You Can Boost Your Sales With These Simple Tricks!

Okay, so welcome, welcome, welcome everyone to this free Accelerate Sales masterclass on unlocking your sales numbers. Um, and thank you for trusting me with some of your time. And for those of you who have turned up live, lucky you, um, I will be sending you My super duper, very fantastic sales numbers spreadsheet that has got lots of magic in there. And so while I'm just letting a few more people in, which is fantastic, thank you. And what we will do is kick off. I do have a section at the end of the masterclass for questions. So I invite you to— I'm just going to put my headphones in. Sorry. I invite you to put them in the chat or note them down, and we'll come to them at the end. I'm just Yep. Okay, good. Okay, right, so let's get stuck in. Welcome! Here's me doing a pose. I hate photographs. Anywho, um, welcome. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Frances Pratt and I run a Accelerate Sales. My claim to fame is that I teach people who hate selling to learn how to love it. And today I'm focusing on sales numbers. So looking forward to helping you think that through. So you're in the right place if you have your business or you're working in a business But getting that consistency around clients and around knowing your numbers and all of those sort of things, that's a bit missing at the minute. You know that you have lots to offer, but how do I get people buying or buying more consistently from me? So you're in the right place if those are the things. This isn't for you if you're not open to thinking about things differently, or you plan to take in part of the entire presentation and all the good bits and get a bit cross if I make you an offer at the end. So that's just a headline that I will be making an offer at the end of this free masterclass. My promise in the next 60 minutes, you will get some awesome ideas. From me. Everything that I do has been tested in my nearly 30 years in selling and 15 years in running my own business and helping people just like you learn how to sell with ease and grace. So lock in for the ride. Here we go. Just letting someone else in. Okay. Welcome, welcome. So just to repeat, I'm just about to get started on the content. So everyone's arrived at exactly the right time, which is awesome. If you have questions during the presentation, please either pop them in chat for me or write them down, and there will be a section at the end for a Q&A, and I love questions. So Um, please hit me up. So I have a confession. I love selling, even cold calling, um, and I've been selling and consulting on sales for 27+ years. Um, but here's what I've learned in the last 15 years. I actually, more than selling, I love teaching people the hidden secrets of selling and sales. I love helping them go, Oh, I don't have to be that icky, sticky, yucky person. I actually just get to be myself, and I get to invite people to work with me, and they're gonna pay me money. Happy days. So that's, that's my role in life. Okay, so this is what we're gonna Um, why have I got 3? And anyway, um, slide error. See, I'm not perfect. Um, so what we're gonna cover is what are the essential numbers we need to know from a sales perspective in your business? What type of numbers are there? How do we do this? Like, once we get it out of a number, how do we actually get that into action? And then we've, as I said, we've got time for questions at the end. So here's what your numbers give you. Predictable revenue, less chasing, more ease. And let me just unpack a little bit of that mindset for you, because here's what I know, that when we are looking at knowing our numbers and getting those clients on board. When we have, when we have the right numbers of people in our sales pipeline as paying clients, it actually does. I've got 3 points there, but it does point number 3 first. If we are looking for 3 sales, This month, and we only are talking to 3 people, that has a whole lot of angst in it. Because the minute that person hesitates, one of those 3 that we have to close, or, or delays or doesn't get back to you, suddenly we feel like, oh my God, I'm never gonna get this. Right? Whereas if we need 3 and we've got 9, suddenly we feel different. Mhmm. We've got less chasing going on. We've got more predictability. But the most important thing is for you as individuals, as people, as human beings, you feel less angst about if someone hesitates or someone says, ah, nah, actually, this isn't for me. So I always like to start with the mindset piece. Because I think when we think the right way about our sales numbers and then we do the right things to bring in those numbers, then that's when we get the predictable revenue. But actually, that mindset piece has to come first. We've got to know where we're heading. We've got to know how to think about our sales numbers in a positive way so that we can actually get out there and do it. And here's the thing, right? I love Martin Luther King Jr. One of the, one of the tasks sometimes that I do with my coaching clients is get them to redo the I Have a Dream speech for their business. It's a really beautiful thing to do because how he's anyway. So that's just a bit of an