The value of an appointment
Activity is one of the key secrets to sales success .In my sales I use a one stop approach to making a sale and this article is based on this however you could you the same idea if you are using a two appointment process.

For the purpose of this article I am defining an appointment as the delivering of a properly written proposal that solves a prospects need and the fact that you asked for the order. I am also assuming that you are following a repeatable process and not taking any shortcuts and are performing professionally thru each step of your process.

What I would like to show is that each appointment has a specific value, which you can use to predict your income and allow you to focus on your activity, which will produce your results. Most salespeople and companies count the value of a lead as the number of leads (appointments) divided by the cost of marketing, I am going to show you that the value is substantially higher then that and this is why you must give 110% to each lead and follow your process to completion with the delivery of a proposal and asking for the order.

Below is a section of a sales chart showing several numbers, which you should be tracking on daily/weekly/monthly/yearly intervals.

Sales calls jobs sold close ratio
447 138 31%
avg. job amnt. Total $ sold presentation value $13,380 $1,846,516 $4,130

There are three ways to increase your income. They are higher close ratio, higher average job size, and increased activity. I believe that the easiest of the three is to increase your activity (number of appointments and orders asked for).

As you see in the above chart I delivered 447 proposals resulting in 138 jobs sold at an average job size of $13,380 and total sales of $1,846,516.The value of each appointment was therefore 1,846516/447=4,130.

Assuming I worked approximately 45 wks of the year this would mean I had 447/45=9.93 appointments per wk or about 10 per wk. If I had done just one more appointment per wk (very easy to do), this would mean 45*4,130=185,850 in additional sales. In my case this would have been an increase of $16,726.00 or $321.00 for 52 weeks. My appointments are scheduled for 3-hour time slots so I would have averaged about $123. Per hr on those additional appointments I would not worry about which of the 45 I would sell (resulting in 14 sales) I would just follow the same actions and process I did on the other 447 and believe in that the same results would happen!!

Happy selling.
Tony Pola
Rapid Sales Growth
www.rapidsalesgrowth.com
tonypola@rapidsalesgrowth.com

Author's Bio: 

Tony Pola was a $40,000 gross income self-employed painter less the ten yrs ago. He had the same problems a lot of you have, not enough time, not enough money, and not enough family time. He then turned to sales in order to increase his income. That is until he discovered the secrets to sales success and how to make a 6-figure income