How to predict you income in Sales —

Even commission sales can accurately predict their incomes, you just have to look at the math and get it done!

Note: This is an excerpt from my first three chapters of “The Sales Engine” a book designed to take your Business and Commissions to incredible heights.

Most Professionals I’ve worked with in the past, especially if you’re new going into the field of Selling get a little worried when they all of the sudden are on an “eat what they kill” sort of pay structure. That is, you’re on pure commission.

This is both the most nerve wracking and exhilarating experience of every Sales Professionals life, it’s also one of the biggest roller coasters that you’re going to face month over month in this industry.

It’s ultimately my aim to get you to a place where you can accurately predict your efforts as well as your income so that the roller coaster has more ups and a few less down than what many, who do not know what I am about to show you, face in their careers.

Make no mistake, what I’m about to share with you is the number one reason for attrition in this industry and why so many Sales Professionals ultimately just give up. So let’s give you a game plan to make sure that doesn’t happen!

What it’s really going to take —

It is often said that this is “the easiest, lowest paying Profession in the world, and the hardest, highest paying Profession in the world.” Emotionally, if you don’t have an unreal sense of optimism, you’re not going to be making any money that day, let me repeat that, YOU NEED AN UNREAL SENSE OF OPTIMISM. I’m trying my best to paint the most real picture possible, but there is absolutely no way around this;

It’s going to be work.

You need to have an above average work ethic to make it.

Fortunately, with what I’m about to show you, you’re never going to have to worry about whether or not you’re doing too much or too little!

Estimating your production —

So where does it all begin? Well, at your best estimation! Especially if you’re brand new, however, should you have the resource of other employees around you. Ask them what it takes, what their best practices are and what they would suggest that you learn first. Most people like to brag about their accomplishments, especially if they have dedicated themselves to their field for years. So ask them what it was they did that got them there in the first place.

You’re going to want to start to get a feel for what kind of work it is going to take to get you to the top of your field.

I remember being a new rep for a Wireless Solutions provider and we were selling Business plans. This meant that I was out in the field trying to drum up new customers by going into their building and offering them our services.

I was doing about 20 doors a day, driving around the city and finding the information for the people who were in charge of making those decision in regards to purchases. I was getting down on myself, when a representative who had been working for the company for years, pulled me aside one morning after I was lamenting during the morning meeting, and he asked me a simple question “How many people did you prospect yesterday?”

I had told him “20, I worked on my pitch and kept trying new and different things.”

He laughed and said; “20 was nowhere near where you wanted to be — just role with the script you have and do more calls!”

I was a little pissed to be honest but I choked back my ego and asked him “What he thought I should have been doing?”

He said that I’m going to “need to bring my numbers up around the 40 mark if I was outside going door to door, and if I was on the phone I was going to want to make at least 60 calls a day without a list, 100 calls a day with a pre-built list. And stop expecting to close every deal you come across dummy, it’s going to take time, and you’re going to have to find out who it was that was behind the decision and then set the appointment from there.”

He broke my day down for me and showed me that it was going to look something like this for my first couple of weeks:

Calls/ week = 300

Decision makers contacted = 30

Appointments set = 7

Deals closed = 1–2

He had informed me that I could accomplish this, I would be well on my way! After that, it was my job to figure out how to improve those ratios through training, product knowledge, negotiation skills, and objection handling over the phone.

This was a lesson I was never going to forget.

The point was, he gave me a road map and way for me to estimate my results and my income based on my production. If you have the opportunity to ask someone what it’s going to take then do that.

If you do not however, do yourself a favor and do as much calling as you possibly can until you start to get a feel for what it is going to take to get you to the desired income goal that you are ultimately after.

Getting a feel for the amount of people that you’re going to need to contact is going to ultimately allow you to decide what it is you want out of life, how much it is going to cost you, and more importantly, what kind of work you’re going to need to do in order to live the life that you deserve!

Focusing your efforts initially on how many calls you’re making is also going to do something that I’m a HUGE advocate of — failing.

