What if I told you bringing it back to the basics will get you to your sales goal?
It’s a numbers game! That’s what they tell you. It’s all about getting in front of as many people as possible!
Whether you are new in business or you’ve been here a while, you’ve heard all about numbers.
That’s exactly what fueled my early sales days of 100 phone calls, my days of 50-person cold calls, and the stacks of mailers.
I got up early and stayed out late! If you could work hard and make it, I was going to make it. I talked to people, visited people, sent postcards and mailers.
I was exhausted and about to give up. If it were all about numbers, I would have been rolling in the dough.
Guess what, all that effort and zero sales!
I was 45 days in, and all I had sold was a deal I had inherited from a sales rep who had quit. He left. I collected a signature and got numbers beside my name on the board.
Something was missing. I didn’t have a lot to go on. I hadn’t found many people to go back out and see out of those hundreds. They all seemed satisfied with their particular situations.
Then I realized. I had been calling on too many of the wrong people.
When I looked at the company’s current customers, that’s not exactly what I had targeted.
I was choosing any business that might need just a few copies daily. Their needs were few, and any equipment they had was sufficient.
Plus, the ones I was calling on weren’t the type of accounts or people I was most comfortable getting to know. I didn’t understand them or their businesses well enough to begin a conversation, much less a relationship.
I began to understand I needed to get picky and target a specific market.
That’s when I started making a list. The list gave me a place to start my weeks and days—the list comprised businesses in my territory with the highest needs.
Then, I chose to go where I was most comfortable first. I went to schools, local governments, churches, and nonprofits. Then after I had seen those, I started to branch out.
But, I focused my efforts and stuck to my plan. That was the first step I took that effectively established territories and made a career in sales work for me.
Each week for the month of July I’m sharing a challenge that will get you back to basics and get you started on the right track.
I’ll warn you it might seem a bit old school, but it works! It worked in 1993 and it will be just as effective now or next year!
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