On the farm you can get in a bind – you haven’t moved the produce you have on hand, and so you put off harvesting for a day.
With things like okra and zucchini, you can do that for a day at most. Any longer and those #1’s (top quality, highest price) have become #2’s, #2’s have become utility (pretty much useless), and utility has become inedible.
Stuff rots in the field.
This happens in sales also, especially when it’s the business owner or professionals like attorneys that are servicing clients as well as converting new ones.
They can unconsciously sabotage new sales because of the stress coming from existing clientele.
Earlier this week, I was with a client that showed a big drop off in new retainers from the previous month.
There was no drop in leads, actually an increase.
Intake set up the same number of initial consultations.
The same attorneys were doing the consults…
What had changed?
Something seemingly completely unrelated to sales…
One of the associates had left.
So now the attorneys in charge of consults were having to take over her cases.
As we dug into it, we uncovered some of the driving beliefs.
The biggest was that existing clients were more important than potential clients… And that’s not necessarily untrue.
But that meant when their preparation for a hearing was interrupted by a consultation, they weren’t present with the PNC (potential new client).
Their mind was on their caseload – meeting hours, moving cases forward.
They were walking into consults already frustrated from being interrupted
Big shocker that conversions were down.
We could’ve tried to shift the belief of PNC importance, telling them they have to prioritize PNCs just like existing clients. But that is far easier to say than do.
I know there are plenty of gurus out there that would be happy to provide a “Sales Mindset Shift Experiential Masterclass Power Development Training” or the like.
But the easier thing is to look at the environment.
In this case, we’re changing the scheduling so they are taking set turns when they’re responsible for PNC consultations, and can be focused solely on them.
We didn’t need to shift any belief. They understood the PNCs were important. They understood when they weren’t present those opportunities were being wasted – like produce just rotting in the field.
We just needed to acknowledge their frustration and give them the space and structure so they could focus on the abilities we knew they already had.
