I was asked a question this week about sales. "Is it just a numbers game?" my client asked. "If I sit down and talk to more people about my business, surely I'll get more business..."
My response was "Well, it's not quite a simple as that."
About 2 1/2 years ago, I had this same thought for my business, resulting in a really hard drive by me to get two potential clients a week that I could sit down with. And I did it! I was really proud of myself - that is, until I look at the number who were turning into clients and realised that it was only about 2 out of every 10 people I was seeing.
In other words, it really didn't matter how many people I was seeing on a weekly basis because the number actually buying from me was so low. So, I realised that there must be something actually wrong with my sales process.
After analysing and reviewing my sales in depth, what became clear was that the people I was seeing were not really interested in buying from me. They wanted some quick tips, or they wanted referrals, but they didn't actually want to buy my services. I needed to weed out this type of person - not that I didn't want to speak to them, but I needed to find some way of not spending at least an hour and a half of my time with them.
What I started to do was put in place a phone call before I met the person. This served a number of purposes - firstly, it allowed me to start building a relationship with that person. Next, it helped me to understand what they wanted and if it was a quick tip, I was able to give them that over the phone and finally, it helped me to pre-qualify that person, so that the people I actually sat down with for an hour and a half were serious about buying my services.
By pre-qualifying people I now see at least one person a week but I'm turning around 8 of the people I see into customers. I'm happy with that ratio!
So today's tip - don't worry about how many you see - increase the number of people you turn into customers!
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