aside, but it is beautiful. So what did he say? If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way. So here's what I want to encourage you with as you go listen to me. Listen to me. No, as you listen to me today, and as you take some actions out of today. If there's one small change that you're gonna make, then that is awesome. Okay? So do a small thing in a great way, and then do another small thing in a great way. And this is how we build momentum. We actually don't build momentum by doing 100 things poorly. That's that whole hustle. methodology, I think, is, is flawed. So I just wanted to share Martin, my mate Martin, with you. Okay, so there are some things that people need, you know, you need to know in your business, but I wanna say to you, it— these are awesome to know, but you're never gonna find them out if you don't start tracking them and you don't start doing them. So I'm very much an action taker and encourage people to take actions. But here's the types of things I want you to know, kind of in 6 months' time. What's your average sale? How many times do you need to contact or be in contact with a person in order to get them to buy from you? What are those ratios? Is it I find someone or they find me? Either way, I talk to them, I do a proposal, and then about 1 in 7 say yes. Or is it 1 in 3 say yes? Like, what is it? And I don't care. I mean, I do care, but it doesn't matter right now whether you don't know those numbers or do know those numbers. What matters is we start thinking about them in our business. So I want you to start thinking about what sort of business, and if you've got recurring revenue from that client, the average sale might also look at that. Um, what a 12-month revenue from that client look like. So, and how do I actively get referrals from my existing clients? And how many do I get? And where are my leads coming from? Are they web activity? Are they referrals? Are they— where are they coming from. But as I said at the beginning, let's start by starting. Okay, so in order to go forwards, what I encourage you to do is to go backwards. Now, for those, um, those people who've come live to this, uh, masterclass today, you are winners because I'm going to send you a spreadsheet that helps you do this. Winner winner chicken dinner. But if you're listening to— actually, I don't do a recording, but I am recording, but I'm not sending it to people anyway. If you happen to be listening to this and not live, you can still do this for yourself. Or if you're— if you have great manners and reach out to me, send me an email saying, Fran, can I please, please, please have the spreadsheet? I will send it to you. Because that's the sort of nice person I am. So, um, what I want you to do is look at your last 12 months. It doesn't have to be complicated. Just grab a report out of Xero or your accounting system. Um, and what you're looking at in this is how— what sales did you do? And you might break that down by month. I wanna know for each month, was that 3 clients, 10 clients, 17 clients? Is there something going on? Now, the reason I have the number of clients plus I have the number of invoices is sometimes we might have some clients where, um, we invoice them multiple times in the month. So that will help us get an average per client and per invoice. And just looking at that will give us some sort of idea about how many more of those types of clients we need in order to reach our goals, which is the whole point. And so I want you to be thinking about not just what has happened, but I want you to dive into that a little bit and go, oh, look at that! In March this happened, and in June this happened. So are there any patterns at play there that can help you understand a little bit more about your clients? Also, I want you to think about You might have some clients who weren't ideal. Let's face it, we've all met them. I'm in the process of writing a new book, and I'm calling these clients our Queen of Hearts because I'm using Alice in Wonderland. So she's a nightmare, right? We don't wanna replicate the Queen of Hearts. So can these numbers show you Those clients you don't wanna replicate, that you don't wanna repeat. And that is fantastic information, um, in the same way that the ones that you do wanna repeat is fantastic information, because sometimes knowing where we don't wanna go is just as important as knowing where we do wanna go. So that's looking backwards. Okay, now we want to set some goals. And one of the reasons that I love working, um, with financial years and, and, and months in general is that at the beginning of the financial year, which, okay, we're 3 weeks in, but everybody in the world— well, not everyone starts their financial Anyway, everyone in the world at the beginning of the month starts at zero. Sales is a great leveler. No one starts the month with anything in their coffer. So we all have as much opportunity as the next person on the first day of the month. And I love that. So I want you to think about, well, what, what do you wanna achieve? In the next 12 months. What does, what does a great August look like? Um, are you gonna build, is that gonna be, are you gonna measure it by number of clients or average