B2B Sales Is A Numbers Game – And Here's How to Win | Salesman Podcast

It is common for sales managers to say that sales is a numbers game. If this is what you have been told you may be wondering what this statement means. The simple explanation of what this statement means is that more activity leads to more sales. But this still leaves you with questions like: * What type of activity? * How much activity? * Is it possible to improve the outcomes from the action? If you Google the phrase “Sales is a numbers game.” you'll find many articles claiming this statement is false or a myth. But in reality, it is true. It's just that working in B2B sales has changed over the years. Where more activity to close more sales might have been practical in the past, there is more to the story in today's sales environment. But, before we dive deeper into what that means today, let's start with the basics of sales success. The basics of how sales is a numbers game works Of course, if you are going to play the numbers game in sales, you have to know the numbers. Crazy, right? Yet many salespeople don't track any metrics at all. This means that you need to track your activity every day. For example, if you are making prospecting calls to cold leads, keep track of: * How many calls you make? * How many decision makers you speak to? * How many discovery calls you schedule? * How many of those meetings result in a demo? * How many of those demos result in a proposal? * How many of those proposals end in a closed, won sale? * What is the average dollar value of the deals you close? Once you have tracked these metrics for a while, you'll have enough data to figure out how many calls you need to make to hit your sales targets. In a perfect world, where you hit your sales target, your data might look like this: * Sales target = $10,000 * Calls made = 1600 * Decision makers spoken to = 320 * Discovery calls scheduled = 80 * Demos scheduled = 40 * Proposals given = 20 * Closed deals = 10 * Average dollar value of closed deals = $1,000 In this case, you would need to make 1600 calls to close 10 deals worth $1,000 each to hit your sales target of $10,000. Your numbers are probably very different than this. So, how can this numbers game help you? The point of this example is to show how to determine how much activity you need to do to hit your sales target. Start with your monthly, quarterly, or annual sales target. Then, divide it by the average dollar value of a closed deal to determine how many deals you need to close to hit that target. Once you know how many deals you need to close, work backward to figure out how many calls you need to make to close that many sales. You can then take that number and divide it into weekly and daily activities. Okay, that is the basics of how the numbers game of sales works. But today, there is so much more to this game. Identify areas for improvement The primary example of sales is a numbers game, if your sales target increased or you wanted to exceed your target, you'd need to increase your amount of activity. But why not work smarter instead of harder? Making improvements in your skills and sales technique will result in better selling strategies. A small amount of sales training advice in the right places can lead to massive upticks in appointments booked and results. By tracking your activity data as described above, you can start improving your skills to close more business from the same number of calls, for example. But be methodical in your approach to measure your progress to recognize what is causing changes to your performance. How does this work? Testing, testing, testing There are many aspects of your sales process where you can u...