I had a sales person who didn’t post his sales numbers every day and week. One of the most important things I teach in sales is how critical it is to your sales career that you put your numbers on the board. If I can’t see the score, I can’t tell you how to win the game.
In the HVAC or any service business, I belive there are certain givens:
- Treat every sales call and customer with honesty and integrity.
- Practice your presentations and how to arrive at your close
- Use a numbers system to close a sale
Brian Tracy talks about the different types of closes in his book, The Art of Closing the Sale. Use of numbers to close the sale is critical. I build all of my sales presentations around many numbers.
In the HVAC business, you should be running a minimum of 30 leads per month. During the busy months of May-August, October and November, 40-50 leads should be run per month. During the slower months, you should use many resources to get into homes and run 30 leads per month. During very slow months, you may struggle to hit the 30, but at least you’re striving toward your goal.
When I’m looking at a sales board, I can tell how many leads are being run per day and how many have been closed. By mid-month, if I see someone has posted 12 sales leads run and 3 or 4 sales leads closed, I know immediately that person isn’t running enough leads. In this case, more leads need to be run, more referrals need to be obtained, and possibly less time needs to be spent on revisiting calls. By increasing the number of leads run, the closed sales numbers will also increase. If sales leads run are 30 and above yet closed sales are still low, then I know to look at sales technique. Is the sales person straying from the technique? Do they need a new pattern of options going into a close?
In some cases, a closing percentage is on track, but number of leads run isn’t high enough. Although there are times in the HVAC business when you have to go back to the home to get answers to questions needed for closing the sale, for the most part, a job can be surveyed and quoted on the first visit. When closing percentages are great, but quoted leads are low, I can assess how to get more leads run. They may be spending too much time on appointments they shouldn’t, or going back too many times to jobs. When the closing rate is good (in our business 40-60%), but number of jobs are low, the sales person isn’t making money, neither is the company, and we aren’t servicing the customers who need our business.
In sales, the numbers don’t lie. Seeing your numbers posted is a tool, something like a road map to get where you need to go. Not having your numbers to guide you in your sales career is the equivalent of starting a cross-country journey without a map to lead your way. You can’t get lost when you have your numbers.
