Summer Sales Success!

Just as the best athletes constantly practice, improve, and refine their strategy, successful salespeople are always experimenting with existing techniques and trying out new ones. After all, the second an athlete or rep stops striving to get better, they backslide.

I've collected one-sentence tips to keep you in peak selling shape. Whether you want to focus on your presentation skills, your approach to calling prospects, your methods for closing, or all of the above, you'll find some great words of wisdom in this list.

Prospecting Sales Tips:

1. Generate more leads by keeping track of less-obvious trigger events: Major shifts in hiring, an executive leader change, new industry legislation, etc.

2. Before you reach out to a prospect, identify the problems they're likely dealing with.

3. Think about your lead as a company, not one single person (6.8 people are now involved in a typical B2B purchasing decision..

4. Schedule time for prospecting each and every day -- even on the last day of the month or quarter.

5. Use multiple channels to prospect -- email, phone, social media, events, referrals -- to keep the top of your pipeline as full as possible.

Email Sales Tips:

6. To get more responses, write emails a third-grader would understand.

7. Keep your email subject lines under seven words -- that's the max that'll show up on a phone, where almost half of prospects open messages.

8. Don't use "Re:" in a subject line; your email may get opened, but it'll be promptly deleted.

9. If you're trying to reengage a prospect who's gone dark, don't guilt-trip them.

10. You've probably noticed that your "just checking in" or "just following up" emails no longer get responses, so include a reason you're reaching out and a clear call-to-action.

11. Use videos to grab your prospect's attention and stand out from the crowd.

12. Include a link to your calendar to avoid the annoying back-and-forth of finding a time to meet.

13. Once you get off the phone with someone, send a follow up email ASAP to ensure it doesn't slip through the cracks.

14. Avoid embarrassing typos and spelling mistakes by copying and pasting your emails into Microsoft Word and running them through spell-check, or downloading Grammarly.

15. Keep track of your templates' open and response rates so you can drop the low-performing messages and double down on the high-performing ones.

16. Don't use funky formatting or special fonts (unless you want to look unprofessional).

17. Never send an email without personalizing at least two things -- and no, [prospect name] and [company name] don't count.

18. Emails that ramble on and on tell prospects you're insecure. If you believe your message is powerful and valuable, you don't need to write a novel.

19. Emojis can add humanity and a conversational tone to your emails, and make them memorable -- but if every line has an emoji, you'll appear to be trying way too hard.

Focus Point

96. Let go of those who keep holding you back.

You probably already know who those people are. If you have a boyfriend or girlfriend who constantly undermines your ability to achieve your objectives, you have a problem. Can you find a way to change his or her behavior? If not, you may need to decide what is more important to you: this person in your life or your ability to succeed in your chosen career.

When Tom attended evening law school a few years ago, he was advised that his four-year commitment would require a great deal of sacrifice that would need to be supported by spouses and significant others of those law students who were in this program. When he graduated four years later, nearly one-third of the married students were in various stages of divorce!

Obviously, there is a chance that any and all problems we may experience can be effectively dealt with through fruitful discussions and dialogue with our partners. However, it this is not happening in our significant relationship, then something (or someone) must give.

When you are a student and contemplating the rest of your life, please factor in the need to find a life long companion who will be supportive of your career choice. These are competitive times and succeeding is difficult even if you already "have all of your ducks in a row." It becomes even more difficult if you have constant spats with your significant other concerning work-related issues.

So please choose wisely and factor all of the information into the equation as soon as is possible so that you will not have to make gut-wrenching choices at a later time.