Know Your Numbers
People say “sales is about numbers”. It is but you need to focus on the right numbers not the wrong ones.
At a basic level you should focus on the number of leads you have.
But unless you have a handle on your conversion rate, you won’t know how many leads you need.
The lower your conversion rate, the more leads you need.
Conversely, the higher your conversion rate the lower leads you need.
Then you need to consider your Average Sale Amount (ASA).
If you have a high ASA and a high conversion rate you need less leads.
These are the three main metrics you need to manage (leads, conversion rate and average sale amount).
Alongside this, I’ve sat in many rural reps’ trucks who don’t know what their sales target is or how they are tracking against it (which makes it kinda hard to plan your sales cycle right…?).
I can bet you the number they do know is their salary.
Or their bank balance.
If you or they don’t know your target, you’re likely to miss it as it’s hard to hit a target you can’t see.
Make sure you ask your Sales Manager to keep you informed about how you’re tracking. That way you’ll know how much you need to do to hit it (don’t worry all your high performers, you’re excused as you do this already : ).
When I do debriefs with the rural reps I train, we talk about their Required Run Rate (RRR) to make sure they know their numbers.
Let’s use an example:
- you have a $1million target
- your average sale is $35,000
- your current conversion rate is 1 in 5 (20%)
This means you need to have 143 leads in your pipeline to make your target.
If you can increase your conversion rate to 1 in 4 (25%) then you only need 114 leads. That’s 20% less leads you need to make or create.
If you can increase your average sale by 10% (from $35,000 to $38,500) and you’ve increased your conversion rate from 1 in 5 (20% to 1 in 4 (25%), then you only need 104 leads.
That’s 40 less leads than you needed before (almost a third less!).
That means less days away from family, less missed kids school sports or having to stay in motels mid-week.
Work smarter, not harder as they say.
“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
James Harrington, IBM Executive
“When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.”
Thomas Monson
Want to know how you get those numbers?
The answer is simple: you train for it.
Just like any professional athlete would.
That’s the power of sales training.
It can make a massive difference to your numbers.
The ROI for sales training stands at 353%. Roughly speaking, for every dollar a rural business like yours spends on training, it receives about $4.53 back.
The discipline and dedication to continual sales training is what separates the marvellous from the mediocre.
Just like sports teams and professionals. Sales is a numbers game after all.
Be better.
PS. If you want to talk you know where to find us : ) We guarantee to get you 5 new farmer leads in 30 days. Shall we talk?
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I am on a mission to help rural business owners, sales managers and rural reps get the results and respect they deserve. Please make sure you Follow Me here on LinkedIn so you don’t miss my articles.
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