Will Improving My Memory Boost Sales Success?

Gavin

Hi! Recently I have missed target a few times and have been hauled over the coals by my boss. I had lots ideas and suggestions as to how they could support me, and as to why I felt that my performance had dropped but my manager suggested that I improve my memory.

I am always prepared and know my stats when speaking to clients but when put on the spot I often do not know everything about my current sales opportunities without looking at my physical forecast.

My boss feels that I am not on target because I do not have instant recall on every opportunity in my head.

Could you advise me as to how important you feel it is to be able to retain ones total and specific sales figures for the purposes of spot checks by my manager, whether you feel that this does impact my figures and furthermore how I could go about developing myself in this way.

Yours Peter

Peter

Firstly, thanks for the email and glad that you enjoy the blog and newsletter. This is a great question and one that’s close to my heart.

So firstly, I understand where your manager is coming from.

As a sales manager, sales director and now as a sales speaker, sales consultant and sales training expert I am constantly frustrated by how lax many so called professional salespeople are about what they have to do.

I am bored of failing salespeople sitting in front of me saying that they want to “earn 100k” but having little or no idea what they would have to do to achieve that nor taking any tangible actions to move themselves towards that.

Knowing where you are now and what resources you have to drive yourself to the results that you want (in this case – sales opportunities) is essential if you want to make more sales and create a sales career to be proud of.

As such, I think it is essential that salespeople know what sales opportunities they have, where these sales opportunities are, how likely they are to close the sale, what they need to do to close those sales, and so on.

As a salesperson I always knew this information. I always had it to hand. I could recall it at a drop of a hat. I held it close to my heart and I reviewed it every day. I knew when I was on target, off target, what might close, what would close, what could close and so on. This knowledge was vital for my success. A lot of this is about having the right attitude and being prepared for sales success.

I encourage sales managers to ask these kinds of strategic sales questions as it heightens the awareness of sales staff to the importance of these questions. It keeps sales teams focused on important tasks and activities rather than getting sidetracked by less important ones.

Many sales managers are too lax around this issue and do not ask their staff for these figures frequently enough or at all. Many of them have salespeople wandering around in their businesses that I (or they if they asked the right questions) could uncover as not performing in a handful of questions if they asked the right ones.

We need to remember that there is no place for dreamers in sales, only doers.

But before you jump off the nearest bridge…

I understand where you are coming from too!

Depending on how many opportunities you have, how good your memory is and what else you have to think about at any given moment in time it may not be practicable, possible or sensible to carry all of this important sales information around with you in your memory so to speak.

As a professional salesperson, the important thing is that you know what you’re doing and that you have a robust sales system that supports this approach.

If you have on only a handful of sales opportunities and leads then I would expect you to be in charge of all of the facts and to have them committed to memory.

Why? Because there would be so few facts you would just have to remember them if you actually knew them.

On the other hand, if you had loads of clients, prospects, sales leads and opportunities then you may well not remember all of them easily or at all. Trying to and getting them wrong would surely be worse than taking the time to write them down!

Putting you on the spot and asking you to recall every detail of every sales opportunity and every client is a good way for your manager to easily assess whether you are focused and doing your work properly but it is not the only way and it is not always accurate!

Management is about doing what works for each and every individual. You cannot apply the same approach and management styles for everybody and expect to get the best sales results.

My belief is that as long as you can operate in the moment and you do a good job I would be happy with you accessing the information from paper rather than your head. The fact that you have this information on paper and to hand shows that you’re a focused, driven and professional sales person. It also sets you apart from 80%+ of salespeople who wouldn’t have a clue about this stuff in the first place.

As long as it does not impact your clients and you review it regularly and use it to get results, what does it matter?

In conclusion, I think that we need to remember here that there is no perfect sales system and what is right for one sales person may not be right for another. Different people understand, process, recall and utilize business information to help them sell more in many different ways.

Whilst asking you spot questions might give a clue on many occasions as to the lack of knowledge or application of an individual if that individual can produce their PDA (or whatever) and give me the answers then the result is the same.

Gavin

p.s. There are some great books written on memory at Amazon UK (and at Amazon US). Check a few out if you want to work on this area.

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1. Why Repetition Is The Key To Improving Your Sales Performance And Your Sales Results
2. How To Destroy Sales Loser Beliefs & Catapult Yourself To Sales Success
3. Why Consistency Is Important For Sales And Business Success