When you are tasked with bringing in business you’ll have a target, either in terms of number of units/items sold or amount of revenue but probably both.
Having a target is essential if you are going to succeed because without one you’ll have no idea where or how to concentrate your time. However, a target can become like a millstone round your neck if you allow it to dominate your thoughts.
I’ve seen sales people obsess over targets; breaking down their annual goal in to ridiculously small parts, to the point where they know how much they have to do each week, divided by 5 working days, divided by the 4.3 appointments that they on average manage to complete each day.
The sales meeting in the first job I had was every Friday. Each Friday the 8 reps responsible for covering the north of England and Scotland would meet above a dentist’s surgery, in what remains to this day the most unsanitary, down-at-heel ‘office’ I’ve ever witnessed.
The first topic of conversation was always what sort of week we’d each had; good, bad or indifferent?
I knew if I’d had a good week. I measured this by how many full-page ads I’d sold. Sure, there were loads of other sizes of ad and ‘displays’ available to flog but it was the ‘full-page’ that did it for me.
However, many of my colleagues would go on to enquire as to what percentage of my target I’d hit and therefore, what fraction I had left in order to achieve the year’s quota: but I never knew!
Others did. They could rattle off precisely what they had done that week, that month and that quarter and how much they had to therefore do over the next week, month and quarter, if they were to be successful. And I have to tell you; they seemed more focused on these figures than on maximising what they could secure every time they sat in front of a prospect.
My approach then and still remains, to take each meeting with a potential customer, one at a time.
I don’t give any thought to what I need to do this week, this month or even this year because if I did it’d worry the hell out of me and that anxiety would surely come across to everyone I met.
I take each meeting one at a time, making sure that my entire focus is on maximising the potential at that moment, with that prospect, in that room.
If it results in business; great! If it results in agreeing to meet up again; great!
You must have a target. You must know what you want and what you have to do to achieve it but you’ll stand a far better chance of hitting it if you focus on the meeting you’re in rather than what percentage of your target you’d achieve if the guy in front of you bought something.
