The one thing you never learned about effective time management is the most important of all the steps. Let me review quickly the five steps of time management and in the process I will explain in detail this most important, but never taught, step.
Step #1: Plan the time to Plan. If you do not make a conscious effect to plan every single day, then you will eventually discontinue planning altogether. Find a place free from distractions, typically the same place every day. Do your planning the same time or the same time period every day. It generally works better, for example, if you plan for the next day at the end of the current business day, regardless of what time that might be, or plan in the morning as soon as you arrive at work, regardless of what time that might be. Personally, I plan my day the night before, prior to going to bed. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, before I retire I plan for the next day.
Step #2: Make a list of all the things that need to be completed for that day, and all the things that you want to complete to stay ahead of the game. Don’t forget to make a list of those things that pertain to your personal goals. If you don’t plan your achievement steps to your goals, your goals will never be reached. Make sure to plan those things that are important to your own interests, hobbies, dreams, and also include family related items. I often refer to this step as a “brain dump”.
Step #3: Prioritize all of the items on your task list. Complete this activity in two distinct steps. First give each item an alpha ranking. For example “A” would be given to tasks that must be completed today or it will cost you business, embarrassment, and money. A “B” priority might cost you business, embarrassment or money if not completed. A “C” priority should be done, but if not, can be completed on another day. A “D” priority would be nice to complete, but it has no impact on your success and may more closely resemble a want versus a need. No harm done if it is not completed.
Next, determine which task is the most important “A” and give it a numerical classification beginning with the number “1”. List all of the “A” priorities in order of importance, A1, A2, A3, etc. When you have finished with the “A’s” move on to the “B’s” and “C’s”, etc. The most important “B” will have a numeric number following the least important “B”. When you have completed this phase of prioritizing, you can forget about the alpha designation and just follow the numeric priority. The alpha ranking followed by the numeric ranking makes it easier and more effective to prioritize your list of tasks.
Step # 4: Determine how much time you will spend on each activity on your task list. This is the step that was never taught. This is the one neglected aspect of time management that is so profound and yet so simple that virtually no one does it! There is a principle that states, “An activity will consume all the time we give it.” This is certainly true with sales people. When I first started to plan my days, I thought I was doing a great job by just identifying what needed to be done. In essence, I made a list and would then proceed to work first, on those things that I had the most interest in doing, or were the easiest. I soon learned that I needed to prioritize. I was completing tasks each day but often was not completing the most important tasks.
I was now completing the most important activities each day, but was not getting as much completed as I could. I found that I spent far more time on an activity than it really required. I was feeling a sense of accomplishment by getting the important things done, while at the same time I was wasting time by spending more time on an activity than it deserved. This principle is the number one time waster for sales people. Spending more time on an activity than it requires. The average sales person wastes on average four hours each day by doing unimportant activities and by spending more time to do a task than is needed. If you will take the time to pre-determine how much time you will spend working on the activities on your task list, I will guarantee that you will be at least two hour more productive each day.
Step #5: Move each activity on your task list to a time slot or a block of time. Once you have filled all the time slots with the activities on your task list, all you need to do is follow the time. You will know what to do when, and how much time to spend on the activity. Some activities may take more time than you estimated and some might take less. You will find yourself working much harder at your tasks in order to complete them in the allotted time. It might make sense to leave a couple of time slots open just in case you need more time. If you find that you don’t need the extra time, then fill the time slot with other tasks.
An example of the effectiveness of the principle of determining how much time we will allocate to specific tasks can be found in this real life experience. One Saturday I had planned to attend a BYU football game. The ticket was purchased and I was planning on leaving for the game about 10:30 am to catch the front of the wave of traffic heading to Provo from Salt Lake. I mentioned the game to my wife on Friday evening and told her of my plan to beat the traffic. She immediately became very upset and asked how I could feel good about going to a football game when I had more than a half dozen projects she had been pleading with me to complete for the past several weeks. She had officially shamed me into doing the jobs, but I still planned to go to the game.
