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What can a business development professional learn from an Olympic swimmer? Work smart not just hard, pay attention to the details and stay calibrated.
With 20 years in the sport and 16 Olympic medals (14 of them gold) under his belt, many would assume that Michael Phelps knows all there is to know about swimming. Training for him at this point is just repetition right? What else is left to work on? Wrong. In a recent interview recounted on sportsillustrated.cnn.com, Phelps told SI.com just the opposite.
“I’m not doing as much volume now as I was four years ago. My body is older and I don’t recover as fast. We’re trying to fine-tune a lot of the small things, trying to pay more attention, whether its getting faster turns or tighter streamlines — just little tiny things like that. These races at the Olympic Games or major competitions, they end up coming down to tenths or hundredths of a second, so you need to always make sure you can do all the small things right.”
Even at an elite level, when you do the same thing over and over it is easy to start taking things for granted and fall into bad habits. But as Phelps said, in a sport where winning and losing comes down to hundredths of a second, sloppy preparation is not an option.
It’s not an option in sales either. To consistently expand an organization with growth driven by sales force, not market force, sales managers and the reps who work for them need to work smart, regularly review the metrics that drive overall growth and calibrate their activities around what is and what isn’t working.
Look at how many calls are being made – how many emails are sent out, etc. Think about it. If the call volume is high, but the close volume is low, what does that say? On the flip side, if the call volume is low, but the close volume is still high, what does that say?
Look at who is being called and how many different contacts within a single organization. Look at how fast things are moving through the pipeline. Is there any one area where things are getting stuck? Is there an area where things seem to be going really well? Fine turn strategy accordingly. The more you measure, the more you know. The more you know, the more prepared you’ll be to consistently stay out in front of the market.
A sales organization that prepares to win by watching the details and doing the small things right will set the stage to win on an Olympic scale.
If your business development efforts are failing to generate consistent and predictable revenue for your organization or if you want to specialize to help fine-tune your sales engine and turbo-charge growth, chances are you could benefit from a virtual sales team that has sales systems down to a science.
NuGrowth Solutions is that team. We bring the people, the processes and the system to take your business to new heights in customer acquisition. If you are interested in working with a partner you can trust to grow business, please give us a call at 800-966-3051.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
