So How Are You Really Doing?

As a “Sales Consultant” I make it a point to ask people how their sales are. They usually respond by telling me that they’re OK or good and sometimes even telling me that sales are great. This leads me to wonder what they’re basing that response on. Is it compared to sales last year, last month or last week or is just that they have sold something and therefore sales are good. A true sales professional can always tell you how good or bad sales are specific numbers. These numbers can range from comparison to last year, comparison to his or her goals and even comparing to the competition.

Selling without constant attention to specific and realistic goals is only whistling in the dark. Sure your sales are good if you really don’t a definitive benchmark for “good” or the specific level of sales you should be making. In high school I was the number 6 man on a 6 man golf team. I was clearly at the bottom of our school’s golf totem pole. The fact was that my school fielded one of the greatest golf teams in the nation that year. We broke a number of records and the championship by 27 shots. The majority of the team went on to play professional golf and one is still a golf professional today, nearly 40 years later.

While I was not a superstar on my team, I would have been on nearly every other team in the nation. I even went on to win a large market tournament just weeks after graduating from high school. and then playing professional golf for over 5 years. I couldn’t beat the 5 other guys on the team, but I could beat a lot of other people and some even seasoned professionals.

My golf analogy is just like that of a salesperson……your really have to know where you stand. Comparing yourself to the guy down the hall may be setting the sales bar high or it could be setting that bar in the sales basement. The best in the business always want to be compared to the best. Fooling yourself into thinking that you’re sales are great by not know what great is or worse yet, comparing it to underachievers is just a false sense of achievement.  If you’re striving to be a “sales professional”, then compare yourself to true sales professionals not the guy that simply calls himself one.

The best way to know if you’re doing well in sales is to know exactly where you are compared to last year this time and exactly where you need to go this year. On yeah……keep your head down and sell hard.