I asked her to remind me what the jobs were and I promised that they would be completed before I went to the game. I made my list, they were all “A” priorities, and I then determined how much time each job would take, being very optimistic and planning to work my brains out. Knowing that I wanted to leave for the game at 10:30 am, I figured when I would need to start in order to complete all the household tasks. My optimistic estimate had me starting at 6:00 am and finishing by 10:30 am. I have to admit that I have never worked so hard and efficient at “honey-do” projects. Some of the jobs took a little longer than I had estimated and some took less time. I backed out of my driveway to go to the game at 10:40 am. As I drove to the game I pondered what I had accomplished. I had completed more work that morning than I had done in any four Saturdays combined!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sales – It is all about Activity, Time and Money
What I’m going to share with you is information that my clients happily pay thousands of dollars for, knowing that they will receive a several hundred percent increase in their income and upwards of a thousand percent return on their investment. I’m going to help you understand the relationship between activity, time and money and how the application of these principles can vastly increase your sales performance and income. This knowledge is not rocket science; in fact it is relatively simple, yet most sales people don’t get it and thus, don’t apply it. There are four distinct steps to this success formula.
Step Number One: Identify your sales process. By this I mean, define the things you do or steps you follow to make a sale. It is possible that you may never have thought about this. It might be that you just do a lot of “stuff” and at the conclusion of doing stuff you either complete a sale or you don’t. Think of those sales that went well. Think of the steps or activities you used to find that success. Think of what you need to do to close one typical average sale. Make a list of the steps from the beginning to the end of the sales process. Identify specifically those activities you typically follow to complete a sale. Now identify how many times you engage in each of those activities in order to close a typical sale.
Step Number Two: Determine how much time each of those activities takes on average. For example, an average cold call takes about three minutes (some may be longer and some shorter, but three minutes is average). A sales presentation typically takes thirty minutes and an average travel time from one appointment to the next is twenty minutes. Break down each activity and assign an amount of time. Next, multiply the number of times you conduct the activity (in the process of completing a typical average sale) by the amount of time it takes to complete the activity. For example, a sales presentation plus travel time may take one hour. Your sales process requires that you make four presentations in order to complete one sale. Therefore, your sales process requires four hours of presentations to make one typical average sale. It might be that you need to make twenty contacts in order to schedule one appointment. If a contact takes three minutes, then it would take three minutes multiplied by twenty contacts to schedule one appointment, or a total of sixty minutes. If it takes four appointments to make one sale, then you would need to invest four hours of prospecting time in order to complete one typical sale.
Complete this step of the process by calculating the amount of time required for each step of your sales process and then multiplying each step by the number of times required to make a sale. Add up all the time required for each of the steps and you now know how much time is required to complete an average sale. The next step is to determine how many hours you work at sales each day, each week and each month. Assuming that the typical sales person spends four hours each day working on sales activities and the rest of their time doing other things, a sales person would spend eighty-four hours each month making sales. If the sales process requires twelve hours of time, then a sales person could make seven sales per month.
Step Number Three: Calculate the dollar amount of the average sale. Dollar amounts might be all over the board. However, if that is the case, simply take the total dollars sold for the month and divide it by the number of sales made. Let’s make a few assumptions to better understand this step. The average sale is two thousand dollars. The average margin is thirty percent. The sales person is paid a commission of twenty percent of the margin. Do the math. The margin is six hundred dollars and the commission to the sales person is one hundred and twenty dollars. If it is possible for the sales person to make seven sales per month, then the total commissions are eight hundred and forty dollars for the month (ten dollars per hour worked).
