Today we will discuss how to get creative and improve your skill set ratios based on the activity and results you have been tracking.
Sales people: you should accept full responsibility for tracking your own results and activities. When you choose sales as a career, you are accepting the fact that in order be be successful, you have to be more accountable than the average person wants to be. However, that accountability should be to you and your family. If your sales leader has to “make” you track your results and activity – you need to adjust your thinking. You should track it because of your own desire to improve your skills and results.
Sales Leaders: Teach your sales people how to track their activity and results. If you or your company has a mechanism in place to help them do so, by all means do exactly that. However, your message should be using the tracking system as a way for you to help your team and the individuals on that team improve their skill sets. Your message should never be based on reporting and accountability for the sake of job security.
Let’s use the same ratios we calculated in yesterday’s post and discuss ways to improve each category.
- 1.42 raw leads to 1 qualified lead
- 10 qualified leads contacted to schedule 1 appointment
- 1.16 appointment scheduled to complete 1 presentation
- 2 follow up contacts to close 1 sale
- 3 sales presentations made to close 1 sale
- average commission per sale = $2,000
For the sake of our discussion, let’s stipulate that all of the above ratios are within your industry norms – and you want to improve them.
Do you know what happens if your appointment ratio moves from 1 out of 10; up to 1 out of 8? You would get 25% more presentations completed. Thus if all other ratios simply remain static and do not improve – your results and income would increase by 25%!
What can you do to improve your ratios on qualified leads contacted to appointments scheduled?
- Make sure your prospecting verbiage focuses on how you can improve the client’s life or business – and NOT on how great your product, service or company is.
- Find ways to bring value to your prospect even before you ask for the appointment; i.e. important articles, free items etc. Or ask for the appointment to bring them something of value rather than to present your product or service.
- Take advantage of social media to warm the prospect. Do your research. Look for common friends to introduce you. Make informal contact prior to asking for your appointment.
I will continue this series next week and we will work on ways to improve our ratios in each category.
QUESTION:
How much extra income will you generate if you close one more sale out of every 10 presentations?
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