Watch this on Youtube:
Hi, this is Jason Kanigan, the owner and founder of Sales on Fire and welcome to another Sales Triathlete Minute.
Has this happened to you? You make about ten dials after screwing up your courage and what happens? You know, about half don’t answer or aren’t in, can’t talk with you. Of the rest, you know, maybe two or three tell you that they can’t talk right now. It’s a bad time. And then of the rest there’s one or two remaining that you could talk to, but almost immediately they tell you hey I’m not interested and hang up. So this is kind of depressing and you give up. Right?
So what went wrong here? Well you didn’t know the number of dials that you needed to make in order to succeed with making prospecting calls. It’s a lot more than you think. Do you remember the law of averages from the last sales triathlete video? Half of the people you call won’t be in, and of the rest half of them won’t be able to talk right now. So that means you need a lot more tries sort of “at bat” in order to be successful with this method. So know your numbers.
Do you know you can calculate the number of dials you need to make before you start dialing? It’s an estimate, and you’ll get sharper and sharper with it the more you do it. There’s three concepts here: Dials, conversations and sales. You need so many dials to get a conversation; and then you need so many conversations in order to make a sale. Now at the beginning you’re going to have to estimate these and I would estimate on the high side if I were you. Like maybe 20 dials to get one conversation because your ability to start off the conversation with somebody is not that good at the start. But after a week or two of doing this it will get much better. And then you need so many conversations in order to make a sale. And that will improve as well over time. So for example you might have to make 200 dials to get 20 conversations to make one sale.
Now you know. Now you have a target. Now you can plan out how many dials you need to make per day in order to reach your sales targets. And your numbers will improve so keep track of them. As time goes on the number of dials you need to make in order to get a conversation will go down dramatically, and also so will the number of conversations you need to have in order to make a sale.
So stick with it. Know your numbers. Keep track of them: Dials, conversations and sales. And you will make sales.
Thanks for joining me, Jason Kanigan, for this quick Sales Triathlete Minute. And check out our other Sales on Fire coaching tips.
