Understanding the Numbers in Your Direct Sales Business

There is one thing certain about sales that is tried and true like gravity... if you expect to make it in this business you need to understand the numbers game. Every business is a little different depending on their audience or product but more or less you can figure out the numbers ratio by looking at how many sales calls or appointments you go on versus the number of sales you close and then do the math to know that for each contact or prospect that turns into an appointment that then turns into a sale you now have the answer to your question.

For me, a woman working in financial services, my numbers look like this company wide. Eight appointments equal five that stick, three sales, and one new business associate. For me it could take between 20-30 prospects to actually get those appointments to happen in a cold market but working through a warm market (people I know well or friends of those I know well) collapses my numbers in half. You may also refer to this as a referral market. The biggest challenge in working the numbers in your business is to not let them defeat you. It's so easy to take the word "no" as a personal rejection against you as a person. A lot of people fail early on in sales because they feel the rejection is too much to bear and they can't handle being told no. What's funny is that most of them are parents and they probably say "no" all the time to their kids. Their kids certainly keep asking and don't let those words deter them, yet when we become adult all of the "no's" we've heard in our lives seem to pile up and become a huge liability to our personal success. If you understand the numbers, then you understand to reach the numbers you have to hear the word "no" more than once to reach them.

I use a trick when prospecting that I wrote about in a previous article called Prospecting is a Game. Get yourself ten shiny pennies and put them in your right pocket. Every time you hear the word "no" when trying to set an appointment or sell a product you get to move one penny to the left pocket. After all ten pennies are moved for the day you are finished with prospecting for new business.

Find a trick or reward system that allows you to beat the numbers in your business and your success will triple in the next 90 days. Let the numbers (or rejection) defeat you and you'll be where you've always been. Without changing your behavior, you won't change your results.