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We seem to place a lot of emphasis on sales numbers, but we sometimes ignore what’s going on behind those numbers.

There have been countless studies that demonstrate that it takes a salesperson about six contacts, on average, with a prospect before they start to buy. These studies were done with inside salespeople using the phone as the contact medium. Other studies have shown that it can take somewhat fewer face-to-face contacts before a decision maker buys, but the number is not significantly different.

Why do most decision makers not buy on the first through fifth contacts? Why does it take six contacts on average before prospects buy? Are they just trying to be difficult? Not really. Let’s think about what is going on in the prospect’s head each time they interact with you. What are they trying to discover?

1. Trust. They are gathering information from you so they can at least make an educated guess about the risks of doing business with you and your company. Prospects ask themselves, “Can I trust this company and this salesperson to do what they say they can do?”
2. Service. Each time you talk with a prospect you are giving him or her indications as to the level of service you might provide. Prospects know that your attentiveness will never be better than when you are trying to get their business.
3. Likeability. Potential buyers want to know if they would like doing business with you. This is especially important if you are in a business where repeat sales over a long period could be expected. Each interaction you have with them during these initial contacts will assist them in deciding whether they’d like to interact with you on an ongoing basis.

Many salespeople think of prospecting as just building “mindshare” with the prospect. If someone ran a red light and hit my car, they would definitely get a large amount of “mindshare.” “Mindshare” alone will not do the trick with prospects. We’ve got to provide them information and build a positive relationship if we hope to turn them into customers, not just make them aware of our existence.

I am asked this in one form or another on an almost daily basis, “Scott, isn’t sales just a numbers game? The more contacts we make the higher our sales numbers. Right?” Our real goal is not to make as many contacts as possible; that misses the point.

We must focus on satisfying the trust, service and likeability questions the prospect has about us and our company. If we focus on just making a maximum number of contacts to gain “mindshare,” we’ll be satisfying our need for activity versus the prospect’s need for information about us. Feeling good about the large number of contacts we are making will not inspire a single prospect to buy from us. Making the prospect feel good about doing business with us will inspire prospects to turn into customers.

Our primary goal is to connect with prospects in a way that will turn them into customers, not to just check off how many times we’ve dialed their number or left a brochure on their desk.

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Tags: Prospecting, prospects

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