[E86] Q&A Week: What is the ideal formula for calls to be successful in sales?

Kicking off Week 18 of The Sales Experience Podcast with a question about the right formula for success in sales.

Fundamentally, you can only control your actions based on your intentions. You cannot control results.

So what is the right amount of actions to take?

In this episode, I answer the question “What is the ideal formula for calls to be successful in sales?”

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Episode 86 – Transcript

Hi and welcome to the sales experience podcast.

If you’re new, if this is the first time you’ve listened to an episode, thank you for being here. So glad that you found it. If you’re unfamiliar with this show or with me, my focus is on helping salespeople improve and build the [inaudible] ideal sales experience for them.

I deal with a lot of different industries, a lot of different sales people in the past dealt with many different verticals. Business to consumer, business to business. My goal is to help you build your sales career around an experience that you’re happy with.

You feel satisfied in helping people and providing value to your prospects and then on their side they are getting a sales experience. Turns them into a raving fan after they purchased from you and they know they made a good choice by working with you and buying whatever you’re selling, whether it’s a product or service.

If you’re a seasoned listener, if you’ve been listening to the episodes, this is number 86 I appreciate some of you, longtime listeners that have been downloading and listening to every episode, so glad that you’re here this week.

I’m going to kick off another set of questions to answer knowing myself and how long I can go on and on. I am going to take one question at a time. Go through this. My goal is to break this down under 10 minutes, give you the maximum amount of value I can in this short episode so that while you’re driving at the gym, getting ready for work at work, whatever it is, you can get some value out of this.

All right, for the question today, it is what is the ideal formula for calls to be successful in sales? Here’s the challenge with this one. I get this a lot from owners, managers, people who are dealing with sales organizations.

Maybe they’re a vendor, sometimes salespeople themselves. The challenge is there is no one set formula other than the results that you want. Obviously that’s the main goal. Whether there’s a quota or a goal that you have for the money you want to make or what needs to be done as a minimum for your job.

That’s obviously the fundamental goal. Now, the challenge is you cannot control results. If we talk about, let’s say, losing weight or working out in the gym and getting stronger, if your goal is to get to a certain level, let’s say strength.

You can’t necessarily control the results. You don’t know what your body’s going to be capable of. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know if you can actually get to where you want to get to and in the time frame especially that you want to get there, but what you can control his actions, whatever you have in place for your sales related job.

you’ve got to focus on the action steps, number of calls, outbound calls, you’re taking inbound, the amount of time you’re spending on phone calls, whether you’re leaving voicemail, the number of presentations, demos that you’re doing, the number of contracts you’re sending out, emails you’re sending out, what you’re getting back.

You cannot force somebody else to buy. You can’t force the sale. You can’t control whether that person is buys or not. You can influence it. You can persuade them. You can do your best and the more experience you have, the more of a professional you are and the better skilled you are, the higher the percentage that you’re going to generate that sale, but you can’t control it.

What you can control is your action steps, the number of calls, the amount of time you’re on the phone; you know the number of emails, outreach, whatever that looks like for you.

All you can do is keep plugging away, keep planting seeds with every phone call that you have and what you want to do is you want to go to your manager. If you’re a salesperson and you want to find out from them, what is the ideal formula of action steps that you’ve got to do?

Is it 50 calls a day? Is it 500 calls a day? Is it sending a hundred emails along with those 50 calls? Is it reaching out? Is it making sure that you’re sending at least three contracts or presentations a day? Whatever that looks like for you.

You’ve got to get that formula down and focus on actions. Focus on what you can control, which is the things that you do. A lot of times people say, well, it’s, you know, and I’ve said this before, it’s a phone job. If you’re in telephone sales and so you’ve got to be on the phone, right?

The challenge is you can’t control that either. You can’t control. If people answer, you could call a hundred people and leave a hundred voicemails and that may be a good day in your industry, in your vertical, in your role that you’re doing, or it may be not a good day, might not be enough effort, need to put in more so always remember that the fundamental thing is you cannot control results.

Now what you can control is your intention. If your intention is to close sales, your intention is to get to that goal, to get to your market where you want to be with either the number of deals that you’re closing or the income that you want to be generating for yourself from your sales role. If you’ve set that intention, then you will find a way.

You will go through barriers. You won’t make excuses and you’ll focus on that action steps that get you there. You call 50 people, nobody answers. Your manager doesn’t have another list for you. You’re going to go find more prospects. Maybe it’s LinkedIn, maybe it’s online.

If you don’t have access to that, if your company just gives you what they give you, you’re going to find other ways. You’re going to push your manager. You’re going to ask for more leads or when you have a phone call, you’re going to set your intention well.

You’re going to go deeper into those conversations instead of letting somebody off the hook cause they got to think about it. You’re going to push past that because your intention is to enroll people who qualify in what you’re selling. [Inaudible] they are a good fit for you.

Then you want to focus on enrolling that person, selling that person as much as possible, highest percentage conversion and with the highest ticket price possible relative to what they’re buying. Right?

Sometimes people focus on number of sales, but then they give away the farm and they’re undercutting the company’s revenue or profits and that doesn’t help either. So remember, can’t control your results. You can control your intentions, which are going to drive your action steps and you will figure out a way you’ll improve, you’ll get better. And then remember sales are a long-term game for you. It might be within a day or a week, a month, a quarter, a whole year, whatever that is for you.

Make sure that you’re setting your intentions on the right time frame. If you’re making phone calls and sending emails, you might close any deals today, but then you might close them tomorrow or next week depending on your time for Yep. Closing sales, what that looks like for your sales cycle, and so make sure you set your attentions on the right.

Yeah, time frame and then give it everything you’ve got for that. Hopefully that helps. I know there’s no exact ideal formula other than you know the effort you’re putting in, which is calls, emails, messages, text messages, whatever that might be, and then also the time you’re spending with prospects. Remember, and I’m just going to throw this in here at the end, you can’t enroll anybody.

You can’t sell anything via emails or text messages or chat that has any value. If you’re in sales, you’re trying to sell something that somebody can’t just [inaudible] order online.

If they could, the company wouldn’t need you to be in sales, so be careful you don’t try to do a sale or take the easy way out by just sending emails, sending text messages, sending chats to prospective clients. You’ve got to get on the phone or face to face.

You’ve got to have those interactions. If you’re a professional that’s actually moving somebody forward on a sale that just can’t be done online by an order taker. Hope that helps. Thanks for listening. Make sure to subscribe to this. If you want to keep getting these episodes, you can do that on iTunes, Snitcher, Spotify.

It’s also on sound cloud, Google play podcast. It’s on the cutter consulting group.com website. You have any comments, questions, any feedback? Feel free to send me a message through the cutter consulting group.com site as well as on LinkedIn. I’m on there a lot. Yeah, you can send me a message.

Always, remember that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.