This blog is for everyone who might have heard me mention my ‘sales board’ but haven’t yet got around to coming to one of my training sessions and finding out exactly what they’re all about. The Sales Board is a prop to help business owners implement a ‘sales process’ when they’re selling their product or service. It’s a ‘dry-wipe’ white board, ideally displayed prominently on your office wall, where you can’t help but see it, with all of your potential customers, (as l call them, ‘Prospects’), listed in a column on the left-hand side. Here is an illustration:

You use the board to log the date when you first made contact, whether it was by phone, e-mail or face-to-face, then to tick off when you have sent them a proposal/quotation, when you follow up the quotation or proposal to see what the Prospect has decided to do, if they can’t give you a deision right away, and then when you next follow up if they still need longer to decide, (it is down to your own discretion how many times you choose to follow up before you decide to leave the Prospect alone, if they persistently fail to give you a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’).

These are the benefits of the Sales Board:

1)      You have the date that you will next contact your Prospect up on the wall right in front of you, staring you in the face, so you won’t forget to do it.

2)      Because you agree with your Prospect the date that you will contact them next, you are saved from feeling that you are hassling them, or that you might be catching them at a bad time.

3)      Always calling your Prospect when you said that you would reinforces your credibility, as it shows your Prospect that you do what you say that you will.

More details about how to work your Sales Process are coming in future blogs – watch this space. If your business is a shop you might be thinking that the ‘Sales Board’ isn’t applicable to your sales process, so I’ll be addressing retail separately in my next blog. If you want more help with setting up a Sales Process in the meantime, or if you have any questions, call Doug on 07946 730475.