Making Sales
THE KEY WORD IN SALES
WORKING THE NUMBERS
Ted Williams was one of the greatest hitters in baseball history and his highest batting average for one season was just over 400. That means he failed to get a hit sixty percent of the time he came to bat.
Annika Sorenstam is one of the greatest women golfers of all time. As phenomenal as she was as a competitor, she won only twenty-five percent of her events on the LPGA Tour during her professional career. This means she was disappointed seventy-five percent of the time.
Several years ago in my CPA practice, we mailed 3,500 postcards to a select group of small businesses. We received eighty-three telephone calls resulting in thirty-five appointments. Twenty-two of those individuals actually kept their appointment and four became clients. The total program cost approximately $5,000.
We grossed approximately $37,000 the year after we ran that program and have continued to make money each year since then. Keep in mind that I have many years of experience getting people to exchange their money for my services. Even then, we still had to burn through a number of leads in order to get those four clients.
LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
While thinking about what to write next, I have to admit that I am laughing at myself because I fell into a trap that I am about to tell you to avoid.
I was so proud of that postcard and was sure it was going to work better than it actually did. Logically, I should have known better, but emotionally, I nourished the fantasy that we had designed the perfect marketing piece that was going to work better than any other. That belief set me up for disappointment.
You will no doubt have disappointments yourself as you build your business. The key is not to let any one disappointment affect your ability to perform the next time. If you ever had the opportunity to listen to Annika Sorenstam after she lost a golf tournament, you could tell she was disappointed. However, she always found something positive to say and always expressed the belief that she learned from the experience.
Most of us would like to get a hit every time we get up to bat. However, that is impossible and as much as you may hate losing any particular sale, you need to learn from the experience and quickly move on. Don’t waste time dwelling on what you can’t change.
MOVING ON
What will help you move on is the use of the most important word in sales. It is a word you should learn to shout at the top of your lungs because it will breathe new life into you.
The sooner you move past a disappointment, the sooner you can use what you just learned and the sooner you will replace that disappointment with a success. The most important single word in sales is “Next.”
Talk to any top producer in sales or anyone considered a rainmaker in business and the common thread that ties all of their successes together is they played the numbers to their advantage. They know they can depend on winning a certain percentage of the time and the more they get up to bat, the more they are going to win.
Use “Next” to motivate yourself to play the numbers game. Get up to bat as often as possible and let the numbers work for you. The more bats you have, the quicker you will learn how to win a higher percentage of them.
If you’d like to learn how we made $37,000 from one postcard, give me a call and we can discuss what will work for you.
The best way to get started is with a complimentary business consultation, where we will answer your questions, assess your situation and recommend a course of action. We can be reached at (408) 378-9500 or by completing the form at Contact Us.
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