What’s Your Fatted Half?

A couple of weeks ago I sent you the first of my Observed Truth of Sales. (The Rule of 95.)

I’ve collected these patterns (and quirks) of situational behavior of sellers and buyers over the course of a long successful sales career. They are not science. There’s been no rigorous quantitative or academic analysis of these observations. Which means they have as much validity as 95% of what passes for research and data into sales these days.

Today I’m sharing The Rule of The Fatted Half.

I suspect most of you have heard the sales adage that "50% of my pipeline is garbage. I just can’t tell which half."

The Rule of The Fatted Half is my corollary to that pearl of wisdom.

The Rule is: 50% of your sales efforts and selling hours spent on 100% of your sales opportunities are wasted.

What that means is that half of your sales interactions with a prospect do nothing to enable that buyer to make progress; to move closer to making their decision.

Your challenge is determining which half is the bloat. The excess. The time sink. The extraneous. The Fatted Half.

And cut them right out of your personal sales process.

Here’s my very simple and powerful technique to slaughter your Fatted Half.

Prior to every interaction with a buyer answer this question: what value will this sales touch bring to your buyer that will enable her/him to make progress toward making their decision?

It doesn’t matter how large or small your planned sales interaction will be (email, voice mail, phone call, video call, in-person meeting, text message, social touch).

You must be able to identify the specific value the buyer will receive from you that will move them forward. If you can’t, DON'T DO ANYTHING. Until you can.

This one question will force you to deliberately plan every sales interaction with conscious intent.

It will streamline and accelerate your sales. And increase your win rate.

What more could you ask for?

- Andy Paul