It should come as no surprise that your top sales people track their success. They’re the people that know exactly what they’ve sold, what they need to hit budget, what appointments are booked for the afternoon. What you might not be so close to is the language difference between those top sales people, and your average performers. I love language as a powerful way to change beliefs and behaviours in an organisation and we’ll revisit language over a series of blog posts. In this instance, I’m talking about the language of achievement for sales people – your top sales people TALK IN NUMBERS.
Let’s look at some responses you might commonly hear from your sales people to the simple question “How has your day been?”
SUCCESSFUL SALES PERSON:
“Awesome! I’ve booked 2 appointments, seen 1 quality client and created 2 leads from following up with existing clients.”
AVERAGE SALES PERSON:
“Good thanks. Really busy. I’ve got heaps of work done, helped heaps of customers.”
SUCCESSFUL SALES PERSON:
“Good. I’ve seen 3 quality appointments and made 3 sales from each of them. I’ve also got 2 solid follow ups for tomorrow morning that I plan to book appointments for.”
AVERAGE SALES PERSON:
“Awesome. I saw lots of people today, helped them with a lot of products. I don’t quite remember everything, but I think it was a good revenue day.”
SUCCESSFUL SALES PERSON:
“Really good, but I’m worried about my sales this week. I needed to make 110% of budget today to close out my month really strongly and I only made 70%.”
AVERAGE SALES PERSON:
“Great. I’ve seen lots of customers, got some good follow ups. I think I’m really close to being at target this month.”
Do you see the difference?
It’s not necessarily WHAT was achieved, but the KNOWLEDGE of EXACTLY the number they did, needed or exceeded. In every business I have worked with, there is a common theme – in every instance, the most successful people in their role, track their success. The average sales person in the examples above may have had a day that was BETTER than the successful sales person, but we don’t know! Even if they had a great day, how do they repeat it, because they have no idea if it was the number of appointments, the amount of phone calls or the type of conversations had that made the difference because they DON’T TRACK THE NUMBERS.
Our successful sales people know where they are up to each day, what revenue they have made, what leads they have created what’s in their pipeline,what growth they need. They talk in NUMBERS!! Ask your sales people how their day has been and check their language – who knows and talks their numbers?