llen Iverson may not agree with this, but practice prevents poor performance. That’s why recording yourself selling your product or service to a prospect will help you identify any flaws in your pitch or sales process.

Once you are able to hear yourself over and over again, you’ll be able to refine your process until it works like a charm.

Once your sales script is refined, you can then train and hire other reps to use your approach. One of the biggest mistakes managers and business owners make is using inadequate sales scripts and processes. Most business owners and manager don’t actively sell their own products and services IF they have a sales team. This causes a domino effect of declining sales performance over time.

What used to work 10,5, or even 2 years ago, may not be the right approach now. The only way to find out what works best is by recording your best sales presentations and having your team test them out over an extended period. You need to refine your sales process continually because technology causes consumer behavior to change quickly.

What used to be perfectly acceptable even a few years ago, may no longer work. Test, test and test some more so that you can find the best sales approach for your company and market in an ever-changing marketplace.

One important example we applied in a few of our companies is, making our first sales calls to a prospect an appointment generation call. 5 years ago, we would use the first to “go for the sale”, but times have changed. Prospects have less time to talk on the phone, so you need to respect their time. In some markets, it might be best not to call first at all, but schedule all calls electronically so that you can have the prospects full attention. Test some new sales and marketing approaches this year and you will be surprised how effective a new approach may be.