Selling ... Still a Numbers Game?

I began my B2B selling career back in 1977 when I went to work for a national company and I was assigned a geographic territory in Los Angeles where I was expected to make 30 in-person cold-calls each day. We were offering business calculators that averaged $500 each although we also provided specialized and accounting systems that could land for over $10,000.

My goal was to place at least 5 of these calculators, each week, in offices on a trial basis. The classic “puppy dog close”. If I placed 5 calculators on trial during the week, I could expect to make at least one sale and each sale could be multiple units. Our most popular model listed for $479.00 and I could make up to $145.80 on each of these. My comp program was straight commission.

We made all of these calls for the simple reason that it was the only way that we could determine the potential of each and every business, in our territory, to purchase our products. We also learned that you can’t judge a book by its cover as sometimes even the most dilapidated buildings disguised sales gold.

The numbers did work …

30 calls yielded 6 face-to-face meetings per day
6 meetings = 1 trial placement
1 out of every 5 trials would result in a sale
Each sale averaged $2,000
I made an average of $400 on each sale

Once you had your ratios figured out, you could even work them backwards if you wanted to make more money. You could make more calls, improve your ratios, or find bigger and better accounts. Increasing your call counts could be very difficult to do as there were only 8 customer-facing hours in the day and you still had to do demos, follow-up, schedule appointments, and close business.

We rarely used the phone for prospecting and our internet was the old newspaper racks that were found at the library. Manual record keeping and reports were done after hours. Still, sales goals today have not changed. We continue to attempt to discover the right prospect and then attempt to convert them into a paying customer. Read on at Maximize Social Business …

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Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!