PSYCHOLOGY
periences, then your rational mind is smart enough to get the set of experiences. Eventually, the intuitive, emotional second mind will come around. You can work with it, you can discipline it – but not just through an act of will power. SP: Let me give a concrete example. A salesperson has set up five appoint- ments in the course of the day. He is meeting with five different kinds of people. Let’s say he has met with two of them before and three of them are new prospects. He has done research on the companies – on the people he doesn’t know – and tried to find out as much as he can. However, he has a fairly small amount of information ex- cept that each company he is calling on needs his product. From the time he prepares to drive to that pros- pect’s office, how should he prepare himself? Should he be watching his
SELLING TIP
Measure the Right Numbers for Sales Success JIM CATHCART
Winners keep score. In any contest, you’ll usually find that the winners always know where they stand. Whether it is batting average, yards per carry, lap times, or free throws, they are keeping the numbers…in their head and usually on paper as well. What metrics do you keep?
In selling, I call these “The Magic Metrics of Selling,” and there are only two of them. These can tell you more about one’s sales success than all the other measures combined. They are simply: 1. The number of contacts with people who can say “yes” to a purchase
2. The number of times you asked them to buy today
Measure your total number of calls and you’ll discover your activity level. Measure the number of calls to con- tacts and you’ll see how efficient your calls are. Measure the contacts alongside the actual presentations made and you’ll see how many times you optimized the con- tact event. But, when you measure the number of times you asked a qualified buyer to make a purchase, you’ll see your income increase!
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own feelings? DR. EPSTEIN: He should do what- ever seems to him reasonable to do at the moment. My point is that there is not a fixed formula of what to do, but that he should continually be able to learn from what he is doing – what works best and worst under the circumstances. Let’s say one prospect says to him, “Look, we are not interested in buying from a new supplier.” He goes away. Now, what he should do is see what he can learn from that experience. Let’s say he says, “What an idiot I am. There I go, blowing it again. I really am a jerk.” Lots of people tend to think in those self-critical terms. One of the implications of thinking that way is how constructive or destructive it is. He is already miserable and now he is simply adding insult to injury by thinking more in ways that make him
more miserable and contribute noth- ing to improvement.
He would observe what he is doing and say, “Yes, I notice I am being self-critical. That is clearly destructive; I have got to work on stopping that. I don’t know where it came from, but it is there, and it is something I would be better off without. What can I learn from this experience about how to behave next time? I should be careful about that initial line I have.” Now, he may well fail again, as he has such a well-established habit. Again, if he uses the process of con- structive thinking, he will be aware of what he did and he will not react negatively to himself as a person. He will say, “There, again, I goofed as I did the first time. This is a well- ingrained habit and I am going to have to continue working on it.” In other words, he will approach all tasks with
Why would your income increase just by measur- ing these “asks”? It’s “The Hawthorne Effect,” a phe- nomenon discovered through findings of a late-1920s productivity study performed at the Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric factory in Cicero, IL. When observers started studying people’s behavior at the factory, the people became more productive. This resulted in the idea that, when we go through the process of measuring things, we also tend to take actions that improve those measurements – and asking people to buy is the primary cause of purchases. If you don’t ask, you don’t get! Start today to keep a chart or journal of the number of times each day you ask a qualified buyer to buy. Hav- ing a wall chart or a pop-up that captures your atten- tion numerous times daily is a real help. Without even consciously noticing it, you will become aware of it. This awareness may cause you to make one more call today or to remember to ask for the order just one more time. Measure the contacts as well as the asks so you can track each of them. You may end up asking one person to buy in three or four different ways during a conver- sation, so the numbers might show far more asks than contacts. Either way, you will see a direct correlation to your income. More calls on people who can say yes – and more asks to confirm a purchase – will surely lead to more money in your pocket on payday. How many did you ask today?
Jim Cathcart is the founder of
Cathcart.com and author of The Self Motivation Handbook.
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