Winners Never Quit, and Quitters Never Win
The key to successful prospecting and building a solid and steady stream of prospects, customers and sales is undoubtedly the quality of persistence.ÿ The ability to keep on trying, to make one more call, to try one more close for that appointment, to be delayed without being deterred, is a rare and valuable commodity.ÿ
It is a skill that has absolutely no value to the person who has no goals...they will have nothing to persist towards.ÿ
If everything else remains equal between rival business leaders, or sportsmen or competitors; if they have the same skills and quality of approach, the same product and prices, the difference may only be the persistence of one person over an other.
As a business leader once explained to a young and struggling salesman ‘You only start selling when the customer says NO’.ÿÿ He was right, you don't actually start to earn your money or use your craft until you get those ‘no’s’, and begin to use persistence to find a way round them.ÿ This is the key to understanding persistence - you don't have to just have it, you just have to USE it.
Imagine a golfer giving up every time he failed to get a hole in one, or not getting a ball down in the 'correct' number of strokes.ÿ A top golfer will know that some holes will always be under par, and some over, and for each stroke a different club will be required and a different level of skill.
Two sales research surveys showed exactly how important this persistence factor is.ÿ The first followed the fortunes of several thousand sales people and studied how many contacts they had with each customer before they closed the sale.ÿ They found that
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 80% of sales were made after the 5th contact.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 48% of sales people gave up after the 1st contact and won just 2% of the sales.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 73% of sales people gave up after the 2nd contact and won 3% of the sales.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 85% of sales people lasted until the 3rd contact and won 5% of the sales.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 90% of sales people wouldn't try after the 4th contact, when 10% of the sales were made.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ Only 10% of salespeople continued past the 4th contact, andÿ ended up with 80% of the business.
The second survey studied control groups of 100 cold-call prospects.ÿ From this study they concluded the following:
From 100 prospects, who you cold-call, you will get on average:
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 10 who say "Yes" and agree to see/visit you.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 10 who say "No", and are completely not interested.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 20 who ask you to call back.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 50 who are not available.
úÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 10 who want more information.
If you want to get a bigger slice of the 100 prospects, the only way is to use persistence to recall the 50 who are ‘not available’ and carefully and systematically progress and track the 30 who want more information or ask to be called back.ÿ This, and this alone, can double or triple your sales productivity, with everything else remaining constant.
As the famous words of President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed...
‘Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.ÿ
The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race’.