Salespeople call on customers for dozens of reasons. Many calls are related to getting a specific order and are therefore, conventionally and legitimately, spoken of as sales calls. But other calls on customers and prospects aren't really sales calls - at least not directly - because they aren't aimed at securing a specific piece of business. On these calls, your objective is the general one of developing, building, or sustaining a relationship. You might meet that objective by providing information, learning about the individual and their company, or working to further projects that you believe might generate revenue for your company somewhere down the line. Both you and the prospective customer know you're not there to close business.
There's nothing wrong with making such calls. In fact, they're essential to your long-term success. Yet they're quite distinct in intention from true sales calls, and it's a distinction we highlight with a particular terminology. The distinguishing characteristic of a sales call is that you go into it with a single sales objective.
By single sales objective we mean the specific revenue objective, or piece of potential business, that you anticipate you'll secure by calling on this person. The achievement of that objective - the close - might be just around the corner or months away. But every time you go into a true sales call, it's this single sales objective that defines why you're there.
Because you prosper by closing business, your life in selling is really composed of a series of single sales objectives that you've defined and closed on. Whatever your long-term relationship with a company or prospect, and however healthy or erratic your revenue profile, your professional success is a composite of your achieved objectives; it's a picture of the accumulated sales you've made over time. A single sales objective is therefore both the unit of your progress and its measure. If you don't have (or close) single sales objectives on a regular basis, you're going nowhere.
This might seem almost too obvious to warrant our mentioning it, but in fact the identification of the single sales objective is, for most of the sales profession, anything but obvious. When we ask salespeople to tell us why they called on a particular customer or prospect at a particular time, we routinely get answers that indicate the reason for the call wasn't single, had nothing directly to do with sales, and strictly speaking, wasn't even an objective. Here are some examples:
- "We're target-marketing this quarter to major firms in this industry."
- "I hadn't seen her for six months, and it was time to reestablish contact."
- "He asked me to drop off some literature on our new product line."
- "I was checking on the implementation of our last solution."
All of these might be valid reasons, even great reasons, for calling on a customer or prospect, but none of them is a single sales objective. Should you be engaging in these activities? Sure. But when you make a call to "reestablish contact" or "check on implementation," don't fool yourself that you're making a sales call. A sales call is much more focused, and what it's focused on is action.
A single sales objective is an anticipated result. We often say that it provides an answer to the question "What am I trying to make happen in this account that isn't happening right now?" In other words, when I achieve my objective, what will be different? Whatever is "different," it has to be measurable in very precise terms.
A true single sales objective defines the who, what, when, and how much of the sale. In order to be sure your sales call objectives actually do that, here's a checklist of five essential criteria. Every single sales objective is:
- Product/service related. It tells you exactly which product or service you intend to sell, and how much of it.
- Specific, clear, and concise. There's no ambiguity in a single sales objective. If it's properly defined, you should be able to read the definition to a colleague or a customer and have that person know exactly what you're talking about.
- Definable and measurable. A single sales objective is so clearly defined that when it's achieved, you can measure the accomplishment.
- Tied to a timeline. This is a further refinement to the "measurable" criterion. A single sales objective has a deadline, or at least a likely time frame for its achievement.
- Usually not connected to "and." Poorly defined objectives are often dual or multiple. "I'll sell 20 of these and secure that service commitment." A single sales objective is just that: single.
Defining a single sales objective will give you a clearer understanding of the eventual goal you're reaching for with an individual customer.