Only 10% of salespeople

make more than 3 contacts

with a prospective Customer.

80% of sales are made

on the 5th to 12th contact.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the message behind these stats from the National Sales Executive Association, as brought to the surface on LinkedIn by

Douglas Green, National Field Market Manager, Healthcare at LanguageLine Solutions, Austin, TX.

Take the bitter pill! If you own or manage any part of a small or medium-size business, or if you are part of an individual or group professional practice, like it or not, you ARE a salesperson! If you can’t accept that and move forward, your business or practice won’t move forward. It is that simple.

So let’s explore this for a minute:

As a salesperson, what keeps you from making more than three contacts with a Customer or prospective Customer? What makes you stop short? Hint: It’s not likely to be the prospect or the circumstances. It’s your CHOICE — active or past– that’s holding you back!

If you’re so easily discouraged in representing your ideas/products/ services more than three attempts, imagine your credibility–never mind the credibility of your ideas/products/services–plummeting in the eyes of someone or group or entity after you’ve made only three attempts.

But whom, you may ask, wants to visit with someone five to twelve (12!!!) times to make a sale? A top performer, that’s who! The top performer you are capable of being, if you CHOOSE to be!

Frustration doesn’t fall from the sky and land on your shoulders. It’s something you intentionally or inadvertently CHOOSE.

Here’s a cage-rattler for you, from the good-fortune experiences I’ve had working with and learning from some of the world’s greatest salespeople: IT IS at least AS easy to choose to make the challenge of 5-12 contacts easy as it is to choose to make the challenge be hard.

And you must be lost in the Stone Age if you interpret “contact” or “visit” as a physical movement of your being back and forth to a prospect’s space. It’s true that physical back-and-forth trips may actually be called for in the case of high-ticket projects, but most of the time, contacts and visits take the form of phone calls, emails, text messages (when requested or agreed to ahead of time), or –Heaven Forbid!– a handwritten note or two (Huh? Handwritten?). Yes really! It’s all about Communication.

It should go without saying, but I’ll pop the comment in anyway: It’s not probable that 5-12 prospective Customer contacts will succeed if they constitute a bombardment or avalanche anymore than if they are as far apart in time as most dentist visits, so common sense must be paired with choosing persistence.

The bottom line: If you want to rise above the rubble, make a conscious choice to rise and a conscious choice to not be sidetracked.

Play the 10%-80% odds! Remember that Consistency Sells! And guess what else? Repetition sells, repetition sells, repetition sells. Repetition . . .

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 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below

Q. What if it walks like a duck

 and quacks like a duck, but 

 looks like a tyrannosaurus rex?

A. You’ve got trouble. . . 

right here in River City!

And if we’re talking about A~N~Y aspect of your business, you can be sure that your customers will have even bigger problems than you, which is not a good thing.

Take it from experience, the last thing you want is for your customers to be confused, because confusion doesn’t just cost you patronage; it costs you your reputation. All the good things you’ve done, and are doing, get flushed away with one jerk of the handle.

Anything that costs your reputation, costs you sales to existing customers, and costs you prospective customers too. Like winning sports teams, businesses that offer consistency succeed. Attitude consistency is paramount.

From McDonald’s to Charles Schwab, from Hershey’s to Microsoft, from Federal Express to Wal-Mart, consistency of products and services (and of innovation, operations, marketing and sales) is what puts businesses like these over the top.

Consistency doesn’t mean having inventories that collect dust or never trying new methods or line extensions, or always doing the exact same things in the exact same ways. Those are investments in maintaining the status quo — a boring and unhealthy practice.

Consistency means carrying integrity and leadership and customer service to the extreme every day of your life that your business exists. It means maintaining and nurturing one strong, simple, single image throughout all the ways you represent yourself to the rest of the world.

It doesn’t matter if some people don’t like your image or your message. What does matter is that your image and message is consistent and delivered consistently across the boards…in your advertising, marketing, promotional and PR efforts, online and off…all of the time, without exception.

You know that repetition sells.

Repetition sells.

Repetition sells.

Repeating what you do and the ways that you do it, over and over, is the best way to build and strengthen a loyal following. Ask any stage performer, producer, or director.

In that sense, you are no different. You are on your business stage every day (and often at night), and your performance (what you have to offer and the ways you offer it) is being judged by others all of the time, even when you’re not aware of having an audience. 

Look at it this way — you want to get in better physical shape, but can’t make that happen by eating ice cream, candy and fried foods,  drinking heavily and smoking cigars only on weekends and justifying it by taking a long walk on Sunday afternoon.

Like building a healthy life, building a healthy business is a full time commitment to consistency.

If your business walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, don’t make it something it’s not. Consistency sells.

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 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below