The Myth of Sales Best Practices.

I recall a profound conversation with a friend named Alejandro, who is also a keen business advisor. He has built companies, bought and sold companies, failed at a few start-ups, then started all over again. He considers himself a business alchemist.

Alchemy.

That’s a great word to describe the magic that often goes into any successful enterprise, a business launch, a sales campaign, prospecting or a new product or service roll-out.

Heck, alchemy can even describe the process necessary to craft sales messages, be it a voicemail for outbound prospecting or a series of emails with a specific call to action.

I came to him struggling over where to make a strategic business investment to monetize my book, "The Anxious Salesman." It wasn’t even a strategic investment, really. It was about where to spend money on outsourcing.

I was looking for the best ROI: Should I spend money on YouTube ads, pay per click, building authority on LinkedIn, an email campaign with a strong lead magnet? How much should I do myself? How much should I outsource, and to whom?

I wanted certainty.

The myth of the best practice is that there's one best way when in fact there are many good ways to accomplish the same goal. If there are many good ways, that means there is no single best way. And if there is a single best way, often, the only way to find it is through experimentation.

Paradoxically, experimentation means we don’t have a best solution, only good ones we are willing to try in pursuit of our goals.

Sales people often ask me, “How often should I follow up?” They're looking for a certainty that doesn’t exist. Of course, follow-up matters; it's a key to sales success. And in that sense, I suppose we can call it a best practice.

But saying that follow-up is a best practice doesn’t help when we are asking questions about how often, at what interval, with what message, and when to stop.

Think about how many variables there are in just that one question, “How often should I follow up?” Is it a warm prospect, a cold one, a current customer? Where are you in the sales process? What purpose is follow-up? What medium? What is the message?

My answer to all of those questions is, experiment. Sorry. There's no certainty in that. But I do have some guidelines.

1. Be persistent. Be brief. Be courteous. Have a clear purpose or call to action.

2. And if it’s a strong prospect, never, ever, ever stop until you hear the definitive no.

3. There, that’s the best practice, if you must have one; don’t stop.

👉 Feel free to book some calendar time with me here if you want to talk about how you can experiment your way to a best practice.

To the Championship Coach inside all of us!

Sheldon