A motivational story about how a frog can be boiled in water, sales people, and monitoring results, it all clicks together, trust me...

A Motivational Story

The story said that if you sit a frog in a pan of water and slowly start to boil it the frog will just sit there until it cooks.

The frog apparently doesn’t notice the gradual change to its situation and puts up with the discomfort without realising how serious the problem is becoming.

The motivator uses the frog story as a metaphor for sales people who don’t realise changes in their situation when the challenges they face gradually increase and change and their results start to fall.

Their motivation levels start to drop which leads to a loss of resourcefulness and sales fall further. Parallels are drawn between the frogs increasing hot water and the sales person’s worsening situation.

Now I don’t know if a frog will actually sit there while the water boils, but I do know that sales people can be oblivious to gradually changing situations.

As a sales manager I see sales people oblivious to the changes happening around them:

Changing needs of customers, marketplaces that reflect current economic climates, and new competitors springing up with a different sales angle.

They don’t notice that their old ways of selling are no longer working.

The hook in their sales introduction no longer catches the attention of the buyer because there is new bait being dangled in front of them.

The sales angle they use is no longer the one that customers want to see. Sales angles such as: Price, Customer service, Consultant, Expert, all round one-stop-shop.

The needs of the prospects have changed due to new technology or legislation or some other reason.

The frog doesn’t realise he is in ever increasing hot water and the sales person is unaware that their environment is changing and their way of selling no longer gets results. In both cases the focus has been distracted and they have missed what’s happening to them. So how do you make sure you don’t become a frog in hot water...

How to prevent becoming a Frog

Sales people become frogs in hot water when they stop being aware of small changes that impact on their sales.

You won’t immediately know about every small change in your marketplace that could impact on your sales results and often the effects take time to work through to your prospects and customers. So what you need to watch for are changes in the results of your sales actions.

Check your figures

In your sales process you will have several stages and the results of your activity can be measured at every stage.

When you call cold prospects to qualify them as someone that could have a need for your products or services you may notice that many now have reasons why they can’t buy from you. The number you need to call to get a list of qualified prospects may have risen. When this happens you need to do more prospecting and cold calling and if you don’t pick up on this then the water starts to heat up.

As you make appointment setting calls you can measure how many qualified prospects you get to agree to a sales appointment. If the percentage you convert starts to drop there could be changes in your environment that you are unaware of. You are seeing the steam, a symptom of the changes but not the actual change itself.

And the biggest indicator of all that your circumstances are becoming different, this is when your old sales pitch no longer gives you the results it used to. Keep a record of the number of customers that you close a sales with compared to the number that you present too. A consistent change, no matter how small, could be a sign that your marketplace is heating up.

Keep your own records, and don’t wait for your company or employer to tell you about the changes in your figures.

When you see changes look for what’s behind the figures.

Take action, change your sales pitch, create a new telesales or appointment call, and look how you can overcome more objections.

If you’ve seen your sales activity yield lower results at any of your sales stages consider making changes that will get you out of hot water and stop you becoming a boiled frog buy clicking Sales Training online courses...

No frogs were hurt during the preparation of this newsletter.

I'm Stephen Craine from the website Sales-Training-Sales-Tips.com

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