When and how much?

I am a firm believer to the power of questions. In business as in life the answer can change but the questions seldom do not. That is why in my sales work as well as when leading people, I have focused on figuring out and asking the right questions.

“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.” – Peter Drucker.

Questions also create space for discussion and communication. A basic sin in sales and in leadership is talking too much and not listening enough. I hate to break it but:

It is not about you.

Many times the impact we are after happens when the other counterpart comes up with the answer, even if it is the same we were thinking of. You know - give a fish or teach how to fish..

It would be tempting to talk more about the overall power of questions but I will keep dropping posts related to the theme with a bit more practical context going forward.

Lets end the post with couple of powerful, basic and simple questions that I have found useful when leading sales or selling myself. They are related to sales planning, forecasting and strategy work:

“When and how much?”

A bit of context. In sales the focus is often a lot on activity. We measure and lead the action whether it’s calls, mails or meetings etc. This focus can sometimes be so dominating that we lose sight on the wanted outcome. Regardless of the shiny CRM tool or all the data and forecast calculators we have put in place.

One example of this can be often seen in sales action plans or when forecasting. We or a colleague of ours presents a plan with multiple bullet points, describing the clients and stakeholders to be met, the products and USPs to pitch and the booking sessions and mail campaigns planned.

The quarter is presented to the fullest with sales activities and the plan looks very solid. Only thing often missing are numbers. Sure we have an overall target we need to hit but the actions presented are not “bridged” to the target. Now if this is the case we should ask yourself or colleague: “Okay, when and how much do you estimate this plan to generate revenue?”

Again sounds like a given, but many times when asking the question we might get a response that “Thats hard or impossible to know or estimate” “I have not thought of that etc.”

Sales is a lot about goal setting. If we do not know when and how much our actions will generate revenue, it is hard to know if the actions we are planning to do are the right ones.

If we add goals and targets to our actions we will also be more focused closing the activities with the needed action to hit the forecast we need to make.

If you think that this is a very basic thing you do, maybe with help from a proper CRM tool and you have data backed forecasts and hit rates always in your plans:

Congratulations and correct. This is basic.

And Best in Sales are Best in Basics.

But in my experience we all sometimes can fall to the business trap where speed is everything and the basics start to crumble.

That is why I keep constantly going back to thinking if I have the right questions or not.