sale, or do you perhaps wanna keep the same number of clients but maybe increase what they're buying from you? There's lots of different ways to play around with this. So, and I just encourage you to play. Because when we put positive energy into the idea of what we wanna do with our clients, that feeds forward into the actions that you're gonna take. So, um, the late, great Stephen Covey says, start with the end in mind. So, um, if you don't know where you're going, another quote from— um, I'm sorry, I'm down the rabbit hole with Alice in Wonderland. But, um, Is, um, I think it's the, um, grub— wrong word, but it's anyway, who— caterpillar who says to, um, Alice, if you don't know where you're going, or Alice says, which way should I go? And he goes, well, where do you want to go? And she goes, I don't know. And he said, well, then it doesn't matter. So knowing where you're gonna go is really important so that we can actually head off in that direction. So what I want you to do is then break that down. So you, you've got a map, a map of what you think, where you wanna go. And then I want you to think, is that income, that extra income gonna come from existing clients, or is it gonna come from new clients? So that's a really good thing to break down. And the reason for that is that if you're selling into existing clients, it's heaps easier. So your statistics on how much activity you need to do to convert those sales is lower. And the other thing that I love to do, and I was actually with someone that I've been in a group, a mastermind group with before, as a participant, and she said to me, oh, Fran, she said, you always do that. You always said to us, what's your good, better, best? So instead of setting one number, I want you to think about what's a good, better— good number, a better number, and a best number. And that's a wonderful thing to look at over a 12-month period because we might break that into, um, into 4-month lots. So let's get to good for July, August, September, October. Let's kick that back into, um, better. And so what we're doing is we're giving ourselves the first goal to get to, and then the next one and the next one, and we can be building the activity that is going to drive that result. Um, one of the reasons I really like that is back to our mindset. When we, when we feel like a goal that we've set ourselves is achievable, we're more likely to put effort into it. It's easier for us to move forward with that. Whereas if we set a goal and say, that's it, I'm gonna lose 100 kilos, we go, that'll never happen. Okay. Whereas if we say, I'm just gonna make 1 new client this month, you think, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's doable. So we want something that's doable, and then we can stretch ourselves with our better and our best. So the good is a doable goal. Now in the special spreadsheet and I think there's a couple of new people who have come in, but I'm sending those people who've come live to a special spreadsheet that does all this magic work for you. And what it does is it helps you reflect on your last 12 months, helps you put in your forecasts, and then it looks at what sort of activity numbers you need to be doing In order to generate that. And it uses some really broad rules of thumb around, you know, percentages and metrics. And in the first instant, I just want you to know that they may not be 100% right, but it doesn't matter. What matters is now we're starting to track it. And then in 6 months' time, uh, or in 12 months' time, you will know what those numbers need to be. But we need to set a goal and think about what activity drives that so that we can, um, track those and then know those in our business. We're not just going to magically wave a wand and know exactly the numbers we need. Activity numbers we need to be doing. That all comes from experience. So I just encourage you to start by starting. Okay, here's a good segue from the last thing I just said. Please, please, please, if you take nothing else out of this, if you don't even look at the spreadsheet, Here's some things to know about sales. Sales is an activity-based sport. It's fun. It's dancing. It's getting in front of people. It's talking to them. It's understanding them. It's working out what works and what doesn't work. The only way you could listen to me for 7 years, and if you never poke your nose out the front door and try any of these things, I promise you, you won't be any better at selling. You might be better at knowing me, which is, you know, let's face it, a fantastic thing, but you won't be better at selling. You have to get out there. It's a sport. You have to play it. And what you learn by playing a sport is what position you're good at. You get to learn what you can lean into, what you need to focus a little bit more on. Are you a natural goal kicker or are you a defender? And it doesn't matter because in sales I have 2 rules. One, you have to be yourself. So if your natural side is to be, um, uh, introverted number nerd, then love that for you. Go hard. Right? Be that. Um, if you're an extroverted weirdo like me, then I've gotta be me. But whatever you are, be you. But the second rule of great selling is you gotta get over