It's about appointment numbers

When it comes to sales, just about everyone focuses on sales numbers. One of the main reasons; this is where commissions come from. Cold calling, appointments, staring at your computer screen pretending to work while scrolling LinkedIn, these don't generate income. They pave the path to an income, but if there are no sales there is no commission being generated.

What many people gloss over is that path. The path to get that sale. One of my theories is that path is scary. Not monster under your bed scary, but close. Here is why:

Let's say you are working with a new agent (or you are a new agent) and your goal is 3 sales in a week. You are shooting for a 15% close ratio. That means you would need 20 appointments. Yes, 20.

How did I get that number? Take your sales target (in this case 3) and divide it by the targeted close ratio (15% or .15). Hence, you get 20.

20 is a lot bigger number than 3. That may sound overwhelming to a new agent (or even yourself). However, don't fear, it gets worse.

Now you have to consider how much prospecting it takes to get 20 appointments. Let's pick cold calling. Let's use the target of 1 scheduled appointment per hour. So, that is 20 hours of cold calling.

Now, of course, when it comes to cold calling, I know very few people that sit at a screen for a solid 8 hours a day. So, let's be real and say most people will do 5 hours of cold calling in an 8-hour day, taking into consideration breaks, lunches, banter, etc. So, now you have 4 solid days of cold calling to generate those 20 appointments.

Let's say those appointments take 45 minutes from "Hello" to "Have a great day." That is 15 hours (45 minutes x 20 = 900 minutes / 60 minutes in an hour = 15 hours). Now you effectively have 3 more days, on top of your 4 for prospecting and that is a solid 7 days if you hit your targets.

Sure, your numbers may vary, but watching the numbers scale can be intimidating to even veteran agents. This is one of the reasons we have so much burnout in our business. No one considers the scale until they are thrown in and start to sink.

The moral of the story, be realistic with yourself and your agents. Talk about the scale, the work, and the effort it will take, but also show the reward.