One Change That Makes Every Sales Person Better | Selling Made Simple

Now, a lot of reps are under the impression that sales is an art. Getting a feel for body language, spotting subtle cues, shifting and re-shifting conversations with prospects.

But where a lot of reps get things wrong is forgetting the logic side of things. Following your cadences, hitting that cold call quota, sticking to a plan through thick and thin—that’s the other side of the equation. And if you neglect your numbers, your art is never going to be enough to propel you to real sales success.

A) Sales Is a Numbers Game

Sales is a numbers game. We’ve heard it all before. And there’s a lot of truth to it. Because when you boil it all down, sales comes down to this:

1. You do a number of activities.
2. Those activities can have an effectiveness on a scale of 1-10.
3. And depending on that effectiveness, they lead to a revenue number at the end of the quarter, and you get paid a commission.

It’s as simple as that.

And the more you do an activity, the higher those final numbers—that revenue and that commission—will be.

More cold calls per day results in more leads. More leads turn into more sales calls. And more sales calls lead to closed deals. Voila, numbers!

Now you can tweak that activity. Or you can choose to engage in a different one altogether. But when you get down to the nitty-gritty, the more numbers you put in, the more you get out.

B) The Law of Averages

The Law of Averages come in? The Law of Averages states that over a long enough period of time, a particular outcome or event will occur at a frequency that’s similar to its probability.

Confused? Don’t be.

Let’s break it down. Let’s say you’ve got a cold calling success rate of about 2%. And over the course of one day, you make 20 calls with zero success. Right now your success rate is… that’s right, zero percent. Now, over time, your actual rate is going to get closer and closer to the real rate of effectiveness, 2%.

So on day two, you make 20 more calls and one is a winner! That brings your rate up to 2.5%. The next day, zero winners again, bringing you down to 1.7%. And the day after that, zero again, putting you at 1.25%. But after the next 20 calls, you bring in a client, which jumps your success rate to 2%—the real effectiveness of the activity.

See how on the short-term, the effectiveness jumps around and doesn’t match the true effectiveness of your cold calling? But in the long-term, over the course of five days, it comes out to be 2%.

And on an even longer timeline, that activity is going to hover around that same percent effectiveness.

Okay, so what does this tell us?

Basically if you engage in an activity with some level of effectiveness for long enough, you’re guaranteed some form of success. If your cold emails only have a success rate of 0.001%, you’re bound to hit a winner at some point. As long as you keep trying.

Now, you’ve got three ways to make the Law of Averages work for you. First, you can put in more reps. You can send out more emails, make more cold calls, send more outreach messages. But there are only so many hours in the day.

Do different stuff. Social selling for example if you’ve never experimented with that. The problem here is that you might have a 0% success rate and so it was a complete waste of time.

The better way of using this law to your advantage is by moving the average in your favor. By pushing up your success rate and doing the same stuff, but better.

C) Move the Average In Your Favor

There are three strategies you can take to get the numbers on your side. Number one is to…

1. Only Spend Time With Qualified Clients

SO MUCH time is wasted on unqualified prospects that require tons of work but rarely lead to a closed deal.

So, how do you get better at qualifying prospects? You follow the Diagnosis Framework.

Whenever you hop on a discovery call, use this eight-step framework to find out if they’re the right buyer for you.

• Pain – Is your prospect’s problem actually a problem? If it isn’t, they aren’t going to be motivated to solve it. And they’re wasting your time.
• Time – Does the buyer need a solution this month, this quarter, this year? Be sure your timelines match up. The more urgent the need, the less feet dragging you’ll run into later.
• Fit – Is your solution actually right for the prospect’s problem? Be honest, will it really help?
• Return – How much will the buyer have to change to accommodate your solution and start getting a solid value return from their investment? Is it worth the hassle?
• Process – Are they willing to adapt to your processes? If not, best to cut them loose.
• Budget – Are the prospect’s financials in a good place to afford your solution?
• Champion – Who else is behind this decision? Is someone influencing whether the deal gets made or not? And if there is, why aren’t you talking to them instead?
• Agreement – It’s up to you to get your buyer’s verbal commitment on the call. And using the “If we can solve X, will you commit to Y?” structure is the absolute best way to get that commitment.

2. Move More Prospects Into Your Funnel

The more prospects you have coming into your funnel, the more chance you have of closing some of them. The Cold Email Framework is a great way to improve your cold outreach.

It follow four steps. Lets run through a example and put them into practice –

It’s to the point. It’s unassuming. And it’s damn effective too.

Alright so the third way of making the Law of Averages work for you is by…

3. Have More Targeted Messaging

More targeted messaging means higher response rates. And that, of course, is going to bump up the Law of Averages in your favor.

So, how do you have more targeted messaging? By using the Value Proposition Framework.

• Find Your Value – What do your products offer? How do they help? You can figure this out by first listing out all your available products and then writing down the perk producers (benefits additions) and strain reducers (hassle subtractions) each offers.
• Find Your Ideal Buyer – This one might take a bit more digging, but it’s well worth it. You start by listing out your buyer jobs. What are their responsibilities? What are their functional, social, and emotional jobs? And then list out the perks and strains of each. Perks being the benefits your buyers want to see from your product, and strains being what annoys a buyer before, during, and after they’re trying to get a job done.
• Find the Fit – Finding the fit. “Fit” is how well your product values line up with what the buyer needs. The better it aligns, the more successful your value proposition will be. All you need to do here is determine which jobs, strains, and perks the strain reducers and perk producers of your products address. Match them up and you can move on to…
• Create Your Value Statement – A value statement should be clear, to the point, and touch on the most important points from the previous three steps. Here’s a template you can use to craft yours.
• Verify the Value – Does this value statement resonate with your audience? Did changing your value proposition increase or decrease buyer response rates? What’s important here is that you keep on testing and refining your value proposition as you go.

When you truly understand the Law of Averages, it’ll entirely change the way you do sales. And if you know how to bend this law to your advantage, you can close more deals, earn higher commissions, and achieve more success than you ever thought possible.