Everyday a sales rep turns in a work sheet. Often they feel the reason for the worksheet is to have someone monitor their daily activity. The reality is that sales people have to become better at monitoring their own activity, so the worksheet becomes a tool to measure personal productivity. A sales person should know what activity would constitute a good day. There are many measuring tools that are inspected — let’s just talk about five different categories: calls, e-mails, prospects, tours and sales.
Let’s say that a salesman made 15 outgoing calls in a day, made two sales, added three prospects, had two tours and sent five e-mails. Everyone is going to have different requirements for success. So let’s measure the obvious. Everyone is working an 8-hour day, let’s assume each tour and sale lasted one hour. That leaves six hours; let’s also assume one hour of time is used for food, bathroom and social engagements within the club. So that leaves five hours. That means in five hours your rep averaged three calls per hour, less than one prospect per hour and one e-mail per hour. When you look at it this way it can get depressing.
Make sure you teach everyone the expected behavior. Everyone should know how many calls, but the key is the ability to prospect internally and externally. Sales people have to work for referrals with their members and members who are not associated with a current sales person. Remember — service begets obligation, so in order to get a referral, you must build a relationship and provide some type of service, so that is also part of the work day. The more prospects that you can create will lead to more phone calls. The more calls you make the more appointments, the more appointments you have will lead to more tours, so the more tours you get will lead to more sales.
Often sales managers are focused on appointments, but they should be focused on prospecting. If prospecting falters, then everything else just becomes a wish. We can’t wish our way to success, we have to work our way to success. We have to teach how to meet people, we have to teach how to get referrals, and we have to teach better e-mail communication. If you measure that activity than all other activity will increase.
Chuck Hall is the executive director at Big Vanilla Athletic Clubs.
