Get Out of the Numbers Game


Traditional selling methods teach you that sales is a numbers game. Take its 80/20 rule that proclaims 80 percent of your sales come from just 20 percent of your customers. In other words, 80 percent of your customers give you only 20 percent of your business. Figuring out which customers fall into the 20 percent category can waste a lot of time.

Customers have their 80/20 rule, too. Only one out of every five salespeople who contact them has something of interest. Now you know why when you call they might seem skeptical or reluctant to meet. The numbers are against you. Therefore, you overcompensate by making more sales calls.

Yet, when you increase the quantity of your sales calls, often the quality suffers. You become less choosy about whom you contact. You figure that with enough sales calls, you are bound to stumble upon opportunities. It becomes easy to take paths of least resistance and pursue sales opportunities that show minimal interest.

Granted, even with 80 percent of customers being nonproductive, more sales calls mean more orders. "Make more sales calls" becomes your (or your sales manager's) battle cry. Let the call reports fly. A sales manager once captured the essence of this sales strategy when he said, "Even a blind squirrel gathers some nuts." Twenty years later, no one is sure if he was commending tenacity, criticizing inefficiency, or just making an astute observation.

Although 80/20 makes sense from a volume standpoint, it does not from a productivity standpoint. Making hit-or-miss sales calls does not place a premium on efficiency. You want to lower the number of sales calls it takes to get an order, not raise it. Therefore, the key is to increase the quality of your sales calls, as well as the quantity.

However, two fundamental questions loom:

  1. How do you apply MeasureMax to positive customers who are comfortable with your existing sales approach?

  2. How do you apply MeasureMax to neutral or negative prospects who are accustomed to product pitches on the first sales call? The answers lie in how much selling effort you invest in account management and market development.




The Science of Sales Success(c) A Proven System for High Profit, Repeatable Results
The Science of Sales Success: A Proven System for High-Profit, Repeatable Results
ISBN: 0814415997
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 170
Authors: Josh Costell

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