How do you Interpret the Day?
Frequently when I am coaching someone in their business efforts, I will have them break down every aspect of their actual numbers from the prior week or month depending on the situation. The reason I do this, is that the actual data tells the real story, as opposed to the filtered attitude/emotion based expression of the person I am coaching.
It is common for someone in sales or referral/network marketing to feel like people aren’t interested in their product or service, when that isn’t true at all. This is because they are focused on the people who aren’t interested instead of on those that are. They build mental monuments to the people that say no, and quickly forget those that say yes. I had a coaching session with a woman not too long ago, who was expressing the negative…that she just felt like she “wasn’t any good at it” and people “weren’t interested.”
When we broke down her true numbers, her actual conversion rate, meaning the amount of people who bought her product versus the number of people she approached, she was at 40%. 40%!!!
She was converting 4 out of 10 when the average is about 1-2, and yet she felt as if no one was interested. This is why I stress so hard to people that you don’t fight human nature. Only 20% of the people in general in a given population will take ready action to meet a need….2 out of 10…this is what you expect and if you do better great….focus on the two. The following is an excellent example from the book The Game of Work (Coonradt):
Negativism is the most destructive force that any of us come in contact with, because it robs us of those good feelings we should have about ourselves. Negativism is an evil force. Negativism is a cancer of the mind.
I once had a young man working for me who was assigned the task of setting up sales calls, making appointments. He called in about 4:30 one afternoon, and I said, “How’s it going, Richard?”
He said, “How do you get past these secretaries?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“None of them will let me see their bosses,” he explained.
Anytime I hear a negative generalization I immediately want to dig into it. I said, “Tell me how the day went.”
“I made twenty calls,” he said. “Fourteen of the bosses weren’t even in.”
I knew right off the bat that 70 percent of the secretaries did not refuse to let him talk to their bosses. Their bosses weren’t in.
“Tell me about the other six,” I said.
“I got two appointments, and the other two people are going to call me back.”
“The other two?”
“One had to leave in the middle of the conversation, and the other well, her secretary…”
This is classic. He only had one secretary out of six not allow him through. Instead of focusing on the fact that he got through 5 out of 6 times and seeing how positive that is and how that represented he could be successful, he sabotages himself by allowing the person who didn’t respond represent the whole picture.
Good lesson.
