That is a pertinent question in successful selling and one we always ask when profiling a sale. Many sales managers that we talk to would like to have a one-call close sale no matter what the sales cycle. That misalignment always leads to a unique discussion.<\/p>\n
Selling Power offers a good article on this topic in What\u20ac\u2122s the Purpose of this Call?<\/a> I found this excerpt to be quite revealing:<\/p>\n Consider this example. Fournies was recently speaking at a national meeting to salespeople whose product was a $25,000 chemical analysis machine sold to hospitals. He asked his audience how many calls it took to sell their product to a hospital and most people responded, \u20ac\u015311 or 12 months.\u20ac\u009d Okay, replied Fournies, but how many calls<\/em>? As a group, the reps argued that \u20ac\u0153it depends\u20ac\u009d because all hospitals are different. That\u20ac\u2122s when the company\u20ac\u2122s highest performing rep raised his hand and said, \u20ac\u0153Mr. Fournies, if I don\u20ac\u2122t sell the product by the third call, I don\u20ac\u2122t go back.\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n The room fell silent as this rep explained his strategy. On his first call, he said he qualifies the customer. He finds out whether the customer needs the product and can afford it and who would make the buying decision. If the answers are positive, the rep schedules a second appointment. During that second meeting, he demonstrates the equipment to the buyer and all the users and gets them to make the buying decision. On the third call, he picks up the purchase order.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I know, it is a bit of blue sky, but the principle is valid. We have assessed our share of salespeople who appear to do little more than wander around looking for a sale. The vast majority of successful salespeople we encounter have a somewhat defined system, or set of goals, that they pursue with each suspect.<\/p>\n At the same time, it is important for the sales manager to know how many calls it takes to close 1 deal. I’ve said this before, it is remarkable to me how many sales managers do not know this number – literally no clue. That lack of mission-critical data is always a clear warning sign to us that we need to qualify the selling cycle before going any further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That is a pertinent question in successful selling and one we always ask when profiling a sale. Many sales managers that we talk to would like to have a one-call close sale no matter what the sales cycle. That misalignment always leads to a unique discussion. Selling Power offers a good article on this topic in What\u20ac\u2122s the Purpose of this Call? I found this excerpt to be quite revealing: Consider this example. Fournies was recently speaking at a national meeting to salespeople whose product was a $25,000 chemical analysis machine sold to hospitals. He asked his audience how many calls it took to sell their product to a hospital… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-iM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}