Sales 101
Well, here I am proclaiming the difference between good and bad salespeople and look at me. I completely fell down on the most basic aspect of the job last week: returning a phone call. I can’t even begin to enumerate the number of times I have gotten on a tirade about “It must be nice to have so much business that you can afford to just throw it away! Just THROW it in the garbage!”
I am reminded of an exercise I did once in a sales training class. Given the amount of the average real estate commission, the value of a lead in real estate can be sizable. If you know your average commission, you can calculate how many transactions you need to achieve a particular income goal. For example, if your average commission is $5,000, it would take 20 transactions to earn $100k. This particular trainer wanted us to figure out how many leads it takes to generate “x” number of transactions. If it takes 10 leads to generate one sale and 20 sales to make $100k, 200 leads should achieve your goal of $100k. Each lead, then, is worth $500.
Once we had all these numbers worked out, he had each one of us take a dollar bill out of our pocket and tear it up. (I guess once the gov’t found out about it, he had to stop. Apparently, it’s a federal crime to willfully destroy U.S. currency. Who knew?) It’s amazing how difficult it can be to actually tear up a dollar bill. If you don’t believe me, try it! The moral, of course, is that each time we blow off a lead, we’re not tearing up $1, we’re actually throwing away $500!! “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.”
“All Things With Exuberance!”
mary!