The simple reality behind cold calling success, is not in your script, it’s not in any of the skills you’re going to learn later on in this book, none of it… it’s two simple ingredients… execution… and failure.

You see, the single greatest secret I’ve come to understand about this industry is simply failing… and failing faster than anyone around you… why? Because you’re executing on a level worthy of learning.

You’re never going to learn without failure, our greatest lessons come from failure, so build it. Brick by brick, build it… and fail at a much faster rate than you thought you ever could before.

Let’s take a look —

Multiplying your efforts —

Now we’re going to assume that you’ve taken a couple of weeks to realize exactly how many calls in a day you’re making in order to start earning customers and closing deals. If you didn’t go back to this phase and make it happen!

Now, I want you to take what you’ve learned in all of those calls, most importantly, and begin applying everything in a magnitude worthy of the lifestyle you ultimately want to live. What do I mean by that?

Well, let’s say it’s your dream to own a home, and you need a $20,000 down payment for the home that you are looking for. Let’s say every time you make a sale, you’re earning yourself $500 in commissions (roughly). This is a starting point and it’s really going to start to paint a picture of the kind of effort that you’re going to want to execute at — this begins with some simple calculations —

Monthly expense — $2000

Additional income needed $2000/ month to get the $20,000 in 10 months.

Fairly straight forward right? Well, going back to our earlier example:

Calls/ week = 300

Decision makers contacted = 30

Appointments set = 7

Deals closed = 1–2 = $500-$1000 per week / $2000-$4000 per month

Alright, so this can either be REALLY good or really bad. It really depends on your ability to close the appointments you set. But let’s reverse engineer our work ethic — if you can find a way to make more calls in a given day and say, up that number to 500 calls per week, and start making 100 calls per day, you’re going to be maximizing your efforts and of course your ratios are going to change! Therefore — your efforts become the following —

Calls/ week = 500

Decision makers contacted = 50

Appointments set = 12

Deals closed = 3–4 = $1500-$2000 per week / $6000-$8000 per month

Now, I’m going to point out the obvious on this one… it’s seems pretty damn obvious that the more work you do, the more you’re going to get. But here’s the reality, most people are completely unwilling to do that work, but you’re not that person, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this book!

So here’s the real scoop on all of this, and where I’m going to begin shifting your mindset — let’s go back to the beginning example —

Calls/ week = 300

Decision makers contacted = 30

Appointments set = 7

Deals closed = 1–2 = $500-$1000 per week / $2000-$4000 per month

Alright, now I want you to take the top figure, your number of calls, and multiply that by no less than 5. Which means you’re going to be doing 5 times the work, and put in 5 times the effort! Which means…

Calls/ week = 1500

Decision makers contacted = 150

Appointments set = 35

Deals closed = 9–10 = $4500–$5000 per week / $18,000-$20,000 per month

Why would you want to do something like this? Because it’s going to take you from a mindset of absolute BARE MINIMUM required of you to achieve your goals and give you a more realistic perspective of what you’re going to need to do.

I’ll be the first person to tell you, the above example is pretty, the problem with me introducing something like to my clients is because they figure “Oh… that’s all I have to do? That’s easy!” And they get disappointed with me when it doesn’t work.

That’s because not every week is going to be a perfect picture. You’re going to need to work. Now, I can hear all of the complainers saying “But Matt, how the hell am I supposed to 1500 calls in a week?” I’m getting to that, I promise, but that is the FIRST PLACE I need your mind to be right now! Let me explain…

You see, so many people get into a lazy mindset! They think they can get away with doing the bare minimum because it’s “paying their bills” that’s not what this book is about. I don’t want you to pay your bills, I want you to LIVE! That means being free to the manner that you find acceptable! The kind of freedom you and only you feel like you can achieve!

In order to get there, you need to stop thinking about “doing the minimum” and start thinking about “…how the hell am I going to achieve this?”

