There are so many out there that tell you they can improve your selling. They proclaim to be a sales coach or sales trainer. But in reality, they are either a motivational speaker or a marketing coach. What they do is offer you motivation or more prospects to see. Both are good, but neither is making you sell better! Being motivated and/or seeing more people just makes you work harder, not smarter. You’re not really getting better. To get better at least one of three things must improve:
1 – Close Rate:
As simple as it sounds, very few people pay attention their close rate. How many prospects do you close compared to how many you meet? The majority of professionals don’t know! Out of 10 prospects is it 2 or 4 or 7? Most just look at the number of overall closes and not the percentage.
So, as an example, you had 4 closes last month and then you decide to hire a new “guru”. This month you have 8 closes and you say, “WOW! My guru is awesome!” But, how many people did you meet? You usually meet 20 people in a month, but this month you met 40. Still good, right? NO! Because you had to work twice as hard to get twice the closes! In fact, you’ll have to work that hard on a continual basis to keep those 8 closes per month! In addition, if you want 16 sales in a month, you have to meet 80 people! This is terrible.
Before the guru you closed at 20% and after the guru you still close at 20%! But the guru is a hero and walks away smiling? Why?
What if instead, you learned tactics to close 8 people for every 20 you met? Now you haven’t worked harder, but you’ve doubled your sales! Now, you can decide to meet more people or you can build other aspects of your business! That is valuable - that is powerful - that is better selling!
2 – Price Points (Dollar Value):
If you ask most professionals what is the average dollar value of their sales, they don’t know. If we follow the Marketing/Motivation guru way, it doesn’t matter. We just need to work harder and meet more people and we’ll make more money. Bad idea!
What if instead, you figured out ways to show your prospect enough value so that they would accept a higher price tag, or negotiate the price less, or buy more? You would bring in more profit WITHOUT meeting more people. And now exponentially, you get more if you decide to increase meetings. That is better selling!
3 – Sales Cycle:
How long does it take to close a deal? 1 week? 3 months? 2 years? If the time it takes you to close a deal shrinks by 50%, that means you can go through double the number of sales processes in the same time! That means twice as much revenue and profit in the same time. That is better sales!
So why do you care? Because it’s much easier for both YOU and the SALES GURU to not attempt real change in these three areas! It’s difficult to do. It’s difficult to teach. It’s difficult to sell. So instead, you get to work harder with motivational stories and fun marketing tricks. Not bad, but not better selling and not sustainable, particularly if you are in a small business. Efficiency is everything!
Envision gaining all three. As an example, currently you meet 10 prospects in a month, it takes you 8 days to close on average, you average closing 2 out of the 10 and you average $1,000 per sale. That’s $2,000 per month. Now imagine that the next month you shorten your sales cycle by 2 days, close 3 out of 10 prospects and average $1,500 per sale. That’s $4,500 per month (a 125% increase) with a 25% decrease in time!
This is what you MUST demand from your “Sales Gurus”! If you don’t, you’ll end up working harder and not smarter. You’ll get a system that requires constant maintenance. so you can keep up your motivation and hard work. Or, you can gain skills to make closing deals more efficient forever.
So, the next time someone tells you that they are a sales guru, coach or trainer, ask them if they can guarantee to increase your close rate, your price points or decrease your sales cycle. If they can’t guarantee at east one, preferable two or three, you know what to tell them!
Good luck!
Larry
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