can also inspire you to get more work done because of the momentum of success you’ve created. Save the coffee for after you take care of your goals.

 

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A-I-D-A (Attention, Interest, Decision, Action)

Perhaps one of the most iconic and helpful parts of Alec Baldwin’s speech is his AIDA acronym:

 

Attention

There are lots of ways to get someone’s attention, but how do you keep it? We are constantly distracted with more things vying for our attention than ever before. Humor works well but can backfire if you can’t read the room. You can’t close if you don’t know how to get the attention of your prospects.

 

Interest

Are they interested? If not, then are you wasting your time? This is the part where your passion for the product or service should shine. How will you keep their interest? Don’t lie to close deals. Tell a story, get familiar, and speak with passion.

 

Decision

The moment you’ve been working so hard to get to. You’ve gotten them behind the wheel, now it’s time to drive. Will they put the pedal to the metal? This is where the hardest-hitting questions and objections rear their head. It takes a lot of confidence to guide a prospect into making a decision. Continue to reiterate how important their decision is and how the value of their choice can impact their future.

 

Action

Closing time. This is your moment of glory. Write up and explain the agreement, ask if they have any questions or expectations, and close the deal.

 

 

Aside from being ridiculously quotable, Glengarry Glenn Ross is filled with countless sales lessons and motivating speeches. They may not all be applicable, but they are surely inspiring and at the very least entertaining. Glengarry Glenn Ross teaches sales teams to sell with confidence, study and learn from their prospects, and be relentless with their goals. Put these actionable sales lessons from Glengarry Glen Ross to good use for your own sales career and you will close more deals!

Good habits tend to come from resisting temptation. However, there comes a time when the lure of shortcuts becomes too enticing and we lose ourselves to bad habits and the comfort of convenience over persistence. We all have our reasons for taking shortcuts, but in the grand scheme of things, shortcuts in selling tend to not be sustainable. Bad practices such as lying about aspects of a product, or being rude and bullying a lead into buying will turn into a bad habit that will eventually harm your abilities to make a legitimate sale.

 

Of course, not all shortcuts hold the same weight. Some shortcuts streamline your day and could help set you up for success. Ultimately, it all comes down to whether you want to save time at the expense of producing quality work, or taking the time and effort to “measure twice, cut once.” Beware of these 4 shortcuts to ensure you don’t dig yourself into a hole of bad habits.

 

1) Doing research on your prospect during the sales call

It would behoove you to avoid multitasking and researching your prospects while making a sales call. Sure you can try scrolling through their company’s social media page and website but the chances that you’re actually focused and listening to your prospect is slim to none. You’ll miss key details that could help you close the sale and more importantly, you risk sounding insincere and distracted.

Give yourself enough time between sales calls to gather important key points, figures, and talking points to help you better prepare for the conversation. You’ll sound more organized and persuasive if the conversation flows well.

 

Related Article: The Seven Deadly Sins of Selling

2) Connecting with prospects at the same time of the day, every day, all the time

Everyone loves routines and schedules. They help keep our priorities and tasks organized right? Salespeople tend to live-and-die by the plan-of-the-day. They tend to fall into comfortable habits of calling this person at a specific time in the morning or emailing prospects at the same time in the afternoon right after lunch.

The problem with this, of course, is that we don’t all run on the same schedule. How do you know if you’re reaching a prospect if you they’re on a different schedule? Perhaps the reason why you’re always leaving voice messages is that they don’t even get into the office until an hour after you make the call every day? Try switching up and varying your call and email times!

 

3) Leaving things to memory and not writing a to-do list

If you think leaving important details to memory works better than taking the time to grab a pen and writing it down on a piece of paper, than by all means have fun forgetting all the things you should have written down. It might seem more convenient to put our confidence in our ability to remember things, but memories can be vile and more often than not, betray us when we least expect it.

The cold hard truth is, you will forget things. So commit to the ten seconds it takes to jot down important details and label them appropriately. Maintaining a to-do list helps you identify all of your tasks and allows you to keep track of your progress throughout your daily routine. You’ll thank yourself later when you turn the page to find what you were looking for.

 

4) Avoiding The Gatekeeper During The Sales Call

Some salespeople tend to take the Gatekeeper for granted and attempt to duck them at all costs. However, one should be wary when burning that bridge. There is a good reason the Gatekeeper is there to screen calls. Don’t be vague with your intentions around the Gatekeeper. Give them a great reason to put in a good word for you. Treating the gatekeeper with respect can sometimes make it easier for you to connect with the decision-maker.

Related Article: Why Creating Great Memories & Experiences During the Sales Process Will Engender Greater Client Engagement

 

 

Keys To Success

There are never any easy shortcuts to success. As with most things worth doing, it never comes easy and often involves getting back up after getting knocked down. Stay passionate about connecting with others and build a solid work ethic by taking the time to do things right the first time around. You’ll save yourself a lot of backpedaling and heartache in the long run. You can avoid developing bad habits and shortcuts by giving it your best every day!

Do you like what you just read? Visit our resource center and download any or all of our 17 Executive Sales White Papers to help improve your sales skills training and build a successful sales career.