By Geoff Wade - Onirik

This is the first of a series of articles on how to increase the number of new clients you get from your sales activity. This first piece will outline the compelling reasons why this is so important today.

The opportunities in your target market

On average, at any given time your target market is made up from five categories of prospect:

1) 3% are in the market to buy your product or service. They are looking to buy right now.
2) 6-7% is open to buying your service, but they are not currently looking.

The other 90% divide into three nearly equal categories:

3) 30% is not really thinking about buying right now.
4) 30% think they’re not interested in buying (but might be, if you did a good job at presenting to them).
5) 30% definitely know they’re not interested in buying.

Now let me further complicate your situation by telling you the bad news.

The biggest prospecting problem you face

Attention is a finite resource; human beings attend to a finite number of things. And attention, like time, is a limited resource and irretrievable once spent. Yet, so much information and so many activities, people, and places are vying for our attention today.

In 1991, a research project *1 revealed that the average consumer was exposed to 2,000 commercial messages each day. It sounds ridiculous until you think of three simple things most working people do each day. Perhaps you read the newspaper over breakfast, listen to the radio driving to work, and watch some television in the evening. Every page of the newspaper is crammed with advertisements. The roadside view is blotted with signs promoting products. Your morning radio show is interrupted with so many advertisements. And your evening television program is presenting more than 30 promotions per hour.

In 1994, another study *1 revealed that the commercial clutter had increased by 50% to 3,000 messages per day. Some sources say that the measure today is 10,000 commercial messages per day. And some say it is as high as 30,000 messages per day!

Understanding and managing attention is now an important determinant of sales success. You must compete with all other possible activities and interests of your customer, not just with similar products or services. The message you send to differentiate your product or to make you stand out, is a critical success factor. More than ever, you must get through the noise of all the other messages in the air.

What has this done to sales expense?

For one thing, in the early 1990’s a sales person faced an average of three rejections before they got a meeting. In the new millennium that average has increased to eight rejections before you get a meeting. The commercial clutter has nearly tripled the cost of sales today. Concurrently sales effectiveness has fallen by 50% over the last ten years. Meaning, today you pay three times as much to get half the result that you got ten years ago. It's very hard to get noticed and hold attention in the new millennium.

What can you do about it?

Well here’s the good news. You can do quite a bit. And what to do is usually simple. Selling is like most endeavours in that there are half a dozen things that really matter. Success is about mastering these half dozen strategies, tactics and skills. It is also about the discipline of doing these things well time after time. It’s not about mastering 100 different skills. You can teach these half dozen things to and refine them with your sales people in your weekly meetings. They get results – the simple strategies, tactics and skills yield improvements of 70% to 200% in sales effectiveness.

In the next Sales Manager we’ll start with the first simple improvements you can apply. And we’ll continue the series in each edition after that. Some of the articles you can look forward to include – Cold Calling, Strategy and Tactics, Building Rapport, Questioning, Time Management, Influencing and Closing, Maintaining Performance States, Sales Management & Coaching.

If you want to get some of this information before the next editions – you can use the contact details for the author at the foot of this article.

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Geoff Wade is the Sales & Marketing Director of Onirik Pty Ltd. Onirik is a team of professionals focus on business value and measurable outcomes, as the reason for our clients to listen to Onirik. Onirik, together with their partner Brava, helps their clients get fast and lasting quantum leap improvements in revenue and margins. Onirik conducts research in selling skills, management, coaching, motivational leadership, the psychology of persuasion, effective business processes, and negotiation. They help clients implement the practical applications of the research and of NLP in sales, service, and management.

geoff.wade@onirik.com.au
www.onirik.com.au
Phone: +61 2 9004 7810

Bibliography
1 Conducted by Jordan Productions for Pacific Bell in 1991 and for Thomson Newspapers in 1994.