yourself. You gotta get out there. You gotta go and talk to people. You gotta learn what works for them and for you. The second thing about selling is it's a future-focused discipline. Sales do not exist in the last month, last quarter, last year. Sales are potential. They're forward-focused. They're about what you can create. And that's why right back at the beginning, I said at the beginning of the quarter, beginning of the month, everybody starts on zero because great selling happens As we go and talk to people, as we convert an existing client into a new contract, or a potential client into being a client with us, or someone who's interested into someone who wants to explore it more. Okay, so I think I've encouraged you enough with— bless you, Ashley. I think I've encouraged you enough with the activities. Let's think about how— what numbers we need to be looking at. Okay, so the other thing I like to do, and I know that all the people that I'm talking to today, sales isn't the only thing you do, right? You also do the do. And so let's think about how we can more consciously put some sort of rhythm around what we do. So in a week, think about when you are best with other people. Are you grumpy, grumpy, grumpy before you have your first or second coffee? In which case, please don't make appointments for 6 o'clock in the morning. Make them for later in the day. Start your sales activities at, say, 11, right? Give yourself some grace. And this is where it, where it comes back to knowing yourself and who you are. Set up some key times in your week where you're on normally. In a good space and a good performer and use those, allocate those as sales times and use them to say, oh, yep, look, normally I meet with people on a Wednesday morning at 11 AM. The good thing about using words like normally or typically is God bless people, but, and most of them are sheep, right? So if you say normally and typically, they'll hop over that. fence that isn't there because they just wanna be the same as everybody else. So think about the types of activities you wanna be doing. So when are you gonna do your follow-ups? When are you gonna do your new client meetings? When are you gonna do the circling back to your existing clients and doing reviews? So have some time set aside in your week So that, that those sales activities can happen. Then when I look at a monthly basis, what I like to do is the first 2 weeks of the month is about bringing new people— sorry, is about closing the sales I need to close for that month. So if my target is One new client, or using my good, better, best, 1, 2, or 3 new clients a month. Great. My first 2 weeks, I've got that done. My second 2 weeks is then about filling the pipeline, filling the sales pipeline. Who am I going to take from interested to, um, actually thinking about working with me and how, how do I progress them? So that's what I do in the second half of the month. When you go back and look at your numbers, you will see some natural patterns. So again, be kind to yourself. Don't try and have a bumper month in June if, or January or December when nobody in your industry or, or the people that you work with are buying. Give yourself some grace. Give yourself some space. And think about planning this activity. And I was just talking to someone earlier today, and she went— she was talking about not really having enough money. And then she said her goal in the next 6 months was to get to $100,000. And I'm like, okay, that, that's great. If you can do that. But I feel like that's more her best rather than the good. And so sometimes when we do that, we can discourage ourselves because we don't— we're nowhere near that, that goal. So it's good to stretch yourself, but not to a point where you give up. So one of the things that I want to talk to you about is the difference between— and that doesn't actually— I think I took the slide out. Did I? Yep. So I'm gonna go back here. So one of the things I want to talk to you about is the difference between where the leads come from and how important it is from a numbers perspective. When I think about getting new clients or new revenue into my business, the first place that I look at, the first place I go is to my existing clients. And the reason that that is so important is because, one, when you go and talk to your existing client base, they fill you with hope and they fill you with all the beautiful, wonderful things that you've done with— for them and with them, right? This fills your story bank and arms you With all the goodness to go out to talk to new people. The second thing that I find from existing clients is it's not just a feel-good exercise. It's an opportunity to say, hey, I haven't spoken to you in 6 months or 3 months or whatever it's been. What's new? Oh, we're just gonna open a new office, or we're just doing this, or we're starting a new restaurant venture, or whatever it happens to be. That's great information, right? And great selling is helping people buy. So if we can know that someone's got something new that they're focused on, then it leads to the question of, well, how can I help you with that? So that automatically adds in new revenue sources and business for us. The