Keeping Score—The Best Sales Motivator

Management consultants having been preaching, for years, how important it is for a business to measure all of its activities, from a complete breakdown of all receipts, expenditures, time to complete specific tasks; to everything vital needed to produce and deliver a product or service. The purpose of this is to give a business the necessary information to manage every aspect of the business towards attaining profitability.

Sales people who do not follow this same sort of discipline, while managing their activities, lose valuable opportunities to maximize their income, make their job more satisfying, and provide their company with the best possible representation.

As a sales person, you must assume specific responsibilities given to you by your company. Often these entail managing a certain territory or geographic region. Within that territory, there is a finite number of prospective customers who can use your product and/or service. Some may already be customers. Those who are not customers must be identified. This remaining pool is your potential customers list. Each one must be treated as if it were the only name on the list.

It may not be possible to sell your product to everyone on this list, but not knowing who they are guarantees a directionless sales approach and makes it absolutely impossible to sustain and meet sales goals. Make a list of your prospects and review it every day. You may have to re-work the list, over and over, again, as you call on them. You may need several lists based upon a variety of criteria, such as different products offered, or specific geographic areas. These lists will become the foundation of your ‘scorecard.’

Keep track of who you contact, who you sell, and who are already customers. Only by keeping detailed records of your activity, can you, then, determine your success.

All potential customers are not equal. The more obvious prospects are usually the same ones that are called on, first, by competitive salespeople. Not to be totally ignored, these potential customers may not be your best choice to focus all your sales energy. It may be more beneficial to sell to smaller or less well known customers, resulting in a quicker and more profitable sale (for your company as well as for yourself) than spending an inordinate amount of time with a potentially larger customer. Measure the time that you expend on all your calls against what profit that you bring to the company and what you are compensated.

All customers share some degree of affinity with each other. This affinity factor may be the same industry, the same community, the same end-users, or the same suppliers. That means they often communicate with each other about business matters. Reputation becomes a running topic of conversation among businesses. Satisfied customers will always praise the products and/or services that have helped them. They will also acknowledge a professional salesperson who tried to help them, regardless of whether they bought from that person or not. Every sale or non-sale, if conducted in the most professional manner, is an opportunity for a referral to someone else on your prospect list. What better introduction can a salesperson have than from a happy customer or friend? Keep track of that metric, as well.

Since sales is an inter-personal activity, you are inevitably going to encounter a prospect with which you will clash. Whatever the reason, you can avoid disaster, by not fueling the incident with negatives directed to the prospect. Reasoning, arguing, or trying to best the prospect will never work. The best solution is to smile, thank them for their time, and leave. If the reason a customer is railing at you is that he heard bad reports about your company, or you, from another customer, thank the prospect for the information and leave. That dissatisfied customer must then be mollified, either by you, or your customer/client services department as soon as possible.

You may never find out what was at the root of the conflict, but you can preserve your reputation and your company’s by avoiding an all out shouting match. Know that you risk eliminating a good portion of your prospect list by alienating just one prospect.

What’s the real point of all these list and records? Most sales people have pretty healthy egos and strive to succeed. By keeping diligent score of all your activities, sale by sale, you are measuring a very positive metric: success. You will, quantitatively and qualitatively, see how well you are doing. The more success that you have, the better you will feel about yourself. Your increased self-confidence will lead to desiring more success and the easier it will become.

Early in my sales career, I sold a business service to doctors, dentists, insurance professionals, as well as to other related companies in downtown Chicago. I had a rudimentary list of all prospects in my territory. Once I sorted this list by address, I went to each building’s directory and noted the room number for each prospect, adding any previously unrecorded prospects. I, then, reworked that list by floor and, ultimately, had separate lists for each building. I arranged the prospects by floor with the uppermost floor at the top of the list. Making sales calls entailed taking the elevator to the top floor and working my way down. It took several years, but I eventually sold every professional office in two major buildings in the Loop. I wasn’t satisfied until I accomplished that goal, but I owned those buildings. I loved making sales calls that way, because I could see my mounting successes. Nobody had to give me a pep talk about my sales. All I had to do was keep score!