Step Number Four: Look for areas of improvement. Evaluate your sales process, the amount of time spent on each step of the process and the amount of time spent working specifically on sales. Consider the value of the typical sale and the margins associated with that sale. What could you do better and what could you eliminate. What more could you do in your sales process to improve the overall result. Let me offer a few ideas to allow your thoughts to start to flow. Are there any steps of the process that could be streamlined? Are there any steps that could be added to your sales process? Can you reduce the amount of time spent on various steps of your sales process? Could you increase the number of hours that you spend each month specifically working your sales process? Is it possible to up sell, or increase the value of the overall sale? Are we selling based on price, thus reducing the amount of margin on the sale?
Let’s see the effect of improvement in some of these areas based on the example we used above. Because of improvements in the sales process, it now takes only ten hours of total time to complete a sale. You have become committed to sales and are now working eight hours a day at sales for a total of one hundred and sixty-eight hours per month. You are offering your customer more and doing a bit of “up-selling” and the average sale is now three thousand dollars instead of two thousand. You have learned how to sell value instead of price and the average margin has increased to thirty-two percent. Let’s calculate what effect these improvements will have on your commissions.
One hundred and sixty-eight hours in a month divided by ten hours to make a sale equals approximately seventeen sales per month instead of seven. The average sale of three thousand dollars at thirty two percent margin now generates nine hundred and sixty dollars margin dollars. The commission on the average sale has increased to one hundred and ninety-two dollars multiplied by seventeen sales will generate a monthly commission of three thousand two hundred and sixty-four dollars (almost nineteen dollars and fifty cents per hour worked).
When sales people understand the relationship between activity, time and money they can dramatically increase their sales and their income. By the way, if the sales person in the above example worked during his lunch hour, their income would increase by three hundred and eighty-four dollars. Time really is money! If anyone is interested in receiving a computerized copy of my program that will do all of the calculations described above and also provide a spreadsheet of your sales process, please contact me.
Step Number One: Identify your sales process. By this I mean, define the things you do or steps you follow to make a sale. It is possible that you may never have thought about this. It might be that you just do a lot of “stuff” and at the conclusion of doing stuff you either complete a sale or you don’t. Think of those sales that went well. Think of the steps or activities you used to find that success. Think of what you need to do to close one typical average sale. Make a list of the steps from the beginning to the end of the sales process. Identify specifically those activities you typically follow to complete a sale. Now identify how many times you engage in each of those activities in order to close a typical sale.
Step Number Two: Determine how much time each of those activities takes on average. For example, an average cold call takes about three minutes (some may be longer and some shorter, but three minutes is average). A sales presentation typically takes thirty minutes and an average travel time from one appointment to the next is twenty minutes. Break down each activity and assign an amount of time. Next, multiply the number of times you conduct the activity (in the process of completing a typical average sale) by the amount of time it takes to complete the activity. For example, a sales presentation plus travel time may take one hour. Your sales process requires that you make four presentations in order to complete one sale. Therefore, your sales process requires four hours of presentations to make one typical average sale. It might be that you need to make twenty contacts in order to schedule one appointment. If a contact takes three minutes, then it would take three minutes multiplied by twenty contacts to schedule one appointment, or a total of sixty minutes. If it takes four appointments to make one sale, then you would need to invest four hours of prospecting time in order to complete one typical sale.
Complete this step of the process by calculating the amount of time required for each step of your sales process and then multiplying each step by the number of times required to make a sale. Add up all the time required for each of the steps and you now know how much time is required to complete an average sale. The next step is to determine how many hours you work at sales each day, each week and each month. Assuming that the typical sales person spends four hours each day working on sales activities and the rest of their time doing other things, a sales person would spend eighty-four hours each month making sales. If the sales process requires twelve hours of time, then a sales person could make seven sales per month.
Step Number Three: Calculate the dollar amount of the average sale. Dollar amounts might be all over the board. However, if that is the case, simply take the total dollars sold for the month and divide it by the number of sales made. Let’s make a few assumptions to better understand this step. The average sale is two thousand dollars. The average margin is thirty percent. The sales person is paid a commission of twenty percent of the margin. Do the math. The margin is six hundred dollars and the commission to the sales person is one hundred and twenty dollars. If it is possible for the sales person to make seven sales per month, then the total commissions are eight hundred and forty dollars for the month (ten dollars per hour worked).
