How to Use Focus to Gain Sales Velocity

Published on April 23, 2019

Severe thunderstorms were forecast for the Denver area on Sunday evening, so I was relieved to be flying out in the afternoon. I thought I’d be in good shape with a scheduled departure at 1:40 p.m. So much for my assumptions. Five minutes before we pushed back from the gate, the wind started rocking the plane and the rain came down in buckets. More surprising, ice began building up on the plane. We had sleet and hail and ice, and now we had to wait to be de-iced in 70-degree weather.  Yes, I said de-ice in 70-degree weather!

As you can see from the photo, the pilot couldn’t go anywhere because his window was iced up. There was no way for him to see where he was going. This is how salespeople, entrepreneurs, and managers often go through their day—attempting their tasks without a clear focus.

We were three hours delayed on Sunday afternoon. How much time and velocity are you losing due to a lack of focus? 

 

Here are some places to apply focus to gain velocity and a clear path to your success:  

  1. Focus on the key areas where you are helping clients with solutions to their problems and consider who else has the same problems.
  2. Focus on key markets that seem to have a need for your value proposition.
  3. Focus on your strategy of penetrating accounts for more business by leveraging existing relationships and success.
  4. Focus on past relationships where people have gone on to new opportunities. Leverage those relationships and past successes to gain new referrals.
  5. Focus your research into the problems your prospects are trying to solve. 
  6. Focus on your mindset: You have something of value to offer the world. Confidence is critical to success. When in doubt, ground yourself in past successes to keep yourself moving forward confidently.
  7. Focus on having customer-centric conversations rather than self-focused conversations. Stop worrying about closing the deal. Find out the issues your clients are facing and help them with solutions. This focus will help you close more deals in less time.

It’s time to de-ice your vision to gain a clear focus on what you need to do to achieve your goals with velocity. Please comment below on the strategies you are using to maintain focus and gain velocity in your results.