How a Down and Out Sales Crew Rose from Ashes to Win at Sales

This story is completely true. It is not a fantasy. It will tell you how what seems to be magic can be used to create phenomenal sales.

The last thing I wanted to do was to be a sales manager, because I loved to sell using my system of "The Magic of Numbers and Statistics in Sales." Teaching it to others would not be easy because other salespeople consider my system a fantasy.

I traveled to our Newark, Ohio office which had had a lot of problems and needed to be rebuilt. It had been declared by the current manager as a disaster. He said no one could make any sales in Newark, Ohio.

The Newark sales manager's negative thoughts were so strong that everyone in the office believed there was no way to make sales in the city. I had been told to shut down the office but I persuaded senior management to let me try to rehabilitate the office, rather than shutting it down.

The office's future hung by a thread. The salespeople had doubt firmly planted in their minds. This doubt would have to be dealt with or Newark would be doomed.

But in my heart I knew that the people in Newark were the same as people in Columbus as the people in Dayton as the people in Cincinnati and everywhere else we had opened up offices. I knew that Newark would produce sales.

Everywhere we had gone our system had been successful, and I knew all we had to do was repeat it in Newark with a positive attitude.

Immediately I let everyone go. I told them that they were correct, this city would not produce sales, and they might as well go find work elsewhere. I knew that in their frame of mind it was an uphill battle and I was better off starting with a new crew.

One young lady begged me to stay, she told me she really enjoyed her work there and she wanted to keep her job.

But, I had to explain that I expected a lot more than the previous manager. Before she was expected to sell only five hundred dollars per week. I, however, would expect three times that as a minimum.

Teary eyed, she told me she would do whatever it took to make the new quota, she said she would be excited to triple her sales, if only she knew how.

Standing before me was a woman who was clearly open to learning a new way. I had no doubt she could do it with the methods I could provide.

I explained exactly how she needed to follow the system step by step and I showed her how that would lead to making her quota. I showed her every single thing that needed to be done to succeed.

I explained to her that sales was more than just coming to work. You have to actually work while you're at work. You have to believe while your dialing that the people want what you have. You have to be kind, you have to be sincere, you have to transmute the feeling you have about the products and services to the prospect on the phone. Without this, nothing will ever happened.

I showed her how to determine the number of sales she could count on per number of prospects contacted by keeping track of her results by percentages,. . After keeping track for a while, she would see that, say if she started out making one sale for every 10 prospects she contacted that she now will know she needs to make ten presentations to count on one sale.

I showed her that to make her quota of 1500 dollars per week, that she would have to do a certain amount of presentations each week in order to get a certain amount sales.

It was amazing to her the first week when she actually hit her goal. What seemed impossible had become possible! The second, third, and fourth, week it became more real and more true to her. Until finally she knew that it depended on her to do a certain amount of presentations, and that would lead to a certain number of sales, that would create a certain amount of income.

And then I showed her how to increase her income by increasing her ratio of sales from yes's to nos, and to increase her belief level, and her consistency.

During this time we developed a very good crew. Everyone was hitting their quotas, everything was going fine. We had a core crew of five people plus myself.

Then we came back to an area that had been called by the previous manager. Now, at this time three of my five salespersons were from the old crew. Over time two others had come back to me and since I had a positive crew going I allowed them to come back one at a time.

We were able to convert them to the thinking that Newark was a great place to work and makes sales, and that people wanted our products.

It was afternoon and I pulled out of the drawer the same sheets of numbers that had been used by the previous manager. They still held bookmarks of the unfinished area and notes about who had said no, who was not home, etc..

It visibly affected the team members from the old sales crew when they saw me pull out the old sheets. They thought those were bad sheets, they thought the numbers were just bad numbers. But I insisted. "These are wonderful numbers," I told them, "There is nothing wrong with the numbers. We will make out fine with them."

They really didn't want to call those numbers. They told me the numbers did not work. They told me those numbers led to the meanest people they ever called, people who slammed the phone down, wouldn't even talk... and even if they made a sale those people were never home when they tried to deliver.

But this, this was now a powerful crew. These were the best salespeople in this company. This was the team that had been setting records over every other office in the company.

