Just occasionally the team at Buddy get to do some reading. We came upon this article recently on billionaires and it turns out around a third of them got their start as salespeople.
Our results suggest that those starting in a sales role are more likely to become a billionaire. It could be that people who are familiar with business deals at an early point in their career will take this forward to be successful in the million and billion-pound deals that come later on in their life. Certainly, this is true of the story of George Soros, the 29th richest person in the world, who started his career as a travelling salesman for a toy and gift wholesaler before making his fortune as a trader and broker. The same could be said of Michael Dell, who started working as a cold call salesman for a newspaper before making his money as the founder of the computer hardware company Dell.
So what is it about sales that leads people on a path to wealth?
And how can we follow that path to success?
First, salespeople tend to be driven, focused and ambitious.
Few survive in the industry if they are not as they’ll be the first in the firing line if sales aren’t being made. But given these traits, what else gives them the edge over other professions?
We talked about it here and we know from our work with many different businesses that it’s the ability of salespeople to follow up, build trust over time, and create a relationship with their buyers.
These ‘soft’ skills of relationship building are the core of any salesperson’s abilities. More than technical knowledge of products, knowing the right people and building their trust over time is the key to a successful sales career. When leads arrive they begin the process of winning the customer’s trust straightaway.
That’s why the follow-up is built into the heart of BuddyCRM.
It’s the key requirement to making sales, but can often be overlooked. All sorts of activity can disrupt our regular process; Too many leads might arrive on one day, you’re distracted by other events, a late lunch, you’re on the road, etc.
Which is why we recommend automating your follow-up calls and emails. When leads arrive, your CRM should follow an automated workflow to create a follow-up call and / or email for you.
Following an enquiry from a prospect, we have a meeting with them. In our CRM, all meetings are automatically scheduled to be followed up with a call one week later, so we know our follow-up will definitely take place.
This automatic follow-up feature can be turned on or off as required. It’s a powerful tool to encourage active following up of leads and can be measured by a sales team manager in their KPI reports.
Keep following up leads and enquiries and turn prospects into customers, briefs into sales and head on your way to making that billion!