It’s the Numbers, Baby

Problem: A few months ago, one of our clients complained that they were not achieving their quarterly sales goals. They had lots of proposals on the street, and sales forecasts seemed to be bloated with deals that showed up month after month, but never seemed to close.

Analysis: In the case of this sales team, the main problem was that they had developed a serious case of cold calling cowardice. The symptoms of this deadly affliction are fear of rejection, need for approval, failure to prioritize, lack of concrete goals, procrastination, and spending too much time on unimportant activities. In short, they found every excuse not to prospect. They had lost sight of the goal which was to focus on the prospecting activity and forget the results. And they had developed a severe reluctance to hearing “no” from a prospect.

Prescription: We had to break it down to the basics for them. We looked at what the monthly sales goal was, determined what an average sale was, and concluded that they closed about 10% of the people they were able to get an initial appointment with. Another important number was the number of calls they had to make in order to get that first appointment. With this information, we determined that they each needed to make about 18 cold calls (defined as any attempt you make to speak with someone who might be able to buy your product or service) per day…every day. And based on the fact that at least half the attempts resulted in a “NOH” (no one home), these 18 attempts typically could be done in less than 90 minutes a day. We also discovered that based on commission structures and closure rates, every attempt to speak to a prospect was worth about $27.50 to the salesperson. We decided that each salesperson would devote one uninterrupted hour and a half per day, in the morning, to this effort. When they had made their 18 attempts, they could reward themselves with a Starbucks or something like that. The key to success was to understand that every prospecting call paid dividends and that every “rejection” they received was a success because it got them closer to a sale. Pretty basic stuff, but it works.

Oh yeah. Their sales increased by 34% the next quarter and they all cashed bigger commission checks!