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In my coaching meetings with clients, two connected trends come up often. The first is the surprising information that very few companies and salespeople ever unearth out what happens to individuals who do not purchase. The second is an exaggerated belief in how loyal customers are and a belief that they will call us back at a later time. This second belief costs untold sales when we stop trying to get a deal today since we believe we will get it in the future if we don?t sell too hard. To prove to you of some of the points I wish to make in this article, I am going to ask you four questions that have nothing to do with your business. Go on? take a guess at the answers. 1. How much does an standard 10 gallon hat hold? 2. Is it better for health to me a married man or a single man? 3. How much does it cost to print a US $5.00 bill? 4. How many people are bitten by other humans in New York City annually? The answers to these burning questions in order of asking is: 1. 3 quarts 2. Married ? an average married man lives 10 years longer than a single man 3. Cost to make a $5.00 bill is $0.04 4. 1,600 people report being bitten by other humans in NYC annually The reason I asked those questions is to demonstrate that many statistics are surprisingly different than we would conjecture. This applies to bites as well as to business. Unless you measure things like what happens to people who do not buy, you may guess wrong and make serious mistakes in sales and in management. I believe that to get more sales and profits, you need to know the real (not guessed answers to at least the following: How many ctrulyand presentations are made each week? What percentage of presentations result in a sale? Those statistics are valuable to know but in addition, it is very important to know what happens to the people who don?t buy. How many buy from a competitor? How many buy from a ?big box? store? How many just leave the problem alone? How many buy from another dealer of your same brand of product or service? Why didn?t they buy? This information is so significant to the decisions you will make about the brand you carry, your sales team, your prices and your market approach; that it is worth investing a little to obtain accurate answers. It may be advisable to have a person at your company assigned to find out. They could call everyone who doesn?t buy and ask. They might offer a small gift to get the information. This person getting this market intelligence should not be a salesperson as salespeople may not want certain statistics to come out. In addition to calling to ask, you could do follow up mailings after 3 months, 6 months or 12 months to find out if they are glad with the decision they made. Large companies invest plenty in this kind of ?market research? but you can get this critical information for very little money with just a few phone calls and post cards. It is not possible to deduce these statistics without actually getting information. You may ?feel? you know but are you correct? Are your prices too high? Maybe they are too low. Do you really lose many sales to big box stores? Which competitors are taking your business and why? The answers and the actions that will increase sales and profits are there for the asking. Make an effort to inexpensively assemble these statistics, investigate the results without prejudice and make the changes that will dramatically build up your control over your company as well as your sales and profits. Carl Davidson is the author of many on line sales training programs inclusing Secrets Of Closing Sales And Overcoming Objections. This on line training program is available at www.Close-more-sales.Info or call 716-580-3384.
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