A Day in the Life of a Successful Salesperson

Author: QuickDesk Academy Team | Reading time: 4 minutes

Published date: 4th January 2022, 17.54 (MYT)

Here’s the deal: to be a successful salesperson, like Dale Carnegie, you need to understand the routine of a salesperson.

So, how do you become a successful salesperson? 

Let’s start by thinking about the day of a salesperson:

1. Wake Up
2. Check Email and Social Media
3. Task Management
4. Morning Scrum/Briefing
5. Prospecting
6. Answering Queries and Prepare Proposal
7. Meeting with Clients
8. Sales Administration Tasks
9. Prepare Task for the Next Day

1. Wake Up Early!

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” – Benjamin Franklin.

Multiple studies have shown that early risers are often more proactive and have higher productivity and happiness. As a salesperson, having a morning routine and planning your day is essential. This is to declutter all unnecessary things that will drive you away from your goals.

2. Check Email and Social Media

The next step is to surf the internet.

1. Search for profiles of your potential prospects on the internet;
2. Check your email inbox for replies or follow-ups;
3. Check your social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.);
4.  Look at your blog posts from the previous week and think about the things you can improve on from your social media and email campaigns.

Increasing your awareness of any updates or changes on your clients or potential prospects are beneficial. Every change is an opportunity to take advantage of them and propose your product’s unique selling point!

3. Task Management

Task management is a crucial component of sales success. It helps you stay organized, make sure that everything that needs to be done gets done, and keeps track of your progress. 

There are many different ways to manage tasks:

1. Scheduling meetings with clients or partners
2. Enforcing follow-ups with clients after they sign on the dotted line; can also be done via email or text message if necessary. 
3. Internal meeting with your team to ensure all tasks are on track!

4. Morning Scrum/Briefing

Use these meetings or briefings to plan your day, discuss tasks to complete, and any other issues to solve. These steps will ascertain where everyone’s focus needs to be during the day. Morning scrums also let everyone know who is in charge of what, making coordination much easier.

5. Prospecting

Prospecting is essential to any successful salesperson. 

There are many ways to prospect; cold calls are the most common method. Outbound or cold calling is essential to prospecting because it gives your business credibility. 

Unfortunately, only 1% of cold calls lead to appointments. Well, the truth is prospecting can be done in many ways, and you should use the best method for you. 

What methods can be used to prospect?

1. Qualifying and scoring lead through follow-ups.
2. Social media (e.g., LinkedIn)
3. Personalized email
4. Phone calls (inbound or outbound)

These methods are all great ways to prospect, but they only sometimes result in new clients or customers. If you’re going out of your way to find prospects but have yet to connect with them (for example: if someone has yet to respond), it might be time for some cold calling!

6. Answering Queries and Preparing Proposals

 
          1.  Ask good sales questions
 

Clients often ask sales questions about their needs (e.g., I need the new iPhone 15) during conversations with potential buyers. 

The right way of asking such queries is by asking open-ended questions rather than general ones like “What is an ideal laptop for you?”. This will give more insight into their wants while allowing them to tell and show!

A good sales question also requires you to have knowledge of your own product and competitors. Let’s move on to the next point!

 
        2. Product knowledge: your features and benefits versus your competitors’
 

A salesperson needs to have product knowledge. Researching about your own company and attending the onboarding session will do the trick! However, this alone will not suffice.

If so, then how?

Then you can consult with the existing colleagues, team, or manager! The knowledge they have can answer your inquiries on the spot about the products or services being sold by your company.

Product knowledge needs to be improved; you will also need to assess your competitors. What differentiates your product from your competitors? What is your product’s Unique Selling Point (USP)? 

 
        3. Client Engagement Automation
 
According to research, higher engagement with clients leads to higher customer loyalty. Client engagement automation can be in the form of:

1. AI Chatbot
2. Automated email campaigns (e.g., welcome emails, birthday wishes emails, etc.)

Tools like these are super helpful to increase efficiency to turn your audience into clients!
 
Related: How to Conduct an Effective Sales Training?

Recommended Resource: Free Sales Training Template

No matter how you train your salespeople, use this free sales training template to track all your goals and progress. Download here for free today!

7. Meeting with Clients

One of the best ways to get your foot in the door is by meeting with potential clients in person. You can do this over the phone or meet them in person if they are within driving distance. 

Suppose you live far away from their location and want to meet them in person. In that case, it’s best to book an appointment before sending emails or texts asking for time slots/dates/etc. This way, when someone says yes and then cancels on their end (which happens all too often), there’s no confusion about why things didn’t work out between the parties involved!

You can learn these competency skills by taking courses or training courses that teach you how to sell or provide services and make your sales team an expert! QuickDesk Academy offers hands-on, personalized learning and in-house coaching too! An all-in-one course for your employees, and it’s Malaysia HRDF Claimable and SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) Claimable!

8. Sales Administration Tasks

Administrative tasks are also essential for a salesperson. It enables the salesperson to keep track of their leads for follow-ups and organize all meetings. 

Here are the 5 main administrative tasks of a salesperson throughout their day:

1. Creating and documenting sales reports, either weekly or monthly sales reports
2. Utilizing and updating CRM
3. Responding to emails
4. Prepare proposals, contacts, or invoices
5. Schedule meetings

Need to keep track of your leads? QuickDesk provides free CRM automation software that declutters your manual administrative tasks and boosts your sales experience. Let us understand your pain point and get your free consultation today!

9. Prepare Task for the Next Day

At the end of the day, a salesperson should plan how to reach the sales goals.

For example, you need to prepare for the next cold call. Don’t know where to start? You may begin with this question format 5W1H:

1. Why are today’s leads lower than the previous week? 
2. Who’s the lead you’re calling to?
3. When are you planning to call
4. Where are you planning to meet them?
5. What is their position in the company, and what is the industry that they’re in?
6. How will you achieve your goals this week? (e.g., 100 cold calls per day)

Consult with us today!

Sales teams that want to make sales require the appropriate training regardless of the industry or company size. To win, your sales team must be equipped with knowledge and skills.

Get started with training and empowering your sales team today!