The 21 Day Selling Skills Challenge

Better than a New Year’s resolution and much better than looking back at the highs and lows of 2020

Bonus – For those that complete the challenge – read to the end.

If you read my articles or been through one of my training workshops, then you know I am not a fan of new year’s resolutions ( Be the Biggest Loser in your market ). Most are made while recovering from a hangover from the New Year’s Eve party. The reason I’m not a fan is that they don’t work. Forbes statistics point to roughly an 80% failure rate within the first 45 days. The number one reason given is will power to sustain the resolution. In addition, after making resolutions myself and watching many people make them, I am convinced the resolution (goal) setting process is the problem. We focus our attention on this massive life changing resolution (goal). Yet, we never figure out the small intermediate goals nor daily actions to get there.

That’s why I want you to make an easy first step by completing a “21 day selling skills challenge”. January actually has 20 working days. However, on January 1^st, instead of making groggy new year resolutions, which won’t make it to Valentine’s Day, you can plug in the “21 day selling skills challenge” into your Outlook calendar.

The guidelines are fairly easy:

Select a 15-minute block of time that will work for you each day.
- This is a great time management technique when dealing with something you tend to procrastinate on. Just about anyone can spare 15 minutes. If you want to schedule it for more than 15 minutes, great. Go for it. But, just be aware that if you are currently doing zero minutes per day, going to 30 or 60 can cause procrastination. Start with 15 and you can always increase it.

Now, schedule it on your Outlook as an appointment.
- This is critical to remembering. Also important, don’t hit dismiss on the reminder when it pops up every day, unless you actually did the time.
- If not familiar with setting appointments in Outlook,
  - Go to your Calendar
  - Click on “New Appointment”
  - Enter the name “21 Day Selling Challenge” in the Subject.
  - Click on the little circle “Recurrence”
  - Select the Start time, the Duration (15 minutes). Under recurrence pattern, select, “daily” and “Every Weekday”.
  - Then set the start date at Jan 1, the end date at Jan 31.
  - Click “Ok”, then “Save and Close”. The daily reminder is now set to prompt you every weekday for the 21 weekdays of January.

What to do in those 15 minutes! Here are some suggestions
- Go through your selling skills…. Connecting with Customers, asking good questions, presenting on your products, closing skills, following up. Which are your weakest and which are your strongest? Pick the most impactful area to improve and spend 15 minutes a day this month working on it.
- Go through your territory management skills…Segmenting Customers, Prospecting, Cold Calling, Time Management. Which are weaker areas for you? Which do you avoid, but need to improve or just do more of? Which are strength areas?
- Go back over your last year’s review or development plan if you have one. What do you need to work on, but “never seem to have enough time for”?
- These are all good places to start. Remember, it’s only 15 minutes. Keep it simple and quick.
  - For example, many salespeople struggle with prospecting or cold calling. You can take 15 minutes and decide to:
    - Make 3 outbound calls.
    - Research on social media and your internal information sources for the most likely prospects. Maybe they bought from you in the past but not currently buying. Click on the social media platform that your customers frequent. Look up associations they are in.
    - In 15 minutes, you can plug in an Outlook reminder with a name and phone number on it for later in the day. When the prompt reminder comes up, all you have to do is click on the phone number on the reminder.

Bonus – Extra Credit: Free Webinar in early Feb on sales productivity
- If you complete the daily challenge and
- Send me a daily email to let me know you completed the 15 minutes that day. It doesn’t have to be anything other than, “Hey Greg, got it done!”. I will not share any of your replies, names, etc. So, you are welcome to share as much as you like.
- If you join the challenge late, no problem, you just need to send me that daily email.
- For everyone who completes the challenge, I am going to hold a live webinar in early February. The topic will be on – Sales Productivity
  - Link to the daily email to send to me: Greg@GregMartinelli.net