Moment by Moment Awareness Tracking

My wife and I had dinner with an old family friend of hers Wednesday night.

We talked about various subjects but Jack shared how he lost 40 pounds or so.

I asked him how he did it. He told us that he uses www.myfitnesspal.com to track his calories and exercise.

So I went home and signed up for an account myself. I used calorieking.com in the past and when I tracked what I put in my mouth, I somehow lost weight because it was a great accountability tool and it sucked having to type in that I just had a Big Mac from McDonald’s.

The funny thing was that I believe I lost weight because I was more aware of what I ate for meals and snacks and I became more selective over time.

Yesterday was my first day of inputting information into the site. I logged my weight, exercise, and how many calories I consumed.

I overate by 700 plus calories. Yikes!

But I will not give up and excited about my progress. I currently weight 170.0 lbs and my goal is to get to 160-163 lbs. 7-10 lbs is manageable and I better accomplish by the end of August before fall rolls around when it gets cooler and I eat more.

What does this have to do with sales, cold calling, and sales prospecting?

Track your numbers! Peter Drucker said: “What gets measured gets improved.”

So true!

I spoke with a small business owner for an hour yesterday and we were talking sales. He wasn’t for sure how many sales calls he made to get the number of clients he needed. So I gave him some ideas and we hung up.

So I’ll ask you:

1. How many sales calls do you make daily?

2. How many voicemails do you leave?

3. How many yes or no’s did you get?

4. How many conversations did you have?

5. How many proposals did you send out?

6. How many proposals turned into paying clients?

These are the basic categories to track. If you want to track even more, knock yourself out.

I’ve been in the lead generation business since August 2006. It wasn’t till 2011 that I actually tracked my numbers.

So I now have data for 2011, 2012 and now 2013. Why is is so important?

I now have real data and a baseline to make decisions on what it takes to land clients.

For example: I personally generate 4-5 meetings for every 100 phone calls I make. Notice I didn’t say “dials”.

My close rate the past 2 years is 19.79%. So let’s just round it up to 20%.

That means I convert 1 out of every 5 prospect meetings into clients.

It’s not guesswork, I know what my stats are to make good decisions.

So if I want to bring on X number of clients, I run the numbers to determine what sales activity I need to invest to land new clients.

Moral of the story: Track your sales activity daily, whether you feel like it or not.

I know as I track my food intake, I’ll lose weight and have success. The moment by moment awareness helps in my goal to lose 7-10 lbs.

Want more clients? Start tracking your sales efforts to determine what exactly it takes to land 1 new client and average it out over the long haul.

At Connect 5000, we’ve converted prospects into clients as little as under 1 week and as long as 2 years. Know your average!

So I’ll think twice before I eat that cheeseburger, wings, or ice cream knowing I have to input it into my food log.

I’m Ray Ruecker with Connect 5000 and wish you a great week!