Conversation Conversion

We have a few clients that are almost starting from scratch. They've had a few conversations with close friends in their network that resulted in what might be a few 'pity' sales, but they're not where they need to be. So, it might be appropriate for me to share a story about Rick in 1985.

I had just gotten hired as the sales manager of a collection agency. Zero experience in the industry, but the CEO knew that my former employer had a reputation for hiring good salespeople. I realized I had no metrics. So, here's where I started.

The best month that this 60 year old agency ever had was 12 new clients in a month.

Equilibrium

In the graph, the yellow line represents the time that I spent making first contacts. My goal is, was and always has been 12 calls per hour. Dial, talk, hang up. Repeat. Leave a message if nobody's there. My goal was to work 8 hours/day. My only focus was to make the call, have a conversation. Everything after that was the green line. Second, third, etc calls were the green line. Meetings were the green line. Discovery calls, demos, proposals, closing calls were all green line. My KPIs appeared in the orange circle.

My KPIs weren't guesses. They were what actually happened in the first day, week, month and I recorded them because I eventually needed to attach my behavior to a goal, but here's what happened. I never made 100 contacts in a day. At the beginning, I had several days in the 90's but surprise(!), sometimes people wanted to ask a question, tell me about there problem or experience, sign up to be a customer. I don't remember the exact numbers, but that first month I made well over 1,000 calls and got business from 21 customers (a new company record). I left that job after 8 months. I never made over 1,000 calls in a month after the first month and I never got less than 20 new customers in a month (several new company records).

May I add 3 things.

1. I inherited 2 salespeople when I joined that agency. I did what I did the first month. They started doing what I did and started generating over 20 new clients combined every month. If they could do it, you can do it.
2. Other stuff gets added to the green line. Delivering services. Fixing problems. etc. which takes time from your 8 hour day and leaves less time for starting new conversations. Just adjust your equilibrium and focus on higher impact contact activity like Project 200 and Greg's realization (second #2) and referrals without asking.
3. I don't remember the third, but let's try: Are you in the way of your own success? Are you killing your sales?

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