Step Number Four: Look for areas of improvement. Evaluate your sales process, the amount of time spent on each step of the process and the amount of time spent working specifically on sales. Consider the value of the typical sale and the margins associated with that sale. What could you do better and what could you eliminate. What more could you do in your sales process to improve the overall result. Let me offer a few ideas to allow your thoughts to start to flow. Are there any steps of the process that could be streamlined? Are there any steps that could be added to your sales process? Can you reduce the amount of time spent on various steps of your sales process? Could you increase the number of hours that you spend each month specifically working your sales process? Is it possible to up sell, or increase the value of the overall sale? Are we selling based on price, thus reducing the amount of margin on the sale?
Let’s see the effect of improvement in some of these areas based on the example we used above. Because of improvements in the sales process, it now takes only ten hours of total time to complete a sale. You have become committed to sales and are now working eight hours a day at sales for a total of one hundred and sixty-eight hours per month. You are offering your customer more and doing a bit of “up-selling” and the average sale is now three thousand dollars instead of two thousand. You have learned how to sell value instead of price and the average margin has increased to thirty-two percent. Let’s calculate what effect these improvements will have on your commissions.
One hundred and sixty-eight hours in a month divided by ten hours to make a sale equals approximately seventeen sales per month instead of seven. The average sale of three thousand dollars at thirty two percent margin now generates nine hundred and sixty dollars margin dollars. The commission on the average sale has increased to one hundred and ninety-two dollars multiplied by seventeen sales will generate a monthly commission of three thousand two hundred and sixty-four dollars (almost nineteen dollars and fifty cents per hour worked).
When sales people understand the relationship between activity, time and money they can dramatically increase their sales and their income. By the way, if the sales person in the above example worked during his lunch hour, their income would increase by three hundred and eighty-four dollars. Time really is money! If anyone is interested in receiving a computerized copy of my program that will do all of the calculations described above and also provide a spreadsheet of your sales process, please contact me.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Visualize Your Sales Success And Then Work To Make It A Reality
Dr. Henry Emerson Fordick said, “Picture yourself vividly defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.”
Let me share a real life story about visualization and let you ponder how it might relate to your sales performance. Several years ago I moved back to Salt Lake City after spending seventeen years working back East. My sales career read almost like a storybook, working for two major Fortune Fifty companies and experiencing success at almost every turn. I was blessed with the opportunity to sit at the feet and learn from the masters of sales and business. It was a great experience, one for which I will ever be grateful.
Finding myself back in Salt Lake, I wanted to do something that I had dreamed about for some time but never felt that the time and place was right, due to frequent corporate moves. I wanted to build and own several duplexes as a means of financial investment and retirement income. After several moves, my mind set was to find the opportunities here and not to move around the country as I had done before. Once we became settled in a home, the first things I did was to find a piece of property to build my first duplex. My search successfully found a building lot with a small cottage nestled on the back end of the property almost hidden from view with dense foliage of trees, bushes and shrubs. This was the perfect place to build my first rental property.
Six years later I found myself standing on the sidewalk in front of my little over grown cottage still trying to visualize what to build. I knew it would be a duplex, but beyond that I didn’t know. On this particular day as I peered deep into the “jungle” of vegetation, I began to visualize what the duplex would look like. I could plainly see a side-by-side “townhouse” style property with a slight off-set for each unit and a roof line showing a change in elevation and ridgeline. I could plainly see the South facing entry for both units with a private sidewalk running to the back of the property. There were two double garages along the back edge of the property line.
