I couldn't sell anything - there was too much snow

The last 2 weeks have been a "challenging" time for sales people here in the UK. Not only have we been dealing from the post Christmas and New Year hangover, but we have introduced a new syndrome - "snowitis" where the onset of snow has resulted in a complete halt in sales activities.

Now of course some of this snowitis is correctly diagnosed where the subject is living in a remote corner of the country and he/she can only normally interact with clients face to face. For those who fully suffer from snowitis (often diagnosed by their managers) it has been fully acceptable to engage in a little extra-curricular snow man building, sledging, or in certain extreme cases having to mind the children because local schools were suffering from the public sector variant of snowitis.

But for the rest of us, snowitis has just been an extreme form of "duvet-day". We have immediately accepted that just because we cannot get out of our local road, all forms of transport have ground to a halt "DO NOT TRAVEL UNLESS IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY" shouts the BBC news. Even in those extreme cases where we cannot travel (or our customers cannot travel to their offices) then we have also decided that all forms of communications have been affected by the snow. Just like the "wrong types of leaves" impact our railway system, so then the wrong types of dampness and cold seems to impact our voice and data communication systems. Clearly there is no point in trying to call people as they will not be there, even though there are believed to be over 1.8 mobile phones per person in the UK!

My personal experience has been that a surprisingly large number of people have answered their phones during the last 2 weeks, and although I have had meetings cancelled, we did manage to carry on discussions over the phone ensuring that the next meeting will be further down the sales cycle. On a more depressing note I have had clients whose Inside Sales Reps, appear to have made limited contact with customers during this period, resulting in a 2 week delays of major outbound sales campaigns. The reason for this appears to be a combination of snowitis and a failure of systems so that those Inside Sales Reps who were willing to work from home had limited access to the systems they needed.

So how do we deal with Snowitis?

1. Attitude - Yes you can still work during snow!
2. Application - You have to believe that you are going to get through to someone
3. Perseverance - It will take longer than usual so persevere, use all the contact methods available and don't be put off.
4. Systems - The technology world has been promoting the value of flexible working, have you been willing to be flexible in your approach? Those who invested in solutions that allow home working were able to continue working - their ROI on the IT and Comms investment just went up!
5. Planning - Sales people who have a plan can execute it even during the snow!
6. Management - Managers have to manage even more so, do your people have a plan of activity, are they delivering against it?

What can we learn from the last 2 weeks

This outbreak of snowitis should help us identify those sales people who do not plan their time and activities, and those managers who fail to manage. We all have a duty of care to our employer (they are after all paying us) and so we should have made best use of the time available.

Look for those people who, even if they could not see clients, have made best use of the time. Those who have built a plan of activity for the coming quarter, or who have updated their account plans, and their contact strategies.

Look for those managers who have driven their teams as opposed to "going native".

Identify those people who have continued to sell, they are your potential stars for the coming year as they have the right attitude.

And finally, remember snowitis is an illness that only affects some. People with the right attitude and strong values don't seem to catch it - funny, they seem to be more successful too.

What can you expect from this Blog over the coming year

It is our aim to continue to provide pragmatic and practical advice and solutions to the issues facing sales teams. We will always ensure that whatever we say you can use with your teams confident in the knowledge that we have already used the solutions in real life. We will continue to provide free tools and if you want access to more tools then you can always visit our website www.sales-accredit.com.

We need your input

We base all of our examples on the issues we are identifying in our clients, but we would like you to help us. Send us the issues you are facing and we will endeavour to address them in our future blogs.

And Finally

In the last blog of 2009 we discussed the personal business plan. We now have a worked examples, so if anyone would like a copy please drop me a line mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com

Next week will start to address the issue of launching a new offering to market and how to ensure the sales team are able to drive it into your customer base.