Falling in love (again!) with sales

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 | By Paul Jacobs

It is said that ‘Love is blind’, that it lacks rational thought and evaluation.

It has been described as a state of intoxication; a heady and breathless euphoric condition; emotional and unconditional.

So, on reflection, could such a powerful sensation be applied to a subject that so many people find less than alluring?

It’s all about your mindset

It is about acceptance and focus.

You may desire success and all of the accompanying trappings: status, financial security and independence. But these aspirations have to be gained through a determined series of steps that all revolve around a basic principle.

Volume of Sales = Volume of Wins

The volume of telesales calls that you make relate to the volume of client meetings that you arrange; the amount of client meetings that you attend, relate to the amount of opportunities that you receive, which in turn equates to the amount of vacancies and assignments that you fill.

It is a straight line, a mathematical certainty.

And there you have it, the secret of success is entirely dependent upon your ability to interact and communicate with potential purchasers of your services and build trust, both in you and the business that you represent.

The greater the volume, the greater your level of success. It will not happen in any other way, so you may as well accept this irrefutable fact.

In fact, embrace it with a passion, because this level of enlightenment will become the platform for your development and the foundation of your success.  

Winning by numbers!

When thinking of Ratios to Success, consider sporting analogies. The more shots you have on goal, the more goals you are likely to score.

Want to score a century? You will need to put bat to ball regularly and strike with direction, power and purpose.

But it is also about improving your averages. Can you lower your golf handicap by improving your technique and ability to get around the course with less shots and effort?

Can you sprint 100 metres or run the marathon in less time with fewer steps? And so on. The first step to success is to plot your current averages.

Don’t know how many telesales calls it takes you to arrange a client meeting or how many interviews attended it takes for you to make a placement? Or how many vacancies it takes to make a placement? Or how many new clients that you need to acquire to meet your temporary hours/shifts goals? You need to.

This is not a Big Brother situation; this is all about you understanding your current performance and base level abilities.

How else will you be able to determine the tangible improvement in your sales ability going forward? How else will you be able to recognise your training and coaching needs?   

How else will you be able to absolutely quantify how many telesales calls that you need to make each day/week/month to achieve your orders goals and ultimately your placement or hours/shifts targets?

The basics

Let’s start at the beginning. Plot the following volumes over a month and a quarter:

·     Telesales calls 

·     Client meetings attended

·     Vacancies received

·     Temporary/interim assignments received

·     Placements made

·     Temporary/interim assignments filled

·     Candidates registered

Ratios will look like this:

·     Telesales calls/Client meetings attended

·     Client meetings attended/Vacancies or temporary assignments received

·     Vacancies/Placements achieved

·     Interviews attended/Vacancies

·     Interviews attended/Placements

·     Candidates registered/Placements

·     Candidates registered/Temp/interim assignments filled

Divide one figure into the other and you have your base line averages, and believe me the maths never lies! 

You can now accurately calculate the exact quantities of each component element of the sales process that it will take to make a solitary placement, and if you want to achieve five placements as an example per month, just multiply each element by five and you now have your daily/weekly/monthly sales targets set out.

Lowering your success ratios

Now that is a different story! To improve and lower Success Ratios you need to develop your sales skills, opening and closing techniques, and client meeting techniques, and then plot the difference in ratios over each month, quarter half year and annual period.

How to improve your opening, closing and client presentation techniques? Let’s make these the subjects of future articles!

Falling in love with sales?

It is entirely possible once you accept and embrace the fact that ‘sales’ is the celestial body around which everything that you desire revolves. Pretty Zen don’t you think?

Most of us could get quite intoxicated and euphoric about this concept, wouldn’t you agree? By the way, that is a ‘closing technique’!

Paul Jacobs is managing director of LoveWorkLife. Email: paul@loveworklife.com. M: +44 (0)7960 550756