I’ve started a new sales project, and I need some quick wins to show my clients that they made the right decision.

If you’ve ever started a new sales job, or been given a new territory, you will recognize this scenario. I’m going to be writing about how I tackle this situation, applying my sales strategies, and letting you know how they work out (or don’t).

A common sales scenario

The setup for this project is a classic. A salesperson just left. They had worked on a territory for over a year, but they did not meet the c-suite’s expectations for closed sales. The salesperson did not keep good records of their sales activities in the company CRM. So now as the person picking up this territory, and trying to make it work, I am short on intel.

Quick wins

I reckon about 90 days is my magic number to make a sale. Once that is in the bag then the initial pressure will be off and there will be time to construct a more scalable, long-term sales machine. Patience is not likely to be in big supply.

What’s in the haystack?

What am I looking for first? I’m looking for clues of any accounts where this salesperson made progress. Which accounts did he talk to? Which conversations went anywhere? What meetings were held? Any proposals sent? Could there be any “low hanging fruit” here–where I can swoop in for a quick close?

This salesperson did leave a few clues behind. Very little documented in the CRM, but after ferreting around for a few hours I have found a few things to go on. Some emails were sent. Some small spreadsheets were shared. Everything of course is in an awkward format. It needs processing…but that’s the game at this stage.

Getting going

Once I’ve assembled the pile of emails and some spreadsheets, I need to get this stuff organized in the CRM, so I at least I can track my activities. No doubt there’s going to be a bunch of data missing that will need to be added to each account and contact.

Looking for the “low hanging fruit” is only going to be part one of my approach to getting quick wins in this territory. If you’ve read my stuff before, you’ll know that part two is going to be looking for connections that can get me into appropriate accounts, along with common backgrounds.

There’s a bunch of data aggregation and appending to be done here. The trick is going to be having enough scale to get results but not so much that it takes too long to get that first win. I’ll be writing about the details of this as I go along. If you’ve ever taken over a territory (or started in a “green field”) you’ve faced this situation before. If you’re up for it, let me know how you approached it.

Summary

• When you take over a new territory you generally need a quick win or two to keep the bosses happy. 90-days seems like a common timeline before dissatisfaction starts to creep in.
• You might as well expect the “previous tenant” to have left behind a mess as far as notes go. Be pleasantly surprised if you get more than “not much”.
• Generally, you need to sift through a bunch of “dusty old files” to find a few clues that might lead to a quick sale.
• Once you’ve satisfied the need for the first sale or two, it’s time to start thinking about how you can scale your sales.