In tough economic times, do you get lazy, or do you work on figuring out ways to beat the competition?
Now is the perfect time to improve your sales strategy.
You can do this by following two simple, yet extremely effective practices:
- set your goals
- focus on your numbers.
Set your Goals
If you are in sales, you may have a minimum quota to keep your job. You should have other sales goals beyond just staying employed. Do you want to win an award, or be the best in your company? Do you want to earn a specific amount of money? How successful do you want to be?
Setting your goal is imperative. If you don’t know what your sales goal is, then it’s pretty apparent why you’re not doing as well as you could be doing: you haven’t identified how well you could be doing!
No matter what your industry, the top salespeople in your field have identified their sales goals, and they have all written them down. That’s how they got to be the best. This is a universal habit among top performers. If you want to be a top performer, implement this habit right away.
How many sales do you want to make this week? This month? This year? Write it down, right now. Write out your goal in big block letters and post it somewhere that you can see it all the time.
Now you have a number to aim for. You know, every day, what you are trying to achieve. But how do you get there?
Focus on your Numbers
How many phone calls does it take you to make a sale? If you know that you have to pick up the phone, on average, 24.36 times to make one sale, then achieving your goal is a simple process of applying a formula.
There are two basic types of sales plans that you can start your day with.
‘I want three sales today, so I will make 75 calls,’ or,
‘I hope I can make some sales today.’
Which of these two strategies do you think would be more effective?
All sales comes from activity. For you, it might be phone calls, or face-to-face appointments, or mailings, or a combination of these. There are all sorts of activities you could be doing to prospect and follow up. How do you know which activities will result in the most sales?
Track your activity
Have a sheet of paper on your desk all day. Make tic marks to record how many times you pick up the phone, how many times you leave a message, have a conversation, set an appointment, and make a sale. Any activity that results in a sale, track this data for three months, and collect it all in an Excel spreadsheet.
You (or your company) may have an easy way to track this data already. For instance, if you use VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) for your phone calls, there is likely a spreadsheet already in existence that is tracking this data for you.
Many people find it easier to track their metrics by hand, because it gives you a tangible relationship to your activity. When you are holding your records in your hand, it’s not as easy to hide from a lazy day.
Use your numbers
Once you have some data to work with, decide the variables you want to measure against your sales. How many appointments does it take to make a sale? Is it more effective for you to measure appointments, or would it be better to divide the number of sales you made last week by the number of calls you made three weeks ago?
If you have a basic working knowledge of Excel, you can play around with your data to find some startling results. If you log your time, you can also capture this data and use it to great effect.
The best analyst of your activity is you. As you begin to track your data regularly, you will begin to notice firsthand what is effective in turning activity into sales. Your data will show you. Divide your weekly sales by your weekly activities, and you will have a formula that shows exactly how your activity translates into sales.
Apply your formula
Go back to the sales goal you set.
What is the activity it will take to achieve your goal? Based on your own past performance, you know exactly how to do it. Apply your formula, make the required number of calls, and set the right number of appointments, and your sales will come easy.
If you start working smarter instead of harder, your numbers will change over time. If your industry goes into a slump, or encounters regulation or damage outside of your control, the numbers used in the past may not be 100% accurate in the future.
But who do you think is going to be the more successful salesman?
The one applying a formula to achieve his goals, or the one who’s hoping that someone, someday, will eventually say, yes?
Which one are you?
