The Sales Buddha

Sales Efforts Equals Sales Results

If you are ever concerned about what you are getting out of something, just look at what you’re putting into it. This is true in just about everything we do, like relationships, school and sports, but it really seems to apply to sales with most of my clients. It’s the same old story I keep hearing. “I’m really working hard, but don’t seem to be getting the results that I expected.” Well, the results you expected are a pretty good starting place for this discussion.

If you have a specific sales result you want to achieve, it is pretty easy to plot the actions and efforts necessary to achieve it. It is sort of like the “reverse engineering” that Compact did to create the IBM clone years ago. To do this, we need to define and list the steps in your sales process. You have to start with marketing to locate prospects, schedule appointments to determine needs, develop a solution, present your solution, ask for the sale, deliver promised goods and services and maintain a healthy relationship for future sales and referrals. If you define your expectations or results, then it is pretty easy to look at your effort metrics to indicate where the problems might be.

Years ago, I worked in outbound telesales. We cold-called prospects, thank goodness those days are gone, and offered a free trial of our product. There was a set of metrics that I called “the rule of halves” that proved pretty accurate as far as effort was concerned. If a sales person made fifty calls a day, they would talk to about five people who would accept the free offer. About half of them would show up for the offer and about half would express a need. About half of those folks would buy, so it looked like this. One hundred calls made yielded ten “suspects”, which gave us five prospects, giving us two and one-half proposals and hopefully, one sale. One sale out of one hundred calls is why I don’t cold call anymore, but it sure works out nice to make this point. Increase your effort at each step in the process and you’ll probably increase your results. Remember, sales efforts equal sales results!

So, if you’re not happy with what you are getting out of something, look at what your putting into it. Whether it’s sales or sports, Michael Jordan said it correctly, “I've always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don't do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results."

Word of Mouth Marketing

For many years now people have said that “word of mouth” was the best advertising there was. Having other people talking about your product or service and how great it is still is the path to real success. Those one-on-one mini testimonials make all the difference in the world in the success of your business. It still works today. The only problem is, not many business owners can explain how to develop and implement a strategy to make word of mouth work for them.

Word of mouth is not hard to create. It’s simply having people talk about you, hopefully in a positive way. Now is a good time to point out that word of mouth can be a killer when it comes to stories about bad experiences with your business. Man, people do love to talk about the bad stuff! But there’s more to word of mouth market than having two consumers exchange information about your products or services. You need to have a strategy and plan to make it work for you. This strategy is what word of mouth marketing is really all about. But, how do you do it? How do you make it easier for your clients and customers to spread the news? We’ll start at the beginning and will follow up in later columns.

The first and most important is to realize the differences between sales and marketing and their related activities. Marketing related activities are all of the things we do to create a prospect, someone who has a need for our products or services. Sales related activities are the things we do that turn that prospect into a customer. So when we talk about networking as it applies to marketing, we are not looking for sales, but for people who might become future prospects or advocates for us. Since we are not selling at this time, we are simply looking to establish relationships that one-day may grow into mutually beneficial relationships

So when I talk about expanding and diversifying your network, I’m talking about the number of people you know. If asked to make a list of their business network, they would make a list of everyone who might buy what they are selling. This is a prospect list to be used for sales related activities. Once again, you must recognize the differences between sales and marketing when expanding your network. Since people buy from people they know and trust, so go out there and create as many trusting relationships as you can. The more people that know who you are and what you do, the greater the chance of them becoming a client and /or referral source in the future.

Go out this week with a clear goal of adding a certain number of new people to your network. Increase the number of healthy relationships you have and don’t forget to maintain your existing relationships. Look in places you normally might not try. Get creative. Increase the number and diversity of people in your network. Next we’ll talk about what to do with them once you have them.