Working Smart AND Hard —

Because this book is about answers and the fastest path to finding a way to succeed in this field! Specifically, I want to examine the factor of efficiency that making 1500 calls in a given week is going to take, and the answer is quite simple at the end of the day… LISTS.

You remember that last thing I wrote on list building? Well guess what’s going to have you become more efficient than ever at flying through that many calls! If that list is sitting right in front of your face and it allows you to smile and dial and still make quality calls at a pace that ultimately prove to grow your income.

Take a weekend and do yourself a favor, BUILD THEM! They’re going to save you in the long term! START CALLING! With an effective list and a tremendous focus on moving with efficiency AND speed — working SMART and HARD!

Now, there are a millions of methods out there that could make you and your team more efficient at calling, but the reality is, there is no more proficient method than having a pre-built, pre-targeted list! So build them, and as you call, track the results. Use a spreadsheet, use a CRM database, use a pen and paper, just use some kind of database that allows you to track the progression of your calls to the sales process!

Planning your day around that —

Again, you’re going to want to go back and take some time to plan your day. Deciding what it is you’re going to do that day and in what order to going to be of utter importance.

However, for prospecting efforts more specifically, I have come across some best practices across many industries that I want to share with you and when you should be calling.

Typically, my day is broken up into everything that is most important to me, and what I need to do in order to accomplish this! Make no mistake, if you’re new to the field of Sales, the most important thing that you can be doing for your day is prospecting for new clients.

Writing pitches, and scripts can be great, but the truth is, you’re going to have to do that on your own time. Even if there are some major corrections that you realize need to happen throughout the day, I want you to do that on your own time.

I did say this was going to be work right?

It’s important that you just make the call, and another, and another. With the script you have. You’re going to naturally find that as you progress, you’re going to find inefficiencies in your pitch and you’ll slowly and organically correct them as you go along — that practice is what is most important!

As for breaking down your day — here are a couple of pointers:

• For new prospecting calls, make the calls first thing in the morning. This is the market that you haven’t reached out to yet. This oddly enough is the time when most people are in their offices catching up on emails and planning their day. It’s a good time to catch them right away.
• Another note about calling first thing in the morning; you’re going to want to get into some kind of a groove. Getting the calls you screw up out of the way as early as possible so you can get into the swing of things is going to help your success tremendously.
• If you can, primarily book most of your calls backs or walk in appointments for the afternoon. For the same reason that people are planning their days and coming up with a plan of action, most people are winding down and have more time to think and converse than they normally would when they’re getting into the swing of things first thing in the morning.
• The most important thing here is that you are constantly calling new prospects in between all of this. In between appointments, in between sending out information emails, in between getting pulled out of your office for whatever bullshit reason there is. KEEP MAKING CALLS! If you set aside 30 minutes to do nothing but make as many calls as humanly possible, I promise you, you are going to surprise yourself by what you actually get accomplished!

Execution —

If I haven’t gotten the point across already, this is about execution and nothing else. This has been the running theme throughout this entire article but I cannot stress this enough. It is you single greatest responsibility to crush out as much as you possibly can in a given day and be committed to those actions for YEARS.

Summary:

• Develop an unreal sense of optimism. You’re going to have some major swings. Become positive about what it is you’re getting yourself into, you don’t have any other choice.
• Estimating your income is a matter of math and converting efforts into income. Ask your co-workers what their averages are and if that does not work, begin finding your average so you can start planning your income effectively.
• Multiply your efforts, this isn’t going to be light work. You’re going to want to ask yourself “How the hell do I get there?” not; “What do I have to do to keep my Business/job?”
• Work smart and hard, with cold calling there is no more efficient methodology than having a pre-built list in front of you! Make the call and keep calling!
• Plan your day effectively! Making calls strategically throughout your day is going to help you get more done and more importantly help you get into the groove of the day!
• Execute, above all else. Execute.

Matthew Gourley is the Founder of www.salestraininc.com. A company dedicated to educating Sales Professionals all over North America and providing incredible levels of service in the Digital Marketing Arena! Give his office a call at 1–403–331–5229.