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Know Your Numbers
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Grant W Davis |
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The Numbers |
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You have to know your numbers |
| First embrace the fact that not everything works out. You won’t sell everything every time. In fact most of the time you wont sell your product or service. The exceptions are when you find yourself with a small monopoly, an edge over your competitors that matters to your clients. But they are few, and far between, but they do happen so watch for them. |
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| Here is an example of why numbers matter. And yes even I forget to pay..........attention. |
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Last year we set out on a telemarketing program. We hired a great young lady who knew how to use a phone to generate leads. We pointed her at the list, and showed her how to use our Contact Relationship Management (CRM) program and away we went. |
| Where we missed our target with our telemarketing program is we skipped from step one the list of names to step 3 initial interviews. We skipped the filtering out of the 720 names to get to the few that are real current prospects. We missed our filter step, from suspects to current or future prospects. (I’ll cover filtering in the Y of successful selling chapter). |
We Missed our filter step, from suspects to current or future prospects. |
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We took the leads she created and tried to begin the initial interview process. It is actually pretty funny as I know this simple truth so well I actually started to laugh when I realized what we had done. We tried to sell to suspects, instead of current prospects. This is one of the top ten errors failing sales professionals make. Usually a failing sales professional is so desperate to talk to anyone they don’t consider if they have a prospect, or a suspect, they are just happy to have anyone to talk with at all. Numbers matter. Poor closing ratio usually has more to do with trying to sell to suspects rather than poor selling skills. Although not filtering suspects is a poor salesmanship skill. So using the numbers from my example, we started trying to sell the 720 leads, before they had been boiled down to the 72. The numbers would have saved us. Like I said you and I are more alike than we are different. The techniques and ideas I am sharing with you are what I have found to work. Even knowing what works doesn’t always mean you use it. We have all heard the mantra “it worked so well I stopped using it” |
| Basic numbers you need to have. |
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| Here is why these numbers are important. In general numbers create a pattern, the more numbers we have overtime the more accurately we can improve our results. In fact numbers are very powerful. They are so honest and powerful I believe that is why so few sales professionals keep track. I assume that if you are reading this your financial life depends on selling your product, or service? If so don’t skip the numbers just because they seem boring, or basic. Make it a habit to keep track. |
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When I am working with sales people I start with number 11. And work my way back down the list. Most can answer number 11. Although some can’t which is amazing to me. But most seem to make it from 11 up to 7, or 6. No one I haven’t worked seems to be able to get to 1 Here is an example of how these numbers can help. Let’s assume you are making 10 proposals a week, but only selling 1 or 2 of them. There are two things I would immediately think. 1. You are trying to sell suspects, or future prospects, not current prospects. And or 2. You aren’t beginning your closing during fact finding. Most of the time if you are selling to future prospects, and suspects instead of current prospects it is because you don’t have enough current prospects. So we would work on two things. 1. Filtering to make sure you are working with current prospects. And 2. We would work on making sure you have enough current prospects in the pipe line |
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If neither of these two actions helped then I would move onto looking at your fact finding, closing skills. |
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Then finally we would take a look at your conversion system. A Conversion System is how you get the signatures, down payments or other items that convert a prospect to client status. Notice I don’t call this how you “close” your sale. You close your sale during fact finding. I call this final step the conversion process, not the closing process.
Believe it or not all things considered this is the order I have found that most things go wrong. I know most common thinking is that if you have 10 presentations and make only 1 or 2 sales you need to work on your presentation and closing skills. Sometimes that is true but I have found that most of the time in the real world something is going wrong earlier in the process. It is really funny that most of us don’t even think about this process enough to have it written down anywhere, let alone take 10 minutes a week to check our numbers. |
| Not using a script is much like having the combination to a lock, but not having the order in which the numbers need to be entered. You know your product, like you know the combination numbers. You can get lucky and put them in correctly from time to time, but if you practiced the correct order you would open the lock every time, instead of some of the time.
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Grant W Davis |
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