I was looking up my old Science of Sales™ training notes recently and wanted to share this analogy with you:

“The Power of 15:7:1 in Prospecting”

Watch what this salesperson does – each day. Let’s call her Yvonne.

Yvonne lifts the telephone and dials 15 people every day. On average, she gets through to or makes contact with 7 people (let’s call them the “decision-makers”) – and she gets 1 booked appointment per day. That’s 5 appointments per week. 

That’s 15 dials, 7 contacts and 1 appointment.

To make a sale, Yvonne will have to visit some Prospects at least thrice (once to qualify and do a value proposition meeting; once to present the Proposal and once to close the sale). 

On an average week, she does 8 visits (3 are “repeats”), and she will get 1 sale.

• 15:7:1 (Dials: Contacts: Appointments per Day)
• 5 New Appointments Per Week
• 3 Repeat Visits
• 8:1 Sale per Week

Why does she do 15 dials per day?

Yvonne’s goal for the year is to secure 50 contracts and her “ratios” provide insights that are critical to securing the target: if she makes 15 dials a day, she will hit the target. In other words, she now knows how to go about guaranteeing she will hit the target.

Once she understands this formula, she now has 5 ways to sell more:

1. She can make more dials / LinkedIn outreach or business networking outreach.
2. She can attempt to get through to more decision-makers.
3. She can secure more appointments.
4. She can increase the conversion rate.
5. She can sell a higher value per deal.

Notice that when you analyse your activity and your numbers this way, you can figure out what to change in order to sell more and hit the target that has been set for you.

With the Scaling-Up! Science of Sales method, we subscribe to these three principles:

1. Selling is not a numbers game; it’s a ratios game to convert prospects to buyers. The most effective salespeople measure two numbers at a time because that’s what tells them how productive they are.
2. We also know that you never get 100% from any effort in sales – the yield will always be less – and usually substantially less.
3. A salesperson’s performance should not be based on ‘feeling’, it must be based on leading and lagging metrics.

As a business owner, how do you help your sales team to perform and track their metrics so that they can achieve their On Target Earnings (OTE) while hitting sales targets?