If you are in sales you have already heard this a million times I am sure, so here is the millionth and one time you are hearing this again. If you want to be successful in sales, you have to be willing to pick up the phone and call people who could potentially buy your products.
If that is not enough motivation then let me tell you the why behind this what.
Before I do that, I want to challenge you with this. How much money do you need to make? Yes. I said need to make. Not want to make.
Make a list of all of your debts and liabilities, and all of the monthly payments associated with those debts and liabilities. Make a list of all of your payments for insurance, internet, gas and electric bill, water, dues of any kind, etc. Make a list of any kind of outgoing money that you have ever month, every quarter, or every year.
I challenge you to make the list of need to make, because this list will get you thinking about the minimum amount of money you need to make to maintain your current lifestyle.
Now make a list of all of the things you would like to have. Do it. You wont regret it.
Now that you have done this. How much money will it take over and above what you need “to make”, to have the things on this list of “would like to haves?”
The chances are there is a gap between what you are currently making and what you need to make to have the extra things you want. If not, good for you. I would just challenge you to think big. Start thinking about how you can invest into things that will eventually allow you to stop working.
Now that you have done this, you are probably like most of us and want to make, or need to make, more money than you are currently making.
This brings me to the topic of the power of one hour. This is the third part of a series of writings that I am doing discussing the power that can be realized if you just focus your time and effort into that one hour. You can read the first two on this topic here and here.
If you are in sales, you know that to be successful that you have to make phone calls to people who could potentially be a buyer of your products. So how many calls can you make in an hour? And what kind of impact could that have on your income and your ability to buy the things you need and want? Let me give you an example.
I recently received a lead. Yes, I received a lead. This doesn’t happen very often, so when it does, I take full advantage of it. But surprisingly enough, most people don’t take advantage of leads when they are given to them. Don’t be this kind of stupid sales person.
I get a call from a colleague of mine. They tell me that someone is looking to buy my products. I immediately get off the phone with this colleague of mine, make the phone call to this prospect. And one hour later, I have an accepted proposal of services for $5,000 dollars.
Is this typical? Not really, but I didn’t let any time pass me by and I know many sales people who would never move things that quickly. But it is possible, if you are willing to move as fast as you can go to make a sale. The point here is this, don’t stop until the sale is made.
So back to phone calls. How many sales calls do you think you can make in one hour? Let me answer this for you. A solid average would be 10-12 outbound phone calls an hour. But lets keep it simple for you and say, it is 10 for the sake of this blog post.
If you make 10 phone calls in one hour. That means each call you make is around six minutes. Obviously, some of those calls you will reach people and some you will not.
If you make ten phone calls an hour. Lets say you speak to one person that can buy your products every hour. So one person an hour, times eight hours in a day. You would speak to eight people a day that could buy your products. If you are speaking to eight decision makers a day and getting one to two appointments a day from those efforts. You will be a highly highly successful sales person.
Lets use my earlier example as an illustration of what could happen. If my average sale is $5,000 dollars. Which it is close to that.
Lets just say you are so busy that you can only spare one hour a day, every day of the week. So you would make only 50 calls a week. 10 calls an hour times five days a week. On average you would make ten contacts a week with those efforts. And lets says you only close one of those 10 contacts a week. Yes. I said one.
One contact a week times 52 weeks. At my average rate of sale of $5,000, that would equal $260,000 dollars a year in revenue. 52 X $5,ooo = $260,000. What if I am half wrong? That would still equal $130,000 a year.
I think you see the point I am trying to make. One hour a day devoted to any activity can have a significant impact on your life, career, your finances, and your health.
I don’t know your sales cycle, I don’t know your schedule. However, I do know that there is a lot of power contained in one hour of focused effort put into a task or activity. You just have to be willing to schedule that one hour and make the effort required to maximize that one hour.
I’ll leave you with this. We as humans fill up our calendars and our schedules for the sake of being busy. It is probably the most overused word in business right now. However, being busy doesn’t mean getting results. And the name of the game is not “busy” it is getting “results”. That is the only thing that matters. Start focusing one hour a day to this simple activity and watch how your results change.
To your success and your future.
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