Today’s Blog post comes from
“Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work)”
by Stephan Schiffman
Get it off Amazon Here
You HAVE TO cold call or your business is dead in the water. Maybe not today or tomorrow…but soon. Learn The Math of Cold Calling well. The A=P=S Formula.
Chapter 2: By the Numbers
The A=P=S Formula
There’s a formula that’s more important to successful than any other: A=P=S. In other words, Appointments give you prospects which give you sales. Your appointment base is always going to be larger than your prospect base, which is going to be larger than your sales base.
- Now you can argue and say “people call me.” But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’ve already established that’s going to happen. Those are consumer-driven sales. We’re talking about the last 1/3 that is up for grabs.
You have to know your numbers.
How many appointments do you need to get your prospects? How many phone calls does it take to get those appointments? If you don’t know your numbers, how can you know whether your sales approach is working?
- If you say you need 1 appointment per day, or 5 in a week. In order to do that, I have to call 15 people per day. Fifteen times 5 gives us 75. Over 5 days, I dial 75 people. I generate 5 new appointments which ultimately give me my 1 sale per week.
How many cold calls do you make each day? Do you know? If so, why do you make that number of calls? Are they true cold calls, or are they calls you’ve been repeating by calling the same people over and over?
- I.E.. If I say that I make 15 calls per day, I mean 15 calls to NEW people. Never talked to
- On busy days, I still try to find a way to call 15 people. Even if it’s at 7:00 am and they probably won’t be around. I leave messages.
Tick Question: If I make 5 new appointments this week, as I always do, how many total appointments will I have next week? It’s 8. Because I know for every 5 new appointments, I’m going back to 3 more for follow-through appointments.
- The total number of appointments (8) is very important. For every 8 appointments, I make 1 sale.
Cold calling is a numbers game (or, to be more precise, a ratios game). This particular game drives your sales. But a lot of salespeople don’t know where their numbers come from. Those goals just evolved; they just kind of happened. That’s not the way to take control of your career.
Back in ’87 I had someone working for me who made $68,000 ($135,000 today) his first year with me; he picked up the phone 2448 times. Which may seem like a lot to you, but when you really think about it, that’s only 10/ day (assuming 250 day working year). In other words, if I promised you that if you picked up the phone only 10 times per day you would definitely make $135,000, would you do it? Of course. Every time you pick up the phone you are getting closer to a yes.
- If you understand that concept, you’ll be successful in sales.
You must understand that you MUST avoid the peaks and valleys though. In order to avoid these, we have to replenish or re-establish the base constantly. How long does that take? You have to run the ratios to determine your sales cycle.
- The need for “perpetual” sales prospecting becomes even more obvious if you consider how far your sales efforts take place in advance of your sales revenues.
- Even if you have a successful week, a successful month, or a successful year, that doesn’t mean you should ever stop prospecting. Prospect constantly, every single day.
- The key, then, is to keep prospecting on a regular basis. Making the sale is important, but it’s not as important as managing your prospects. And the key to that is to replenish your base of prospects. If you don’t get enough prospects, you’re not going to get enough sales, and you’re not going to be in business. A=P=S
