| When I was a kid I was always fascinated by | | | | per month. Seventy percent of these trips are |
| numbers. Not that I slam-dunked math or | | | | sold by phone with the remaining are sold on face |
| anything. I was fascinated by numbers because I | | | | to face sales calls. |
| loved baseball and loved reading the box scores. | | | | When Billy Rae and his manager look at the sales |
| Basically, box scores are percentages. If you hit X | | | | behaviors he needs to do they'll look at these: |
| number of times and get hits X number of times | | | | 1. How many outbound telephone calls does the |
| then your batting average will be X. | | | | rep have to make? |
| As I moved into sales and sales management I | | | | 2. How many live connects with prospects does |
| was a fanatic about figuring out what I or my | | | | he need to have? |
| sales team needed to do to hit revenue goals. It | | | | 3. What is his percentage of total calls to live |
| went something like this. OK, last year we did | | | | connects? |
| $12.5M in sales as a region. Management is asking | | | | 4. How much time is spent on each phone call? |
| for a 20 percent increase in sales, which means | | | | 5. Of the live calls how many of those does the |
| the region has to do $15M for the year. Then the | | | | rep close for a trip? |
| numbers really start caroming around inside the | | | | 6. What is the percentage of closes to live talks? |
| brain. Let's see, Jim did $2.8M last year so he | | | | 7. What is the percentage of closes to total calls? |
| needs to do......Beth did $3.2M last year so she | | | | 8. How many face to face sales calls does the |
| needs to do....Most of the time I didn't need a | | | | rep have to make? |
| calculator because I'd been juggling numbers in my | | | | 9. What percentage of these does the rep close? |
| brain since age 6. | | | | 10. What is the closing percentage on face to |
| Sometime in the late 80's I was traveling with a | | | | face calls? |
| salesperson and we were talking about his | | | | 11. How many total closes does Billy Rae need to |
| revenue goals for the year. Man, this guy blew | | | | make his target? |
| me away. He described what he had to sell each | | | | 12. Is this a one call close, two call close? |
| day and week in order to hit his numbers. He | | | | 13. How long does each sales call on the phone |
| broke his sales life into sales activities that he | | | | take? |
| needed to do everyday. How many accounts did | | | | 14. How long does each face to face sales call |
| he need to see, how many prospects did he need | | | | take? |
| to see in those accounts, what products should | | | | The scenario does not take into consideration if |
| he sell and what should be the margin? He | | | | the rep receives leads from ads or if he has to |
| practically broke out the number of bathroom | | | | make cold calls. Obviously, we also don't know |
| visits for each day! | | | | how good a salesperson Billy Rae is. Or what his |
| I was impressed but not enough to remember it | | | | sales process is. The focus of this article is merely |
| until about 10 years later when I began to train | | | | on the sales behaviors and the quantities of those |
| and coach salespeople and sales managers. The | | | | sales behaviors the rep needs to execute. |
| idea is really pretty simple. It becomes more | | | | Let's face it, this is a pretty vanilla example. The |
| complex during implementation. | | | | rep selling high tech capital equipment has a |
| The question a manager has to ask of the | | | | completely different sales cycle than this example |
| salesperson is-what are the sales behaviors | | | | illustrates. The rep with a four inch thick catalog |
| (activities) you need to do daily and in what | | | | will have a harder time placing a dollar value on an |
| quantity? Here's an oversimplified example. Billy | | | | average sale. However, the point is that no |
| Rae sells golf vacation packages. He has a base | | | | matter what a company sells the sales manager |
| salary of 40K and gets 10% commission of the | | | | and rep can wrap sales behaviors and numbers |
| trip cost. He sells 10 different packages and has | | | | around the product. Call it Six Sigma or metrics, I |
| figured out that the average trip cost is 4K. Being | | | | don't care. The point is, a salesperson absolutely |
| a math wizard Billy Rae figured out that he | | | | has to know what his or her sales behaviors need |
| makes $400 per trip sold. His quota is 10 trips sold | | | | to be. |