You continue to make great points. My old boss used to say, “Don’t confuse activity with productivity.”

In terms of checklists I agree with them wholeheartedly as long as they are put in the right hands and the hands that they are put in, are coached to use them in the right manner. The danger is that people use checklists as a way of filling up their days with activities that ultimately go no where near helping them achieve their objectives. A salesperson needs to be coached that a checklist is a way of structuring their path towards their objectives and that that path has to be flexible: ultimately because we sell to people it is possible to go through a whole career where no two sales are the same.

The other point which you mention, qualification, the company I work for and I believe heavily in (hence why we have developed SymVolli). All too enough people will chase sales that they really shouldn’t go anywhere. The qualification of the sale should coach and guide the salesperson as to what is the next step, from their checklist, to undertake.

The danger with any checklist is that in the wrong hands it can be treated very linearly: the salesperson can go from step one to step two, three, four marking them as being completed yet potentially making little headway or missing vital detail which could aid them in reaching their objective. I believe that with checklists the key is in the coaching.

Just plain old laziness and the lack of planning and prep leads to the majority of sales people just “winging it”

A check list is plan old common sense but as we all know…common sense is not common!

Sean

How could someone not use something as non-threatening and simple as a checklist?

I love the checkist concept -thanks for the checklist download. I visited that first thing and will use it on my current opportunities. That is something I’ve haven’t been doing to that level of detail.

I love the checklist concept in every aspect of life – can’t do a thing without them it seems! One I’ve used over and over is JustSell’s Sales Management Checklist (http://www.justsell.com/salestools/salesmanagementchecklist.aspx). I had almost forgotten about it until you reminded me of checklists. It often came in handy. I need to put more discipline around using one like yours for my sales role.

Thanks for reminding us of such a basic yet important concept that, like surgeons and pilots, we’ve never gotten too experienced to need.

Jill