Ben Wright argues that chasing perfection in sales hampers growth. Instead, focus on precision: respond to leads within two business hours, speed up site visits by scheduling shorter dedicated ones, and conduct efficient inspections that capture essential data without losing customer trust through over-detailed tools.
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In this episode, we are going to really unpack why perfection won't ever grow your sales, but 3 ways that precision will. Welcome to Sales Growth Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction and industry sales and business leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last 20 years. So today we're going to be unpacking what the difference is between precision and perfection. And then we're going to pick 3 areas where I'd suggest you as a business can hone in on to be more precise and grow your sales. This episode all kicked off from a quote from a recent customer of mine and Natalix, right in Natalix here, went something like, I learned that in your sessions, I can be more precise. And it's empowering. Quite a different quote when I first heard this from one of my customers, and I asked him to unpack it. He's an individual salesperson based out of Victoria, smart guy, has been in sales for a long time, but had been struggling with his numbers. However, post our sessions, his numbers really started to pick up. So it was interesting from a direct salesperson rather than a leader. And when I asked this participant, this student in our courses, what he meant by being precise, what he says was that in the past I tried to get everything to be perfect. I wanted everything to fit into a nice box tied up in a bow, and I spent so much time on making things perfect, but I forgot that what was really important was to be precise without aiming for perfection. And I said, okay, that makes sense. He also then went on to say, I was also finding that in some areas I was too sloppy, I was too slack, I didn't have a process, so I needed to be a little bit more precise rather than chase perfection to get deals done and win programs. And win projects. So this was really interesting for me because it crossed between both not having enough process and how being precise could help with that, but also how chasing perfection was slowing down getting business in the door. So that one landed with me and, and as such, we're doing a podcast today on that. So for me, the way here to define the difference between precision and perfection is that having a good commercial process, a good commercial outcome for our customers is often far more impactful than going to perfection. So perfection can certainly slow down deals, but then also on the flip side, if we don't have enough precision in our sales process, we can be left short because we're not consistently applying our craft with customers. I.e., we're not consistently creating value for them, but at the same time, we're not consistently giving ourselves an approach that we're confident in, can go out to customers with a smiley face, right? Run on autopilot and actually listen to what they're saying rather than needing to fumble through how we're going to get the information collected or the quote information, right? And I had this example today. I had a quote come in for window cleaning. The guy was lovely. He asked me all the right questions. He had quite a good sales process, but his quote template, so his iPad, it needed to be so precise that he took forever to get around and quote the house. And in the end, he ended up saying to me, look, I'll just go around and complete the rest of it myself. Now, for me, he lost all momentum with me because when I was standing with him, he had me as a captive audience. He could talk to me about what he did. He could tell me what he was going to move through. But his software was so perfect or demanded perfection that he wasn't actually able to get around and get the quote happening quickly. On the flip side, someone who quoted me last week for the windows actually just had the old notebook and pen. He was able to move really quickly around the site with me, but instead of focusing on updating the tech, he was actually able to just write down the numbers, do your, you know, your gray lead pencil on the book, and then talk to me about what he did. So he's actually going to get the business for the window cleaning, right? It'll have all been decided. By the time when this goes live. But I think that's a really nice example around where perfection got in the way and precision really could have actually saved the day or won the day in this instance. So if I'm sitting here now and I'm in a trade sales business, which I have been for much of my career, and I certainly work with many leaders who are in the trade industries, I'd be encouraging you to think of some areas that you can be precise on. And I want you to think of it as coming either from a way where you don't have a process and you need to be more precise, or perhaps where you're aiming for perfection and things are taking too long. So your speed to market is too long, i.e., we're too slow, and customers aren't necessarily waiting for us to then make their decisions on who they're going to use. So first thing I'd really encourage you to look at from a precision point of view is to find a way that you can get to your leads within 2 hours of them coming in. And more importantly, I should say within 2 business hours, right? So when your lead comes in, you're able to bang, get out to that straight away. And the way I'd encourage you to be precise is do you have a system that collects those leads? And spits them out to your phone, right? Your emails or your text messages so you can get onto them straight away. But the same in reverse, that you don't rely on perfection in having to capture every single detail from customers or do every single piece of research before you call them. But you're able to then say, right, lead comes in, I need to call them. And we have some standard questions set to ask them. So that's the first area. The second area is I'd really encourage you to have a look at speed to site visit. So how you're able to get out to sites quickly without needing long lead times. This may mean that you run slightly shorter site visits. This may mean that you have dedicated times in your calendar to be able to get to site visits. This may mean that you prioritize local quotes versus those who are a little bit further away from you. But the aim here is that you can get to more quotes more quickly because time is of the essence when we're contacting our customers. All right, and the last one here that I'd really encourage you to think about is your site inspection process. So making sure that you're precise in that you are collecting the right data but it's not so perfect that you need to spend your time on site with your head buried in your iPad or your head buried in your quoting tool. We need to be able to collect the information that we want, but still have a really engaging conversation with our customers so that we can grow some sense of trust and really build up on that phrase around people buying from those they know, like, or trust. So they'd be the 3 areas I'd be focusing on, precision over perfection, with some honorable mentions to your quote template, right? Making sure your quote template is fast enough for you to fill out, but also provides all the detail that you need for customers. Right. And the second honorable mention here would be around understanding what your customers actually want. So making sure you can get really clear on what's going to add value to them without having to go through every single detail. Right. But at least asking those main questions so you're clear. Now, this is a really interesting episode because precision can come from both ways. It can come from not being precise enough. Right. And it can also come from being too precise. So there is a real nice sweet spot here in in terms of precision over perfection or precision over having no process at all. So recommendation I've got from today, and I hope as we're winding up this podcast that you start to think about 3 areas that you can be precise on. Speed from lead generation to contact, speed from contact to getting out to site, and then the quality of your site inspection process, right? Strong enough that you're collecting all the information, but not too robust that you're not spending enough time talking to the customer. Now my experience with many sales professionals is that they spend so many hours quoting and end up with really low close rates. It's frustrating. Often people won't change anything. They'll just continue to get the same results over and over again. And they can certainly be very painful, if not stressful. What I've done for podcast listeners is I've set up a free quote audit that's going to help you pinpoint exactly why you're not winning more jobs and what you need to do to really quickly increase those close rates. It's free. You can book in by going to the free quote audit link in the show notes. It's really easy. It's right up near the top of the show link. And if it's something that you think will interest you to help you build more momentum in your sales growth, then I'd really encourage you to go and do it. That's it for today. Thank you very much for listening. Look forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now.
