Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you closed every sales opportunity that you have?
That would be amazing.
They would rename you to Superman or Wonder Woman.
They would permanently enshrine your name in the Sales Hall of Fame as the Wunderkind.
No matter how good you are at sales, you will never close 100% of your sales.
Accept this as reality now if you haven’t already accepted it.
You are not perfect.
The good news is you don’t have to be perfect.
You just need to be consistent.
With consistency, you prove that you are reliable, and people like to buy from those that are reliable.
Here’s my question for you,
Are you consistent?
Yes, you may answer to me.
Where is the proof that you are reliable?
If you can’t prove that you are reliable, then you aren’t reliable.
How do you prove that you are reliable?
You have documentation that you are reliable.
You have records of the actions that you took to be reliable.
I am a reliable writer.
Every day I write.
I can prove it to you.
Look at my blog at www.www.damonyudichak.com, and you have evidence of my consistent writing.
This is the 275th article that I’ve written since May 1, 2019.
Now let’s examine your sales activity.
Show me the records of your sales activity.
What are the sales activities that you’ve performed in the last week?
How many of each of those sales activities have you performed?
Same question for the week before last week.
Now, what about last month? How did you do?
If you don’t have records that show your actions and the results of those actions, then you don’t have objective data to inform you about where you can make improvements.
The first step is to establish a measurement system to measure the sales activities you perform and the results of those activities.
This is valuable information that will guide you to improved performance.
You must collect this data, or you will end up wasting your time and your energies.
Now it’s time to review your set sales process.
A set sales process is the set of activities that you perform when you have a lead.
How do you nurture that lead along the sales process?
How do you build trust in those people so that they will want to buy from you?
You should have a document that maps out what your set sales process is.
Here is an example of a set sales process.
- Day 1 Call lead to set up an appointment.
- Day 2 Leave a voicemail if there is no answer.
- Day 3 Follow up email.
- Day 4 Mail the person a brochure.
- Day 6 Connect with the person on Linked In
- Day 7 Call the person.
- Day 8 Send the person a handwritten note.
- Day 10 Add the person to your email list.
Now you have a set sales process that you can take a person to that will provide the lead with valuable information about you and your company and the ways that you can help that person.
Now your job is to keep meticulous records of the actions you take when you take a person through your sales process.
Review these records on a weekly and monthly basis.
As you review these records, you will start to see patterns of what is working and what isn’t working.
As you discover something that is working, do more of that activity.
If you decide you want to make changes to your sales process, be very careful, and make only one change at a time.
By making only one change at a time, you can isolate the results you are getting as a result of that change.
Don’t make your set sales process more difficult or convoluted than it has to be.
You are taking your leads through a journey.
There are three stages of this journey.
- Lead – this is a person that makes initial contact with your company
- Prospect – this is a person that makes a micro commitment showing that they are interested in buying from you. A micro commitment could be signing up for your lead magnet or asking you a question about a product or service you offer.
- Customer – this is a person that pays you money.
You don’t need any more sales stage than this.
Now that you have these three sales stages, you can calculate the conversion rate people take as they move through your sales process.
Here’s an example.
100 people visit your website this week. 10 people sign up for your lead magnet. Your lead to prospect conversion is 10%.
1 of your 10 prospects buys a product from you. Your prospect to customer conversion is 10%.
With these conversion metrics, you can measure how successful you are.
With the above statistics, we can say that 1% of the people that visit our website will buy from us.
How do I get more people to buy from me?
There are three ways to increase your customer acquisition.
- Increase the number of people that become leads.
- Increase the percentage of people that move from lead to prospect.
- Increase the percentage of people that move from prospect to customer.
Now, as you review your sales activities on a weekly and monthly basis, you begin to see where things are working and where things need improvement.
If your number of leads diminishes, then your first job is to increase the number of leads.
If your lead to prospect conversion percent goes down, you know that something needs fixing with that decision point with the lead.
If your prospect to customer percent goes down, you know that something needs fixing with that decision point with the prospect.
Now you have actionable data about the sales process in your business.
You can now diagnose what areas of the sales process are working and what areas need improvement.
Work on one area at a time and seek to make an incremental improvement.
In the long run, you will be much more successful, achieving a 1% increase regularly than trying to double overnight.
Steady incremental improvements in your sales process will give you incredible growth.
Before I end this article, I wanted to ask you if you’re looking to grow your business profits and having more cash in the bank, send me an email at damon@idealmoneylife.com with “PROFIT” in the subject line… tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details!
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