Thoughtful Thursdays - Do You Have Enough Prospects?

Now that we are well into the second quarter, you will have had the opportunity to review and analyze your sales results for the first quarter. How did you do against your forecasts?

If you are like many, you may have experienced some slippage. The question is what are you doing to make up the gap?

The majority of businesses I have worked with were not working with a sufficient number of prospects to produce the expected sales results. Once we developed a plan to increase sales activity and executed, it was not very long before the sales gap began to close.

I ask three questions to begin the process:

1. How many prospects do you think you need to approach before getting a sale?
2. What is the dollar value of an average sale?
3. How many prospects are you currently working with?

Now a bit of arithmetic:

1. Take the number of prospects you are working with
2. Divide by the number of prospects you think you need to approach before getting a sale
3. Multiply by the dollar value of your average sale

Does the resulting dollar figure support your sales forecast?

This simple exercise will demonstrate if you are not calling on, or reaching enough prospects to support your expected sales.

Good selling,
Richard