At this time the company was covering three states, so it was quite an accomplishment for this crew. I looked at them and I told them you have the ability to call the same people on this list that told you no before, but this time they will say yes. The reason you'll do this this time, is that now you believe, now you have a different attitude, now you have new sales skills, now you know you have something to offer that is good and that these people want it. They said "we will try." But I knew I had a problem.

So we started dialing. I did everything I could keep the room cheery, I made a pot of gourmet coffee, the aroma would fill the room. I brought in some doughnuts, I tried to make a few jokes. However at five o'clock we did not even have one sale.

Now I had promised my boss, that I would never walk out of my office without at least seven hundred dollars in sales for the day. We had zero. However, I was not worried, I knew my crew had the ability to pull off a minimum day in only one hour if they decided to. We normally turned in twelve hundred dollars or more per day in sales.

Two hours left now. I told everyone to stop. The room was gloomy with fear and negative thoughts that had been part of their office life from the old manager. These old thoughts had taken control of them again. It was almost as if the negative thoughts had been imprinted in the number sheets and was rubbing off on all my sales crew.

I insisted that their success came from the changes they made in their beliefs about sales possibilities. It was not about the old manager, or the old numbers, or even the new manager or the new numbers. My role had simply been to point out to them their own innate sales skills, and to help them put those into action. Since their success had come from skills they had already demonstrated, they could still take these numbers and make sales.

Calling resumed, but I knew I was losing them. They were whining and complaining. I was losing my cool. Half an hour left and no sales.

STOP! I told them. I shared with them that I had made a promise never to turn in less than 700 dollars for one days sales to my supervisor and I vehemently insisted to keep that promise with whatever time we had left. I listened to all the bad talk all day long, now they had to listen to me.

I know that you are the best crew I have ever had, and probably one of the best I will ever have. But you have let me down.Now that is fine, because I have let people down also. But mostly I am concerned that you have let yourselves down. You have let this poison of negative thought infect you, and I have to show you that it is only yourself stopping you. It is not the people we are dialing.

They knew I was angry when I asked them to give me the very worst sheet of numbers in the room. They agreed with little delay on a specific sheet on numbers. I took it, and I announced that we would make that $700 today if I had to do it all myself. I told them to get the drivers ready to deliver product and pick up checks. I warned them that we were going to be very busy in a short while.

I selected two of my sales people to write down orders as they heard me make them, because I knew I would not have time to write down these sales, so they would have to listen closely as I worked on the phone. In order to make $700 in less than half an hour I'd have to make 20 sales in about 20 minutes.There was no time for a no. For my plan to work, veryone had to say yes. But I knew, that if I had the belief, no one could say no to me. I knew that if I was sincere, if I believed I was doing the right thing, If I believed I was doing something good for someone, it would work, and no one would say no.

So I made that first call and I sold the first person I talked to, and I sold second person I talked to, and I sold the third person I talked to.It was true! Not one of them could say no to me. I was truly at the top of my game! And I was proving to my people that they could choose not to allow the negativity in their minds to stop their sales. I was showing them they could control it.

When the day was over I was down to what my people told me were the "worst of the worst" numbers. Yet I was still making sales and Imade the seven hundred dollars of quota just as I told them I would. The products were delivered and the and the checks were collected. My sales team was speechless. Now they knew I would never, ever accept "bad numbers" as an excuse for lack of sales. I had done it right before their eyes.

That was just the beginning. Now they knew that success was up to them. My sales team outsold other offices with 3 to 4 times the numbers of sales staff. The local district gave us what they considered the worst sales territory, and we turned that around to have our highest sales figures ever.

They knew they could do it, and we still outsold many of the offices with 12-15 phones and 20-25 salespersons.Although my 5 people had to share 3 phones, and we were calling an area no one else wanted, my people knew that did not matter.

50% of everyone we talked to said yes. The company average was 5%. My best average as a saleperson before I started managing was 33%. But now my crew was doing better than I had done.These numbers were so fantastic that no one else would believe us. But my crew believed because they were doing it.

Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. is still helping student learn how to become the best salesstudent. Visit our slideshow to see how Tim can help you be the best salesperson you can be.
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