 Problem: A few months ago, one of our clients complained that they were not achieving their quarterly sales goals. Many proposals were outstanding and sales forecasts seemed to be bloated with deals that showed up month after month, but never seemed to close. Diagnosis: 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. We looked at what the monthly sales goal was, determined what an average sale was, and concluded that they closed about 20% 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 a first appointment. With this information, we determined that they each needed to make about 9 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 9 attempts typically could be done in less than an hour 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 per day, in the morning, to this effort. When they had made their nine 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. Oh yeah. Their sales increased by 34% the next quarter and they all cashed more commission checks! Sign Up for the Monday Morning Sales Coach Here! Good
Selling!
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this email Published by Whetstone Group, 3934 Murphy Canyon Road, Suite B200, San Diego, CA. 92123 © Copyright 2005 |
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