My mind took me to the inside was a dining room and living room were on either side of the formal entry hall. The hall continued to the back and opened into a large family room adjoining a large and open kitchen with a wide counter top and bar stools. There was an eat-in kitchen nook for casual dining. There was a stairway leading from the family room to the basement with a large bedroom, full bath, large TV room and a storage room that would be the envy of any property owner. From the formal entry hall was a stairway leading to the top level with a laundry room at the top of the stairs, two bedrooms sharing a “Jack-and-Jill” bathroom and then the master suite with an over sized tub, separate showing and walk-in closet.
I don’t know how long I was standing on the sidewalk with this visualization running through my head, but it was real, and for the first time in the six years since I purchased the property, I knew exactly what I was going to build and how it would look. I immediately drove to the office of one of my friends who was an architect and described to him what I had seen in this daydream. He started to make some sketches and within an hour or so he had captured on paper what I had seen. Within a couple of weeks he had elevations and floor plans drawn. We made a few changes to those first drawings and within a couple more weeks we had plans that were presented to the city.
The city required a few changes to meet their building requirements and within two months of standing on the sidewalk visualizing what kind of a building to construct on my property, my builder was tearing down the little cottage and starting constructing on my new duplex. Now, why did it take six years to start something that I new I wanted six years earlier? The answer is simple; I had no vision. Once I was able to visualize what I wanted to build, it became a reality. The reality took time, activity and money, but nothing happened without the visualization.
Sales success is no different than the story I have just shared with you. Sales people can spend a whole career doing very little compared to what they are capable of doing because they have no vision of what is possible. They perform at a level comparable to others in their company with no comprehension that they could do far better if they could only visualize something better. I have a client who was the top sales person in his company. He was making a good income based on commissions, more than any other sales person had ever earned. One day this sales person asked himself why he didn’t sell more and visualized himself selling at a pace twice what he had done the previous year. He pondered what effort would be necessary, thought about where the sales might be found, and visualized himself achieving that new level of success. During the next year he doubled his sales. Having reached that level of success, he again visualized himself increasing his sales by fifty percent. The following year he did just that.
There is only one thing that limits our success in sales and that is our ability to visualize our success, combined with the effort to make it happen. Spend time daydreaming and visualizing your sales success, looking far beyond your current levels. Increases can be achieved if you use the right process and the first phase of that process is visualization.
Let me share a real life story about visualization and let you ponder how it might relate to your sales performance. Several years ago I moved back to Salt Lake City after spending seventeen years working back East. My sales career read almost like a storybook, working for two major Fortune Fifty companies and experiencing success at almost every turn. I was blessed with the opportunity to sit at the feet and learn from the masters of sales and business. It was a great experience, one for which I will ever be grateful.
Finding myself back in Salt Lake, I wanted to do something that I had dreamed about for some time but never felt that the time and place was right, due to frequent corporate moves. I wanted to build and own several duplexes as a means of financial investment and retirement income. After several moves, my mind set was to find the opportunities here and not to move around the country as I had done before. Once we became settled in a home, the first things I did was to find a piece of property to build my first duplex. My search successfully found a building lot with a small cottage nestled on the back end of the property almost hidden from view with dense foliage of trees, bushes and shrubs. This was the perfect place to build my first rental property.
Six years later I found myself standing on the sidewalk in front of my little over grown cottage still trying to visualize what to build. I knew it would be a duplex, but beyond that I didn’t know. On this particular day as I peered deep into the “jungle” of vegetation, I began to visualize what the duplex would look like. I could plainly see a side-by-side “townhouse” style property with a slight off-set for each unit and a roof line showing a change in elevation and ridgeline. I could plainly see the South facing entry for both units with a private sidewalk running to the back of the property. There were two double garages along the back edge of the property line.
My mind took me to the inside was a dining room and living room were on either side of the formal entry hall. The hall continued to the back and opened into a large family room adjoining a large and open kitchen with a wide counter top and bar stools. There was an eat-in kitchen nook for casual dining. There was a stairway leading from the family room to the basement with a large bedroom, full bath, large TV room and a storage room that would be the envy of any property owner. From the formal entry hall was a stairway leading to the top level with a laundry room at the top of the stairs, two bedrooms sharing a “Jack-and-Jill” bathroom and then the master suite with an over sized tub, separate showing and walk-in closet.
