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

This is not just a story, it is a true story. It is not just a story, it's a set of instructions that can awaken your amazing sales potential.

I was put into sales management much against my wishes. Teaching my system of "The Magic of Numbers and Statistics in Sales" was no easy task, because people considered my stories of guaranteed sales to be 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.

Because of his attitude, and belief, not only had the salespeople believed him so did the management that I was working for. Originally, I was to shut down the office but I asked for a chance to redeem it.

This was the last chance for that office. The place was riddled with the doubts of the sales people and especially the sales manager. This was the toxin that was killing sales in Newark, and if I couldn't get it out of there, the game would be over.

But I absolutely knew that people in Newark were not different than in any other town we had successfully sold. I knew the Newark office could make sales.

Our system had been successful everywhere, all we needed to change in Newark was the attitude.

I believed it would be easier to start with a new crew then to change the deeply negative thoughts of the current group. I told everyone they were absolutely right, and that Newark was an too hard to sell. I advised them to find work elsewhere.

One young saleslady that had been employed at this office begged to stay. She claimed to enjoy her work.

I warned her that I expected a lot more than the previous manager. I told her that she would be responsible for three times the amount of the previous quota.

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.

I looked at her, and I could see through her eyes into her soul, that she was open to suggestions and willing to learn. I believed that she could do it if she was shown how.

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.

"Sales, " I told her, "is more than just being physically present at the workplace. You must work while you're at work. If you believe while you're dialing that the people you are calling want what you have, if you are kind, if you are sincere, this will come through perfectly on the phone and the feeling you have about the products and services will influence your contacts positively."

By keeping track of her results by percentages, I showed her how to determine the number of sales she could count on per number of prospects contacted. . If for instance, if she started out making one sale for every 10 prospects she contacted that can be a number she can count on no matter what.

She would know how many presentations she had to do per sale, she would know how many presentations she had to make each day to make a certain number of sales in a week. If she wanted to make a certain amount of money in sales per week, that she would have to do a certain amount of presentations each week in order to get a certain amount of sales.

She was amazed the first week when she actually hit her goal. And she had done it herself! The truth of my system became more real and more true to he as week after week she made that quota. Finally she understood that it was all up to her to do a certain amount of presentations, and that would lead to a certain number of sales, that would create an amount of income she could count on.

And then I introduced her to the next step: increasing her ratio of sales from yes's to nos, by raising her belief level, and her consistency. And of course that would lead to even more increases in income.

I hired more salespeople, and trained them side by side with the young woman who was aliving example of the things I was teaching them. Slowly I built up a group of five top salespeople, including the young woman. Everyone was making quota with the system.

At this point I had a blended crew, some new members, and some members from the old sales team. Over time two others had come back to me and I allowed them to come back one at a time, and I taught them the new way. Everyone used the new system, quotas were being made. And then it was time for a test of my great team.

We had only been able to turn the sales people from the old crew around by changing their thoughts, because we showed them that Newark was a place you could make sales. They could see it, and when they believed it, they made sales.

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 told me, we have dialed those before, and they did not work. Those are the meanest people we ever called, they slam the phone on us, they will not talk twelve even fifteen to us. If we make a sale they are never home when we try to deliver.

I explained to them, you are now a powerful crew. You are some of the finest people in this company. We have been setting records over every other office in the company.

We all worked for a very large company so it was quite an accomplishment for this sales team to have the top sales records in the company. So I looked each of them in the eye and said very firmly: "This time when you call those people, they will say yes!" All of you have nothing to fear from the old numbers, you have something new -- you have a new belief. All of you have a different attitude, you have new sales skills. Now you know you have something to offer that is good and you know that these people want it. They only told me they would "Try". I knew there was a problem, when they told me that.

To keep spirits up, I created a positive party-like atmosphere in our office. I made coffee, and brought in refreshments, and tried to keep the tone light with humor. But near the day's end, we had not made even 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.

I asked everyone to stop calling for a moment. The room was dark with fear and negative thoughts, the legacy that had been part of their office life from the old manager. These non productive negativities had taken them hostage again. I knew that the miasma was not coming from the numbers, they weren't bad luck. But it seemed very much like the bad stuff was attached to those numbers. Everything had been fine before we started on those sheets.

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.

We tried on again. They started to whine, they started to talk negatively. I knew I was losing my crew. By 8:30 I had had enough. We only had 30 minutes left and we had no sales.

I asked everyone to stop. I told them that I had made a promise never to turn in less than 700 dollars for one days sales to my supervisor and I am going to keep that promise even if we have less than half an hour left today. I have listened to your concerns, even your complaints and whining all day.

I told them, "You are the best crew I have ever had, and probably one of the best I will ever have. But today was terrible. I'm disappointed because I know you can do better. You have let yourselves down, but you are ruining yourselves with your negativity. It's you, not the numbers."

I asked them to give me the very worst sheet of numbers and they knew I was angry. A sheet of the very worst numbers was proffered. I took it, and I affirmed that we would make that $700 today even if I had to do it all myself. I told them to ready the drivers to deliver product and pick up checks. I warned them how busy it was going to be.

I chose two of my sales people to listen to me on the phone and 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 because I would not repeat myself. In order to make my quota in less than half an hour I'd have to make 20 sales in about 20 minutes.There was only time for yes's. For my plan to work, everyone had to say yes. And I knew, with my belief, that no one could say no to me. If I was sincere, if I believed I was doing the right thing and doing something good for someone, I could do it. 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 time clock told us the working day was over and I was down to what my people told me were the "worst of the worst" numbers, I made the seven hundred dollars of quota I told them I would make. The drivers who had been made ready successfull delivered product and collected the checks. My sales team was floored. They had seen it with their own eyes.Now they knew I would never, ever accept "bad numbers" as an excuse for lack of sales.

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.

The sales team I had trained was doing better even than I had done as an individual sales person, and I had sold approximately one out of every three, which was a very respectable number and made me a top salesperson. The sales were unbelievably high. But my sales team had proven that it could be done, because, they were doing it.