If you’re like me, you hate keeping track of numbers. But if you want to improve your sales results, it’s important to keep and regularly review some key records;
1. Number of Leads. How many people are you making meaningful contact with during any given week? When I say ‘meaningful,’ I mean that they have expressed interest in you and what you sell. They may have responded to an email blast. They may have clicked the ‘more information’ button on your web site. Maybe they picked up the phone and called you. The key here is that they ‘raised their hand’ in some way and said ‘I’m interested.’
2. Number of Sales Conversations. How many of those interested prospects did you have a conversation with? A conversation is a two way exchange. The best sales conversations are actual voice conversations: you talk to the prospect on the phone or in person. You may have an exchange through email or Facebook, but I prefer in person (or on the phone). You don’t get voice inflections and emotional response in an online conversation. Why do people want to converse online? They’re afraid to talk with a sales person! If they’re afraid to talk with you, they’re not comfortable with you yet. It’s up to you to disarm them and initiate a conversation.
3. Conversions. How many of those conversations resulted in sales? The number of people you talk with means nothing if you’re not closing sales. Your conversion rate is the percentage of conversations that result in sales. If you’re having lots of conversations but rarely converting them to sales, you are either drawing the wrong prospects with your marketing or your sales skills are suspect. Marketing should zero in on the exact prospect you want to talk to. If it doesn’t, you draw response from unqualified people and waste your selling time talking with people who are never going to buy no matter how good you are. If your marketing is drawing qualified prospects but none of them are buying, you’re not doing the job of closing sales. If you want to improve your conversion rate, both marketing and sales have to be strong.
4. Average Sale. This one is simple. How much is the average buyer spending with you? Part of effective selling is the ability to up-sell. I’m not advocating hard-sell tactics that get people to buy something they don’t want. I’m talking about really digging into everything you could sell each prospect that would make their experience richer, their travel easier, or their life simpler. You are doing your customer a disservice if they have to go out later and find something that you could have provided for them. Dig deep into their wants and needs, and make sure you fulfill as many as you possibly can. It’s not pressure selling. It’s simplifying their life.
By the way, this can also reveal weakness in your product line. Always be looking for new products or services that might be of value to your clients. You’re not serving them well if they have to go elsewhere for components you should have offered.
5. Profit. It’s the most important number in your business. Whether you’re one person working from the dining room table or a multi-national corporation, your business success is totally determined by your net profit. It’s simply how much money is left after you pay all of your expenses. If you’re making lots of sales but not taking home any money, you have to improve your margin. It may mean cutting expenses, it may mean finding higher-margin products, or it may mean changing your fee structure.
Take a hard look at these five key numbers every month. It takes some record- keeping, but it will give you a great barometer of business activity and success. And it will tell you where you have to make changes. If you don’t have enough leads, you have to work on your marketing. If you’re getting lots of good leads but not closing sales…or if your average sale is not what you’d like it to be, you’ve got to look at your product line and your sales skills. And not matter how much revenue you’re producing, it doesn’t mean a thing if you’re not taking a good chunk of it home at the end of the month.
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By Larry Merserau, CTC, PromoPower LLC
Smart business owners, marketers and sales professionals (people just like you!) turn to Larry Mersereau, CTC, for the ideas and insights they need to bring in more business and take home more money. Learn more!