I don’t know how long I was standing on the sidewalk with this visualization running through my head, but it was real, and for the first time in the six years since I purchased the property, I knew exactly what I was going to build and how it would look. I immediately drove to the office of one of my friends who was an architect and described to him what I had seen in this daydream. He started to make some sketches and within an hour or so he had captured on paper what I had seen. Within a couple of weeks he had elevations and floor plans drawn. We made a few changes to those first drawings and within a couple more weeks we had plans that were presented to the city.
The city required a few changes to meet their building requirements and within two months of standing on the sidewalk visualizing what kind of a building to construct on my property, my builder was tearing down the little cottage and starting constructing on my new duplex. Now, why did it take six years to start something that I new I wanted six years earlier? The answer is simple; I had no vision. Once I was able to visualize what I wanted to build, it became a reality. The reality took time, activity and money, but nothing happened without the visualization.
Sales success is no different than the story I have just shared with you. Sales people can spend a whole career doing very little compared to what they are capable of doing because they have no vision of what is possible. They perform at a level comparable to others in their company with no comprehension that they could do far better if they could only visualize something better. I have a client who was the top sales person in his company. He was making a good income based on commissions, more than any other sales person had ever earned. One day this sales person asked himself why he didn’t sell more and visualized himself selling at a pace twice what he had done the previous year. He pondered what effort would be necessary, thought about where the sales might be found, and visualized himself achieving that new level of success. During the next year he doubled his sales. Having reached that level of success, he again visualized himself increasing his sales by fifty percent. The following year he did just that.
There is only one thing that limits our success in sales and that is our ability to visualize our success, combined with the effort to make it happen. Spend time daydreaming and visualizing your sales success, looking far beyond your current levels. Increases can be achieved if you use the right process and the first phase of that process is visualization.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Most Successful Sales People Keep Score
In sporting events we have winners and losers. How do we know who wins and who loses? We keep score. It is knowing the score that allows the players to reach deep inside themselves and find that little “extra” that allows them to win. Years ago when my first son was about four or five we enrolled him in the local Tee Ball baseball program. There is no pitcher on the mound, only a tee-ball stand on home plate. The children would swing their bat at the ball placed on the stand. Most of the balls hit didn’t even make it to the outfield. My son played Right Field and seldom ever saw the ball come his direction. He would stand in his designated area wondering if he would ever see a ball and after a while he would sit on the grass and pick clover, oblivious to what was going on around him. The game was being played, but not in his mind. He along with many of the other children had no concept of the score, and often didn’t know if their team had won or lost the game until the coach told them. It didn’t really matter to them; they got drinks and treats regardless, when the coach announced the game was over.
Why do I mention this experience? It reminds me of salespeople! Most sales people don’t know that they need to keep score and few have any method of keeping score. The majority of sales people that I have known over the past thirty-five years have just done a lot of “stuff” every day hoping that if they did enough “stuff” their commission checks would pay the bills. Is it any wonder that the majority of salespeople are under achievers? They are in the game, just like my young son, but they are just out there in Right Field picking clover, oblivious to what is going on, and totally unaware that anyone is even keeping score. If you are going to win at sales your head must be in the game and you must keep score so you will know where you are and what must be done to win. Imagine going to a sporting event, paying top dollar for a ticket and watching the players run around demonstrating their athletic prowess without any indication of competition. There is no score keeping, no penalties, no time frames, no winner, no loser, and no point to their activity. It would become very boring for the ticket holder’s and soon there would be no tickets sold.
In a typical sales organization the sales people show up for work every day, involve themselves in certain activities, they do lots of “stuff”, and go home at the end of the. day. Nothing has been measured and very little profit has been added to the bottom-line. These days are over and significant changes needs to take place. Let me explain what needs to take place each day, each week and each month.
