If you are going to be a success as a salesperson, you have to be well-organized. You’ll have information on your own products and services to keep track of, information on your customers and their businesses, information on prospects that might become customers, and any other information that your organization might provide.
Plus, you’ll have information relevant to the job itself. You’ll have to keep track of any sales you make if you are paid by commission or quota. You will have information on internal promotions and procedures, as well as information on how to use any data, tools, or software that you need to use. You’ll also have a calendar to keep track of involving any meetings with clients or internal support people.
So what can you do to help improve your organization skills? Here are some suggestions:
- Keep one calendar that has both business and personal appointments on it. Whether electronic or written, include the location of the meeting as well as the contact information for the person you are meeting with.
- Create a sales ‘funnel’ to track which stage of a sale your customers are in. An example of a sales funnel is shown in below figure. The numbers in parentheses represent the number of customers in each stage of the funnel. You would create a spreadsheet or file for each of the customers at each stage in order to track when you move them from stage to stage through the funnel.
The funnel should represent a specific period of time such as a month or quarter, at the end of which you can evaluate how well you are doing at moving customers towards a sale.
- Get in the habit of creating a ‘to-do’ list at the end of your workday of things that you need to get done the next day. Label them in order of priority in case you aren’t able to complete them all. If something doesn’t get completed, move it to the next day’s to-do list.
- Use a contact management system software system, if possible, which will help you keep track of when you have spoken to, sent mail to, or sent email to a customer, as well as when you need to contact them again.
If you can’t get a content management system, create one of your own using Microsoft Access or Excel. You should be able to sort by different values that are important in determining how and when you contact each customer (size of organization, type of industry, current products the customer has, date(s) you promised to follow-up with customers, etc.)