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.

The Newark manager's belief was so strong that the salespeople and senior management believed also that the town was incapable of profit. I was slated to shut down the office but instead I convinced senior management to let me try to salvage it.

The office's future hung by a thread. The salespeople had doubt firmly planted in their minds. This doubt would have to be dealt with or Newark would be doomed.

But in my heart I knew that the people in Newark were the same as people in Columbus as the people in Dayton as the people in Cincinnati and everywhere else we had opened up offices. I knew that Newark would produce sales.

Everywhere we had gone our system had been successful, and I knew all we had to do was repeat it in Newark with a positive attitude.

My first action as new manager was to tell everyone they were correct. Newark was an impossible place to sell. I told them they would need to find work elsewhere. I believed it would be easier to start with a new crew then to change the attitude and belief of the current.

One young woman begged me to stay. She said she loved her work, and didn't want to find another job.

I explained to her that I had higher quotas than her previous manager had. She had been expected before to write five hundred dollars per week, I expected one thousand five hundred dollars per week, three times her 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.

Standing before me was a woman who was clearly open to learning a new way. I had no doubt she could do it with the methods I could provide.

I showed her exactly how she needed to follow the system step by step and how that would lead to making her quota. I revealed to her every single thing that needed to be done to make sales.

"Being a salesperson, " I emphasized, "is more than just being physically present at the your desk. There's real work you must do. You must believe while you're dialing that the people you are calling want what you have, this will come through perfectly on the phone. Be kind, be courteous and you will create feelings about the products and services that will influence your contacts positively."

I also explained to her that you can keep track of your results by percentages. If for instance, you start out making one sale for every 10 prospects you talk to, that can be a number you can count on no matter what.

So 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. And because 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.

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 showed her how to increase her income by increasing her ratio of sales from yes's to nos, and to increase her belief level, and her consistency.

During this time we developed a very good crew. Everyone was hitting their quotas, everything was going fine. We had a core crew of five people plus myself.

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 been able to turn the sales people from the old crew around, because we showed them that Newark was a great place to work. They could see it for themselves, they made sales, and now they could see that people really wanted our products.

One afternoon I pulled the same sheets of numbers that had been used by the previous manager out of the drawer of my desk. These shame-filled pages still held bookmarks of the unfinished area and notes that detailed that sad results of the old method of calling.

The team members from the old sales crew did not want to see the old sheets. They said they were bad sheets, they thought the numbers were just bad numbers. But I insisted. "There's nothing wrong with the numbers" I told them, "They are fine. We will make our sales with them."

They really didn't want to call those numbers. They told me the numbers did not work. They told me those numbers led to the meanest people they ever called, people who slammed the phone down, wouldn't even talk... and even if they made a sale those people were never home when they tried to deliver.

"You know" I explained "that you have been setting records over every other office in the company. You are now a powerful crew. You are some of the best salespeople in this 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.

So we started dialing. I did everything I could keep the room cheery, I made a pot of gourmet coffee, the aroma would fill the room. I brought in some doughnuts, I tried to make a few jokes. However at five o'clock we did not even have 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.

7 o'clock rolled around and we only had two hours of dialing time left. I stopped my crew. They were very despondent. The fear and negative thoughts that had been part of their life from the old manager had taken control of them again. It was almost as if the negative thoughts magically left the paper into their hands and went up to their brains.

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.

STOP! I told them. I shared with them that I had made a promise never to turn in less than 700 dollars for one days sales to my supervisor and I vehemently insisted to keep that promise with whatever time we had left. I listened to all the bad talk all day long, now they had to listen to me.

You are the best crew I have ever had, and probably one of the best I will ever have. But today I am disappointed in all of you. I'm disappointed because I know you can do better. You have done better. You need to realize that you have let yourselves down. These numbers are not bad numbers -- but you are ruining them with your negativity and especially your negative self talk. 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 selected two of my sales people to 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 as I worked on the phone. In order to make $700 in less than half an hour I'd have to make 20 sales in about 20 minutes.There was no time for a no. For my plan to work, veryone had to say yes. But I knew, that if I had the belief, no one could say no to me. I knew that if I was sincere, if I believed I was doing the right thing, If I believed I was doing something good for someone, it would work, and no one would say no.

So I sold the first call. Then I sold second person I talked to, and I sold the third person I talked to. I was doing it! Every call was a yes! I was truly at the top of my game! I was showing them they could control it. I was proving to my people that they could choose not to allow any negative beliefs in their minds to stop their sales.

When the day was over I was down to what my people told me were the "worst of the worst" numbers. Yet I was still making sales and Imade the seven hundred dollars of quota just as I told them I would. The products were delivered and the and the checks were collected. My sales team was speechless. Now they knew I would never, ever accept "bad numbers" as an excuse for lack of sales. I had done it right before their eyes.

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.