First of all, sales people need to understand that selling is a process. It is the result of very specific activities that sales are made. Sales people need to know their sales process. It might include (1) finding prospects (2) scheduling appointments (3) making a presentation (4) preparing a quote (5) following up regularly and at the proper intervals (6) resolving concerns (7) asking for the order. Regardless of your sales process, find what works and follow the process consistently.
Second, you must keep score. Keep track of the number of prospects needed to make a sale. Keep track of the number of follow-ups need to make a typical sales. Keep track of all the activities needed to complete the sale. Know what the typical commission will be on a typical sale. The more you keep track of the specific activities that are necessary to make a typical sale, and the better you understand your reward, the better you will perform. When your head is in the game the more you will participate and less time will be spent picking clover in Right Field.
Third, salespeople should use and keep scorecards. There are several different types of scorecards. The first one is a pipeline sheet listing every active prospect. The second one is a monthly goal sheet identifying their sales goal for the month, including a weekly breakdown. It should also include a list of those prospects that they believe have a reasonable chance of being closed for the month. The third scorecard is a chart showing what their income will be based on their completed sales for the month. If they want to increase their income they can easily see to what point they need to increase their sales. When sales people keep score, they know what their sales and income are at any point in the month. They know if they need to do more activity and work harder to reach their goal. They will consistently increase their income as they begin to understand the relationship between activity, time, effort and money. Sales people that keep score are winners!
Why do I mention this experience? It reminds me of salespeople! Most sales people don’t know that they need to keep score and few have any method of keeping score. The majority of sales people that I have known over the past thirty-five years have just done a lot of “stuff” every day hoping that if they did enough “stuff” their commission checks would pay the bills. Is it any wonder that the majority of salespeople are under achievers? They are in the game, just like my young son, but they are just out there in Right Field picking clover, oblivious to what is going on, and totally unaware that anyone is even keeping score. If you are going to win at sales your head must be in the game and you must keep score so you will know where you are and what must be done to win. Imagine going to a sporting event, paying top dollar for a ticket and watching the players run around demonstrating their athletic prowess without any indication of competition. There is no score keeping, no penalties, no time frames, no winner, no loser, and no point to their activity. It would become very boring for the ticket holder’s and soon there would be no tickets sold.
In a typical sales organization the sales people show up for work every day, involve themselves in certain activities, they do lots of “stuff”, and go home at the end of the. day. Nothing has been measured and very little profit has been added to the bottom-line. These days are over and significant changes needs to take place. Let me explain what needs to take place each day, each week and each month.
First of all, sales people need to understand that selling is a process. It is the result of very specific activities that sales are made. Sales people need to know their sales process. It might include (1) finding prospects (2) scheduling appointments (3) making a presentation (4) preparing a quote (5) following up regularly and at the proper intervals (6) resolving concerns (7) asking for the order. Regardless of your sales process, find what works and follow the process consistently.
Second, you must keep score. Keep track of the number of prospects needed to make a sale. Keep track of the number of follow-ups need to make a typical sales. Keep track of all the activities needed to complete the sale. Know what the typical commission will be on a typical sale. The more you keep track of the specific activities that are necessary to make a typical sale, and the better you understand your reward, the better you will perform. When your head is in the game the more you will participate and less time will be spent picking clover in Right Field.
Third, salespeople should use and keep scorecards. There are several different types of scorecards. The first one is a pipeline sheet listing every active prospect. The second one is a monthly goal sheet identifying their sales goal for the month, including a weekly breakdown. It should also include a list of those prospects that they believe have a reasonable chance of being closed for the month. The third scorecard is a chart showing what their income will be based on their completed sales for the month. If they want to increase their income they can easily see to what point they need to increase their sales. When sales people keep score, they know what their sales and income are at any point in the month. They know if they need to do more activity and work harder to reach their goal. They will consistently increase their income as they begin to understand the relationship between activity, time, effort and money. Sales people that keep score are winners!
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