Joining me today is Lori Richardson, Founder and CEO of Score More Sales. Lori is a thought leader on the sales growth front and works with technology brands worldwide. She has worked with known companies such as Apple, IBM, and Siemens and has become a well-known sales leader.

Below, you can read highlights from our discussion or use the links to start the video from different parts of the conversation.

Lori's Motto - Make Small Daily Improvements

Click to start video at this point—Instead of going in the marketplace with one solution or one methodology to be successful, Lori has found improvements to companies existing methodolgies to be successful. In her work she's found so many companies with interesting solutions that she couldn’t find flaw in, that she decided to work with what people are using if it is generally moving them forward, and help them tweak their results and make improvements to some very basic things she feels many sales leaders and company leaders are overlooking. Lori has found that there are a lot of really good companies out there that want to be greater.

Lori helps her customers to dissect the sales process and find small improvements. She shared that if you have 10 deals and you close seven, then you want to know what happened to those other three. Lori’s motto is to make a 1% improvement every day, rather than trying for overnight success. The small gains over time compound just like compound interest and have a great impact.

Do Your Soft Skills Need Improvement?

Click to start video at this point—A number of years ago it was considered a bad thing to talk about soft skills because there were no hard dollars associated with it. Lori observes that today you see people so focused on a process that they don’t have communication skills. They don’t show enthusiasm and they don’t make eye contact. Lori recently read an article about the lack of eye contact being made now compared to a couple of years ago and how it negatively effects our ability to build trust, which has a huge impact on revenue growth and building pipelines.

While Lori sees the value in a process and metrics, she also sees issues that have developed around some very basic things, what we say to others and how we say it, and the great need for these things to be addressed.

Filter Through the Noise and Stay Focused

Click to start video at this point—This is something Lori herself asks others in leadership roles in hopes of gaining a new tip as well. Just like anything there is an art and science to it and you have to find a system that works for you. Lori likes to start her week by seeing what her goals are from a revenue and activity standpoint and she ends her week the same way.

A salesperson should be able to look back on their week and answer what they did to contribute to revenue for the company, or at least what activities they performed to justify their five days of work. If they can’t answer this then changes need to be made. Work toward remaining focused and doing things in chunks of time instead of losing time stopping to research calls and emails which is extremely wasteful and contributes to loss of focus.

Are You Tenacious About Sales Follow Up?

Click to start video at this point—Lori regularly encounters issues with sales follow up. It’s so easy for your mind to trick you into thinking that when you don’t hear back from someone they must not be interested, but if you have something of value that you really feel is beneficial and you feel a company is a good fit for the solution then it’s up to you to continue trying to contact them until they tell you directly that they’re not interested.

I shared my thoughts with Lori on a “legislative branch” being established for a period of time to monitor leads, so that if there has been agreement between marketing and sales on a lead definition, and leads aren't being followed up, there is a responsible party in place to look for the reason.

Lori agreed that if marketing does have a process and they feel they’ve qualified a lead through that process, but sales doesn’t follow up, then yes, someone else should look at it and see what the issue is.

I also asked Lori about the challenges around the lack of insight from salespeople into their sales activity and the sales process. Lori sees this also as an ongoing issue that happens every day in sales. She regularly sees leads being hidden until a rep knows there is a solid opportunity. The challenge this presents is the ability to justify investing in an expensive comprehensive CRM tool that has been customized, when in fact it’s not reflecting the true data.

You can connect with Lori and learn more about Score More Sales via the following resources:

Lori's Website: www.scoremoresales.com

Twitter: @scoremoresales

The next PowerViews will be with Peter Bourke of The Complex Sale. Stay Tuned.

By Dan McDade