Missing Video Piece Of Your Productivity Puzzle
The French. What are they good for?
Well, as Englishman writing in the week of Trafalgar Day, the natural answer is, practically 'nothing'.
Yet I lament to report they outshine those across the northern side of La Manche in one key aspect.
Productivity.
A sample of latest stats is alarming.
Britain's productivity lags behind. Overall, taking as baseline the 2008 GFC, it is alone a full 24pc lower today than if it'd kept to trend.
Even falling farther behind. For the current set of figures measured by gross domestic product per hour worked, show it was 0.1pc lower in April to June 2024 than the year before.
France’s productivity by the same measure sits at $93. 16pc higher than the UK $80. Brits work around 3pc longer hours. Yet Frenchies working less, produce more.
Everyone wants higher productivity. Sales being no different.
Think about what productivity measures. The amount of output per unit of input. Can you get more from what you're doing?
In Sales terms, these parameters are neglected at your peril. Can you swell results of a period, a patch, a pitch? Gain more orders from fewer prospects? Higher margin from the orders taken?
In trad terms, getting more out of a day is never about solely making more dials. It's also about improving the hit rate of the calls you make.
There was once a simple visual funnel equation. Tip more into the mouth, close more in the spout.
My early career driving force focused on sharpening my close rate. The standard, I was told, for a solution salesperson hitting their number was typically winning 1 in 3 deals they elect to pursue. I fondly remember the year I soon smashed 1:1.7. When later starting my own business at the dawn of the Millennium (a then leading edge sales force knowledge management SaaS proposition) I maintained better than signing-up one-in-two.
Better profiling, better targeting, better qualifying. Better pitching, better objection handling, better closing. Better timings, better process, better flow.
That gallic sixteen percent represents quite the uplift. Other countries, loftier still. It's almost like gaining an extra selling day, every single week. Or an equally eye-popping two whole months extra a year.
What could you do with that?
How on earth can you release such fresh time?
And if selling from one of the more fecund territories, how do you stay ahead of the game?
One significant source, is video calling.
As one recent headline surmised; chronic under-investment has led to productivity slowdown in the UK. What are you investing in your video sales call approach?
Cultivated correctly, you can both work a greater number of quality deals, and raise the value you win.
Are you consciously matching the medium to the message?
Tacitly knowing when to video or not (which can actually mean you do less videoing overall)?
Understand why your prospects will look forward to video calls with you more than with your competition?
Refining what makes your video meetings distinctive?
Mapping optimum videoing onto your Sales process?
Ooh la la. Are you on this path?