Reach EVERY Decision Maker – Forecasting 50

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Talking to folks and once in a blue moon I’m catching myself reminding people that Bill Gates had a kind of a famous line about 10 years ago that said, the companies that can marry high tech with high touch will dominate their industry. The companies that go all high tech will be a flash in the pan. So I wanted to dedicate a podcast to what I thought was maybe the one of the biggest blind spots that the internet has created.

And it goes something like this. Prior to the internet, a case could be made that if a given sales rep or a team of salespeople simply made the most calls in their office, their division, their company, the chances are they would end up the month on the top. Now prior to the internet, there’s no question, you make the most calls, you’re probably going to win.

There’s a number of reasons for that. First, I believe is, I believe in something called the deserve factor. The deserve factor simply says, it’s that old-fashioned, get there early, stay late, be loyal, you know, make one more call, so to speak.

I’m going to talk about that in a second. But the deserve factor triggers something. Brian Tracy says that the definition of selling or the definition of sales is a transference of feeling.

That’s all it is. And I totally believe that. Well, when you’re putting the work in and you’re doing it and you’re grinding it, you know, in your heart of hearts, you deserve a sale.

You know, 10 no’s in a row lead you to a yes. You know all the cliches, you’re living them. They’re cliches because they’re real.

So the deserve factor often leads to putting you at the top because you put the law of numbers in. Also, there’s the thing called the law of numbers. You put the most numbers in, you know, with everybody carrying the same sample, the same script, the same product, the same whatever.

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Just pure math says you play roulette long enough, eventually you’re going to land on, you know, 31. You know, you’re going to hit a number at some point. But the other one is experience.

Whoever makes the most calls fields the most questions. Thus, they kind of build up what I call a war chest of the perfect responses to questions that go from purely absurd to the obvious. And again, when they’re experienced and they’ve fielded that many questions, the answers flow freely.

The other end of the line feel more comfortable. So making the most calls is a critical, important aspect for many of the largest companies in the world. I mean, they’re still today just, I’m going to say hundreds of major companies that are still doing similar tactics to the mid to late 60s, where they just have teams of phone reps that are just cranking, setting up either, you know, salespeople, closers, you know, different things like that.

Many of the greatest sales trainers in the world, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins, they have book chapters, even seminar series, if that’s a word, seminar sessions, maybe centered around the concept that the best performing sales reps are definitely those that get in early, stay late, make another call, et cetera. But here’s where this kicks in. Today, we live in an internet world.

We live in a digital society, a digital age. Decision makers today, think about 1982, right? And what the decision maker was dealing with during his day. Today, the decision maker probably, probably is a little bit distracted with text.