second part of that is we also get the opportunity of saying what's new with us. Have you got a new product? Have you discovered something about your clients or your business that you wanna share with people? Have you— has something momentous or, or even just interesting happened for you or your business or both. Share that. Be human with your clients. Share what's going on. And this segues beautifully into asking them, okay, so for the next 6 months, what's your focus? What's the number one thing you wanna achieve in 6, like, you know, in the next 6 months? Again, you might be able to help them. It might be that their number one thing is to find a great accountant, and you know a great accountant. It doesn't have to be something that is about your business, but the more you help them, the more they're going to focus in on you and seeing you as a trusted advisor. Secondly, You then get to share with them what your focus is. And so one of the ways that that might come up is, might you might say, well, I'm focused on growing my business. I've got a goal in the next 3 months to get 3 new clients. And so one of the things I'm doing is going and asking for referrals. So the type of client I'm looking for And please, God, be crunchy about what you're asking for. Don't just say anyone with a pulse. I want you to be deliberate. I want you to say the clients I work best with are founders turning over about $2 million who really wanna get better at their sales, and this is their problem, right? Be as crunchy as you can because that helps. The person who's listening to you go, oh my God, I know that person. That's Mike or that's Sally. The great, great, great reason to focus on referrals and ask for referrals is because referral business is faster, is better, and is more likely to succeed. So let's run through that. When you get someone referring you, you get some trust. So if you reach out to someone and say, oh, go and see this hairdresser, or go and see this person, they're awesome at blah blah. As a, as a consumer, we kind of stop looking, don't we? We go, oh great, someone's referred me. Great. I'm just gonna go and say, hey, I was talking to Fran, and she said that I should call you about blah blah. It takes that weight off us to go and find someone. So when we go and talk to that person, we're more open. We're less guarded. We are more likely to tell them the truth about where we're at and what we want. And because of those things, the person that we're talking to is better able to help us. And so the client's mindset is more proactive. The seller's mindset is more proactive. And so the whole deal goes more quickly. They're more likely to say yes. Because not only do they come with some element of trust in what you do, now they're sharing with you more intimate details, which allows you to get deeper into the trust equation than ever, than with someone who's starting out cold. And so it just makes so much sense. So when I'm looking at helping people grow their business, The first thing I do is go to existing clients, collect stories, tell them what I'm up to, find out what they're up to, look for business, look for a referral. Next, after I've exhausted those markets, then I go out to other people I know. And if I exhaust those markets, then I go out to the cold market. The cold market is It's the reason it's called cold is because it is. It's cold out there. Um, it's cold. People take warm longer to warm up, longer, longer to become acquainted with you, what you do, how you do it. And, and they're harder to convert. They take longer to convert, and then they're less likely to stay. So please put some effort into your existing clients. In my book, More Sales, Less Marketing, I wrote a chapter called Shut the Back Door because so many people are so obsessed with getting new clients in, but then they let the old ones just wander out the back door. So please don't do that. Look to love your existing clients. So, um, there's different types of businesses and different types of sales. So this is just another way to think about our sales pipeline and, um, how we take qualified people from that outer circle into the inner circle. So in a, on a weekly basis, I really need to be working on my current prospects, the people who I'm currently working with. So I'm either working with them this week, or I have the next meeting booked in my calendar for the next 2 weeks. On a monthly basis, I'm feeding more people in, um, into the sales pipeline and getting them to a point where They're a current lead. And what I mean by a current lead is they've got a proposal. They either have a proposal or I'm about to write one for them. So they're, they're an active, active prospect. On a quarterly basis, I'm talking to industry players, sharing and improving knowledge, increasing awareness, thinking about how I'm going to do that. So this is another way of looking at your sales activity because, um, we need to be not just working with the people who already know us and wanna work with us. We've gotta be building that awareness and bringing those people into our web. And into the, the closer areas as we move through. Questions? Okay, so there's nothing in the chat. Now listen, I'm gonna stop.