crush monsterTo succeed in sales, you need to plan.  In order to plan, you need to understand.  Successful salespeople know that achieving aggressive targets does not happen by chance, it happens by design.  There are a million little steps that must be made each year to do it right, but sometimes that becomes daunting.  Most salespeople who don’t hit their targets lack one of three things:

  • Selling Skills
  • Belief in Themselves
  • A Plan

For the purpose of this post, let’s assume that you have the first two items – you can sell and you believe in yourself.  Now you need to know how to create an effective plan.  How many times have you had a very busy day and still feel as though you didn’t do enough?  Maybe your numbers are still behind.  The problem is that you don’t have specific enough goals each day.  Sales is a numbers game and you MUST drill those numbers down to the day.

I tell everyone, “If you don’t know what you are supposed to do today, how do you know you did it?”

Do you know what your numbers really are?

What is your revenue target for the year?  Work backwards – how much per month, week, day does that equal?  How many leads do you normally lead to get a qualified prospect?  How many prospects does it typically take you to get an appointment?  How many appointments do you need to get a sale?  Now within that, how many phone calls or emails at each stage does it take you to move the process forward?

Every sales process will have different stages and benchmarks, but you will have to understand what your numbers mean.  Let’s play with some numbers:

Sales Target:

Say your sales target for the year is $3 Million.  Let’s assume you work on a 13 period, 4 weeks per period system.  That means $230,769.23 per period and $57,692.31 per week.  Divide it by five work days and that is $11,538.46 per day.

Average Sale:

Suppose your average sale is $9000.  For the year, you will need 333.33 sales.  For each period that’s 25.64, and for the week, you will need just over SIX sales.  So let’s say our target is SEVEN sales per week to ensure we hit our target.

Conversion:

Now say you convert about 50% of appointments to sales, you convert 80% of your prospects to appointments, and 80% of your leads to prospects.  That means close to 14 appointments per week, from 17.5 prospects, from 21.88 leads.

Phone Calls and Activities:

Let’s say it takes you two phone calls per lead to convert them to a prospect, three phone calls per prospect to convert them to an appointment, and three more calls to convert to a sale.  That equals 44 prospecting calls, 53 appointment calls, and 28 closing calls per week.

So now your weekly plan looks like this:

  • 14 appointments
  • 44 prospecting calls
  • 53 appointment calls
  • 28 closing calls

And your day looks like this:

  • 3 appointments
  • 9 prospecting calls
  • 11 appointment generating calls
  • 6 closing calls

Can you break your sales into this kind of depth?  Many salespeople say they don’t have the time to do this.  If you are not busy with these sales items, then what are you really spending your time on?

Sales is a tough profession.  But you can make it easier when you break it down into manageable pieces.  Two of the main challenges of sales are lack of instant gratification and dealing with rejection.  By applying this formula, you deal with both simultaneously.  You have pre-planned for the specific amount of rejection in your numbers, and you know exactly what to do to achieve your goals today.

Now, you have to execute.  You know each day whether you are ahead or behind and you can work it on a much more micro level.  You can address challenges well before they become big problems.

So go and apply the formula, and if you need help, drop me a line.

image: by © Stranger

Joe Girard
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    4 replies to "The Sales Formula to Crush Your Numbers. What to do TODAY to Hit Your Target for the Year."

    • Wes

      Joe…as you know, I’m a big fan of manipulating sales numbers and stats as a tool to a) help motivate sales reps and b) help empower them to achieve more for themselves and their organization. This process is a good step and one that I have used a number of times with the people that report to me. Some it helps…they become successful. Others…not so much, and they are still wondering why they aren’t succeeding even though they are “really busy”.
      The other manipulation I like to illustrate for them is their “cost per sale”. But maybe we should leave that for another post on another day.

      Nice Work!
      Cheers!

      • Joe Girard

        You are right on one specific point, Wes where you say, “Others…not so much.” Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you use a training tool, words of encouragement, or even threat of death. Some reps you just can’t help.

        What I really want to stress in this post is that there is a formula – and it works. It takes 1,000,000 little steps each year to hit targets. It is not by fluke. It is by working at it every day.

    • Joe, with regard to your closing comment "now you have to execute," let me just add a little secret I use in sales that really helps. If I know that someone who won't cut me any slack is going to scrutinize my success that day, I am much more likely to deal well with rejection and be patient, because I just plain don't want my friend or family member to ridicule me if I have a stunning failure of a day. By this, I don't mean my sales manager. Different risk there. If my wife calls me at my request at lunch to see if I made my calls, then I'm much more likely to have a good report for my manager later. Just sayin'. –Arlen   PS: I have more sales goal achievement tips available at my new blog. Click my name to see it.

      • Joe Girard

        I understand what you mean, Arlen. My question would be then, why someone would call and ridicule a salesperson in the firstplace? Sales is about personal growth and if there is someone who attempts to sabotage that growth in your life, that is an altogether different issue.

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