83. How can you take the risk out of selling?
The trouble with a great many people is that they are not willing to make present sacrifices for future gain.
They prefer to have a good time as they go along, rather than spend time in self-improvement. They have a vague wish to improve their selling skills, but few have that intense desire which motivates them to make sacrifices today for their future.
They have a desire for success, but their desire is not the kind that makes them willing to pay a price or make any sacrifice for accomplishing it. So the majority slide along in mediocrity their entire career. They have ability for something higher, but they don't have the energy and determination to prepare for it. They don't choose to make the necessary effort.
They prefer to take life easier rather than to work for something better. They don't play the game for all they are worth. It is not a lack of ability that holds these sales people down, but a lack of ambition.
By not understanding the science of selling they let fear of rejection hold them back and keep them from becoming their best. They live or die with each sales presentation.
Read this next paragraph carefully...
The next time you become jittery because selling is such a risky business, consider this: The risk that an insurance company takes on one individual policyholder is the most unpredictable thing in the world. What could be more risky than trying to guess when one certain individual is going to have an accident or become sick, or how long he or she is going to live? Yet the insurance business itself is the most stable in the country, the safest investment anyone can make, the nearest thing to a "sure thing" in the way of guaranteed returns to investors. The risk an insurance company takes on one individual policyholder is tremendous, yet the risk involved in 100,000 policyholders is so predictable it can be figured to the fourth decimal point.
Whether or not you will sell any SINGLE prospect is unpredictable. But do as the insurance companies do; "spread the risk" by making a sufficient number of presentations. Make enough calls, see enough prospects, and a number of sales are guaranteed.
Let's say you are calling on 40 customers every week. Instead of going in and just asking for their regular order, make a presentation to each customer on at least four specific items they are not buying from you. That will total 8,000 presentations per year. Let's say you sell half of them and the average order per line item is $100 per week. That will total $400,000 in new annual business.
Selling can be done with mathematical certainty when you understand how it works.
The first step is to identify your target customer and determine how many customers it will take to maintain your business. Here is what I mean, using examples from different industries.
Let's say you wanted to sell residential real estate for a living. You would need to stake out an area that has a minimum of 500 houses. If you began a systematic schedule of contacting these 500 homeowners on a monthly basis, some in person, some on the phone, some by mail, and asking for their business, there would be enough houses bought and sold each year to make a living.
Another good example is insurance. You would have to have a list of one thousand households and contact them on a regular basis. There would be enough insurance needs to earn a living.
Both examples depend, of course, on your ability to out sell the competition.
Even a nursing home with 100 beds has to have them filled with residents. If they have 10 empty beds for any length of time their expenses go up and their profits go down. A hospital is in a similar situation. The success of their "selling" is measured by their "occupancy rate." The next time you visit a hospital ask what their occupancy rate is and you will be surprised at how quickly they can give you the percentage. A manufacturer looking for national distribution needs 200 distributors selling their product line.
Looking at a restaurant's business from a mathematical selling perspective can also be measured with precision. A restaurant needing to sell 1,000 meals each week to take in enough money to pay all their expenses needs a customer base of 5,000. A "rule of thumb" for a restaurant is to take one week's business and multiply it times five. Restaurant customers normally rotate their eating out, so we would want to be sure that we had five thousand people "rotating" into our business at least once every five weeks.
The bottom line… By making a certain number of presentations you can adopt the attitude that "I have got nothing to lose" before making a call, instead of telling yourself, "Everything depends on this," you can now tell yourself that "EVERYTHING DOES NOT DEPEND ON THIS."
You can strike out occasionally and still hit more home runs than anyone else on the team. Say to yourself, "If I do not call on this customer and ask for the order, the sale is lost anyway. If I call on him or her and flop, I will not be any worse off than I am right now, so I have nothing to lose." When you strike out a few times you get over the "fear of failure."
Comments:
I believe when calling on prospects you are building your future. If you see about 25 new prospects in a week and you get 1 of the prospects a week, that is 52 new customers a year. It takes a long time to close a new customer, it could take you up to six months. You have to keep working on the customer until they tell you yes or no. Never walk away from a customer until they till you YES or NO. You have to remember if a customer tells you NO it is not personal it is business. Never leave it on the table for the competition to come and take over the presentation. If you want the sale work hard and get it.
Jim Harris
The only thing you risk when you stop to see a prospect is the pennies in gas and the rejection. You aren’t going to be shot or exported to a foreign country. Nobody is going to sell you into slavery or kidnap you. It is simply another answer to the age old question, supply and demand. If you don’t ask you certainly won’t get the order.
Dave Ferren
This brings up one of the strongest temptations a salesperson has to face everyday – categorizing prospects. I won’t call on them because……. Fill in the blank with your favorite excuse. “I have called on them fifty times with no business”, “that manager does not like me”, “that business is a little out of our area of expertise” and on and on. I sometimes have to force myself to make the call that I think will be a waste of time and occasionally it will turn out productive. This all comes back to disciplining yourself, keeping your competitive spirit and staying ambitious…easy to say but a constant challenge.
Crocker Smith
You can take the risk out of selling by getting better and better at your job. We all know to expect rejection, and move on. That will make the successes that much sweeter. This story reminds me of when I was in labor having contractions. I was told that after one contraction passes, just say to yourself you are one step closer to final outcome. Same for a rejection, after you are rejected each time, say good, one more down I’m one step closer to the success.
Kimberly Burgess
Sales is like anything else, it’s a numbers game. The more calls you make, the more appointments you get, the more presentations you give, the more sales you close. I know a lot of GREAT salespeople, but I don’t know of any that have a 100% first approach closing ratio, so what this means for them all is increased front end numbers to support the back end numbers.
Scott Green
This is something that I have implemented recently. I used to put a lot of pressure on myself with each new potential client. Sometimes it might take 20 sales calls to 20 different prospects before I make a sale. It really depends on how much I am willing to sacrifice to make a sale. Do you go to one company, get rejected and go back to the office? I think you have to have that failure expectancy and have the ability to shrug it off and move on. I guess if a pond only had 1 fish in it, we would not fish there very often and would not catch that fish for quite some time, if ever.
Jeffrey Mole
I average anywhere from 25-40 in person sales visits a week. Some are to current customers, some are to prospective customers, some are to anyone who will listen. I usually get only ONE interested individual out of 20 in-person visits. This one individual still has to be groomed and molded – meaning credit reference checks, contracts signed, price negotiation, worker’s comp computed, etc. EVEN when I complete all these things – sometimes it does not work out. I just keep going, knowing that the next one might be the one who buys.
Angela Brewer
"Whether or not you will sell any SINGLE prospect is unpredictable. But do as the insurance companies do; "spread the risk" by making a sufficient number of presentations. Make enough calls, see enough prospects, and a number of sales are guaranteed."