How To Increase Your Sales

Tough Times
A few years ago my sales figures were really struggling. It felt as though I was working really hard every day, my calls were of high quality and like the customers were the right ones for my product so there wasn't any problems with my prospecting.

But I wasn't making any sales. I didn't know what I should change or do to improve.

That was until I was shown a great technique called the sales grid.

The sales grid is basically a tool that helps you find your faults and motivate you to do more work. It helps you calculate the number of phone calls you need to in order to make a sale.

For example:
To make 1 sale you might have to meet 4 customers and have a meeting.
To get 4 meetings you have to book 6 because sometimes they just don't show up.
To book 6 meetings you have to get a hold of 15 decision makers.
In order to reach 15 decision makers you have to make 33 phone calls trying to reach them.

So you have 33 phone calls to the sell. This basically means that all you have to do is focus on making 33 phone calls every day and you will make 1 sale/day.

If you chose to make 66 phone calls you will make 2 and if you make 99 phone calls you will make 3 and so on.

This number is unique to every salesman and every business. One salesman might only have to make 10 calls, whilst a salesman working with telephone sales might have to make 200 phone calls but what is important is that you know yourself what is required.

Using the knowledge
You can decide exactly how much money you want to make. If you want to make 150 000 dollars/year you have to make x number of calls/day and if you want to make 200 000 dollars/year you must make Y number of calls.

It is all up to you.

This technique is motivating and gives you a greater sense of control when coming to your income.

So how do you calculate it?

The sales grid is a piece of paper with different columns.
- In the first column you write the days of the week; Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and so on.
- In the second column you write the number of phone calls you make.
- In the third the number of decision makers your reach.
- In the fourth the number of meetings you book.
- In the fifth the number of meetings you meet the customer at.
- In the sixth the number of sales you make.
- And in the seventh the commission you get from each sale.

This can be adapted to any method of sales.
For example in telephone sales it would look a little differently.
- The first column is still days of the week.
- The second has number of calls.
- The third has number of decision makers.
- The fourth has the number of times you get the chance to present your product or service.
- The fifth the number of sales.
- The sixth the commission you make.

I hope you can see the value of this method.
With it you can calculate your exact income but also see what points are your weakest.

If you are making to few calls you can see that. If you aren't reaching the right people you can make an adjustment. If you aren't booking meetings you can work on your telephone skills, if the problem is at the meetings people aren't showing up you know you have to be more firm about the calls and make sure they write the time and date down.

If you aren't making sales at the meetings you know you need to work on your sales technique and lastly if you are making a very low commission per sale you know you have to start raising your prices.

This completely objective view forces you to look deep into yourself and shows you number by number what you are doing wrong.

How long does it take to get a correct number?
Most say it takes 13 weeks of work before you know, but you do start to get a decent picture after about 5-10 weeks.

One thing to remember is that you can never stop, do this every day and you can increase your income steadily over time.

So, what happened to me?
It turned out that I was neither working so hard or making that high quality sales. I had to make some changes and started working on increasing my activity and practiced sales technique for 30 minutes every day. Within a month I had doubled my activity level and my sales calls were a lot better.

I quickly tripled my sales and was all of a sudden considered a top salesmen.

All thanks to this easy technique and the fact that I took action once I had learned my weak points.

By : Daniel_M_Wood