DOUBLE EARNINGS

QUICKREAD

Here are three ways to increase your sales income:

1. Shorten your selling cycle by changing your "buy-cycle" paradigms. Your own purchasing habits mirror your vulnerabilities to prospects.

2. Increase your average commissions per sale by dumping high maintenance, low yield opportunities. Learn to move on!

3. Prospect smarter, and more consistently. Let your clients sell for you. Make your prospecting system your highest priority.

How to Double Your Commission Income in 12 Months.

Every week I'm asked: How do I earn more commissions? It is simple. There are only three ways:

1. Increase the number of prospects you add to the top of your sales funnel, or

2. Increase your average commission per sale, or

3. Shorten your selling cycle.

You pick. Most pick #3, but few have a clue how to do it. Number 1 is the easiest, but few have a system and most lack the discipline. Number 2 wins most simple, yet toughest. Here are some insights you can take to the bank.

How to shorten your sales cycle. Sit down. This next concept will upset you. Your sales cycle is a 100% mirror image of how you buy things in your personal life. Analyze your "buy-cycle" when making a major purchase. Do you shop around? Do you buy on price? Do you research major purchases? Do you take time to think purchases over? Do you consult others before buying? If you answered yes to any of the above, most likely you are vulnerable to prospects who beat you up on rate; who shop your proposal; who pick your brain for ideas; who delay decisions and give you stalls, sob stories and put-offs.

What's the fix? Change your buy cycle. Learn to be decisive. Make Yes or No decisions when buying from other sales people. Remember the rule: Only decisive people can get others to make decisions. (If this affects you, this weakness is costing you 50% income potential every year.)

Other ways to shorten the sales cycle? Learn how to set expectations for a short and decisive sales cycle.

How to increase your average commissions per sale:

You have two choices. Raise your commission percentage rate. Or, increase your average deal size.

When you establish your sales plan for the next 12 months, split your prospects and accounts into three categories: Elephants, Deer and Rabbits. Rabbits are small accounts that take some time to close and service, yet yield the smallest commissions. Rabbits are easiest to "kill", but it takes a lot to feed the village.

Deer accounts aren't as plentiful, are harder to close, yet the village eats well each time you bring one home.

Elephants are the biggies. Good in that one elephant feeds the village for months…bad in that they're hard and costly to hunt. And, if you shoot and miss, you could starve in the meantime.

Analyze your sales from last year. What's the mix? If you wanted to double your income, how must your mix change? Most of my clients quickly decide to jettison rabbits in favor of more deer, and maybe an elephant or two. And after working with us 24 months, most of our "Sales Black Belts" have evolved exclusively into elephant hunters.

Finally, how to put more in the funnel. You can work harder or smarter. Harder means to do more prospecting. Smarter means to do better prospecting. Better means:

a) Coach your customers on how to introduce you to five prospects per week. Coach them on how to sell for you.

b) Establish measurable daily prospecting goals, and don't let anything keep you from meeting them. (Identify things you really want, calculate how many sales you need to buy them, then calculate how many times you must dial the phone every day based on your closing ratio.)

c) Focus on your behavior…not results. You cannot control results, you can only control your behavior. (Do the behavior, and the results will come.)