How to Win the Sales Numbers Game
Sales IS a numbers game. You can do a lot to change the numbers involved but at the end of the day, your sales results are a function of two inputs. The fundamental formula in sales is below:
Number of Leads x Quality of Leads = Your Sales ($$$)
Depending on how they view this fundamental formula some sales organizations will focus on touching a huge number of very cold or remote leads, while others will only focus on only a small number of hot leads.
Some teams are outbound, some are mixed and some are exclusively inbound, but one thing that matters no matter what type of sales role you are in is maximizing the value of your time - and making the most of the fundamental sales equation.
This might sound like a stupid question but how do salespeople make money?
Answer: They sell.
If salespeople make money by selling the fact that they (according to Forbes) spend only ? of their time on selling is a serious problem. Less time selling is lowering the number of leads you can call, which will hurt your sales equation.
The sources of time drain can range from checking personal social media to dealing with bad CRMs, to team meetings, but for well-motivated salespeople (the type that don’t check personal social media at work) one of the biggest time drains is simply finding the right people to call/email to be able to open up sales conversations.
While the exact amount of time drain will differ, I would estimate that most salespeople spend at least 3 hours per week trying to find more leads to sell to.
Here's a quick example to help visualize how time drains hurt a typical salesperson's sales equation.
Let’s say you are a salesperson who makes $50,000 a year in total. That means it probably costs your employer roughly $75,000 a year to keep you around - that means you should probably be bringing in at least $75,000 a year in revenue.
$75,000 a year works out to $37.50/hr based on a 2,000 hour a year (50 weeks of 40 hour weeks).
That means for every hour you spend not selling you are basically throwing $37.50 in the garbage.
That means if you have to spend 3 hours per week on finding leads to call you are flushing $112.50 per week or about $500 per month down the drain.
Luckily there are a few simple and free or low-cost ways to more quickly gather quality sales leads:
- Phantombuster - This is an amazing tool for a wide variety of sales organizations with a whole swath of tools. If there is any downside from this tool it may be that it is actually too powerful or overwhelming for some salespeople. Their free forever plan is probably powerful enough for a single salesperson but if you can afford it (or are a sales leader for your organization) and the ROI is there I would recommend looking into a low cost paid plan.
- Business Listing Websites - if you sell to local SMBs yellow pages is far from dead and can be a great source for your leads. These leads are going to be very cold but have at the very least a phone number for you to contact.
- Google Maps - Google Maps is a great resource for information about local businesses. Not only will you get phone number information, but you can also see information about how busy certain stores are or other valuable data like opening hours or current offerings of a particular company. Phantombuster has an API (technical tool) that can be easily used to scrape data from google maps so the data can be imported to a CRM or used however you wish.
- Ben Jones Lead Sourcing (i know - it's a self-promo) - I offer 2 FREE months of lead sourcing when you get an annual plan (starting at $7/month). I'll deliver high quality targeted leads you can use without you needing to learn how to use complex technical tools or do the lead source research on your own.
Send me a message on Linkedin (now), give me a call/text (226-406-4391) or send me an email, tell me what you need and before you know it you can have all the leads you could ever need.
At the very least send me a message now and we can set up a call to see what potential value I might be able to offer - If that call doesn't become worth your time - I'll pay you for it!
Sales is a numbers game. The more people you can open conversations with the more people you’ll be able to sell to, but the less time you are talking to people the less time you are selling to them.
