When you are setting your annual goals—you may find the activity and sales targets a bit daunting. However, if you will follow the advice of “Mary Poppins”, you can add a spoon full of sugar and make your goals much more believable and achievable.
Once you have your annual activity and sales targets (see previous post), follow these additional steps.
If your annual goals are:
Leads Identified = 5,775
Qualified Leads = 4,620
Qualified Leads/Prospects Contacted = 4,620
Sales Presentation Appointments Scheduled = 660
Sales Presentations Completed = 600
Sales Closed = 200
Commissions Earned = $100,000
The first step is to decide exactly how many weeks you are going to work over the next twelve months. Then divide each annual target by that number. This will give you a smaller (and more palatable) number upon which you can focus your weekly efforts.
Sales results tend to follow activity levels. But if you focus too much on the twelve-month activity level needed, the task can be daunting. For most people, focusing on the smaller segments of time will yield a much better frame of mind.
Let me explain. If I told you that you need to contact 4,620 qualified leads over the next twelve months, how would that make you feel? Uncomfortable?
However, if I told you that you only needed to contact 18.5 qualified leads per day you would probably feel much more confident, wouldn’t you? You would almost experience a sense of relief. Well, the good news is that 18.5 qualified leads contacted each day for five working days would total 92.5 per week. And 92.5 qualified leads contacted per week for fifty weeks per year would total 4,620!
Thinking in weekly targets—the above goals should be accomplished by doing the following activities on an every week basis (based on 50 weeks).
Leads Identified = 115.5
Qualified Leads = 92.4
Qualified Leads/Prospects Contacted = 92.4
Sales Presentation Appointments Scheduled = 13.2
Sales Presentations Completed = 12
Sales Closed = 4
Commissions Earned = $2,000
Of course, your industry and averages may be different from those I am using. So, based on input from a trusted sales mentor with your company, break your activity goals down into the appropriate daily, weekly, or monthly targets. Then work your plan as if you were a machine that never breaks down and stops.
Once you have determined your activity goals above, write them on several index cards and place them in strategic locations to ensure that you see and read these goals several times each day. I also recommend that you find some sort of emotional touchstone, such as a picture or token, and keep it close by your goals as well. If you keep a picture of your family enjoying a trip to your favorite vacation spot on the wall of your office, and under that picture you have your list of goals and activity targets, you will find you have more strength to follow through with each day’s activities.
There are a few additional techniques I will recommend in helping you to have the mental strength to work your activity plan each week.
Consider yourself paid per call—not per sale.
Too do so, determine how much income you earn for each of the activities you perform.
For example, if it takes you 3 presentations to make 1 sale, and 1 sale generates $2,100 in commission, consider yourself making $700 per sales presentation. Or better yet, if you must contact 100 qualified leads in order to generate $2,100 in commissions, consider yourself earning $21 per contact.
Think of that! You would be making $21 if they say yes—so don’t get too excited. You would also be making $21 if they say no—so don’t get too disappointed either. With this mindset, you focus on the total activity level as your “job” rather than allowing too much focus on any single call, day, week, or month.
Fortunately, my first sales mentor (the real Jack Amberson used as the basis for the character in The Unexpected Tour Guide) gave me a book that really helped me understand this concept early on in my sales career. The book was How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, by Frank Bettger.
I can still remember my early averages in the industrial uniform industry. I considered myself making $23 per call—whether they told me yes or no.
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Once, I was making a cold call to a business owner in Atlanta, Georgia. Pretty quickly into my request for an appointment, he politely said, “No thank you.”
I smiled, reached out, and shook his hand and said, “Well, thank you for the $23.”
As I turned and walked away, he said, “What do you mean, thank you for the $23?”
I laughed a bit as I turned around. Then I explained the concept to him.
He said, “I need to have you come in and talk to my salespeople!”
To which I grinned and replied, “For a fee!”
Now that I think about it, that prepared me pretty well for what I do now!
QUESTION: How much income do you average per call?
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