Why prospecting is key to long-term success

Too many salespeople worry about each of their month’s sales. In fact, business does also. Salespeople are saying “Boy I had a good month. I hope that I can do it again next month.” The manager might even say “Hey gang, nice month, so what is going to happen to our team next month?”

The key here is to quit thinking about sales. They are short term goals and really concentrate on the here and now. I like to believe in longer range goals and focus more on the future and keep things much more consistent over the long haul.

Let’s take a little science into my thought process here. Study after study shows that in business to business selling situations, salespeople usually close between 50-70 percent of their legitimate prospects. That means that the customer was ready to make a decision.

Who they will buy from, what they will spend, and when they will make the decision, is what determines a genuine prospect.

With that in mind, if a salesperson has four prospects for that specific month, that would equate to having approximately two sales towards their performance quota. Let’s assume that they need four sales for the month to be at 100 percent of quota, which would put them at about 50 percent of plan.

Early in my career while working at Xerox, we had to sell five copiers per month to be at 100 percent of our sales goals. You wanted to be at 250 percent because if you achieved that goal, you received a bonus for each quarter.

The big income to achieve, when I was a sales rep for Xerox, was being at 250 percent of plan or better.