There's a gazillion ways, but some are harder than others.
You could win Who wants to be a millionaire 1,000 times. (This might be difficult because there's only been 215 winners in the world since the show started.) Now that I read that, it's a stupid plan.
OK. How about this? There are 7.6 Billion people in the world. Ask every one of them for a dollar. They could refuse 86% of the time and you'd still get your billion. I know. Seems like a lot of work.
All right. Back up. In the late 70's, I was one of about 200 salespeople that heard Dick Gardner speak in Cleveland, Ohio. He told this story about himself.
He grew up in a slum and when he was growing up, everyone in his neighborhood thought that anyone that could make $200 in a month was rich. He set a goal to make $200 in a month and he worked and he worked and he worked until eventually, he earned $200 in a month.
He thought, this is good, but I wonder if I could make $200 in a week. So, he worked and he worked and he worked until eventually, he earned $200 in a week.
At this point, he was feeling pretty good about himself, but he crazily thought, I wonder if I could make $200 in a single day? (Remember, this is the 70's.) So, he worked and he worked and he worked and he worked and he worked and he worked until one day, he earned $200 in a single day.
He went through the same process to get to the point where he could earn $200 in an hour. Then he shared the finale. Could he earn $200 in a minute? He ended by telling us that he would be conducting several hours of sessions for us that day for the fee that our company was paying him and if you divide the total fee by the number of minutes that he was speaking, the answer was $200 per minute.
Before I get to the lesson, let me ask if you've ever earned $100/day? $100/hour? $100/minute? $100/second?
Do the math. If you worked 2778 hours next year and earned $100/second, that would be
2778 hrs x 60 min/hr x 60 sec/min x $100/second = $1 Billion
Here are the two obstacles that salespeople encounter when they try to establish goals.
- They set incremental growth goals rather than exponential growth goals. They try to increase sales by 5%, 10% or 25% rather than shortening the time to get at done. Faster is more exciting!
- They plan to increase activity rather than make changes to increase productivity. They try to make more calls, emails, or demos rather than learning how to make better calls, etc. Work smarter or harder?
A few years ago, someone asked "Can You Build a Million Dollar Business?" and I answered.
How about this quote from May 2016? "I was doing OK. I sold 9 six figure projects in 7 years. I've sold 3 projects since I started getting coached 5 months ago and I've just scratched the surface. Now I am looking at my goals and thinking, 'Geez, I can do way better than that. ~Michael Douglas, Director of Accounts at ENFOS (You might want to read that again. 7 years > 9 sales then 3 sales in 5 months?)
But, what about you right now? How much did you sell in 2017? What if I could help you sell that much in the first quarter of 2018? Talk to me before Thanksgiving. Get started now and I'll work with you through the end of March. Start here.