I am fortunate to live close enough to my office that sometimes I go home to eat lunch or to exercise. Yesterday, I returned home and noticed the light flashing on my answering machine. The message was from a physician’s office, and the caller proceeded to detail a medical condition and a recommended drug to treat the problem. Unfortunately, there was one major dilemma – the message wasn’t for me or anyone else in my family. The doctor’s office had dialed the wrong number and not realizing it, the caller left the message anyway.

My wife is a nurse and my brother is a physician, so I’m very aware there are strong laws governing privacy of medical information. Consequently, as a courtesy, I called the doctor’s office to report the mistake. Surprisingly — or perhaps not — the person who took my call brushed the incident aside as though it were no big deal (it really is) and issued an insincere apology. I almost regretted getting involved, but remembered my real reason for calling was to ensure the correct patient got an important message.

So what’s the lesson here? Sometimes you have no choice but to leave a message. However, be you sure you’re leaving the right message with the right voice mailbox/person, or else you may disappoint/anger or possibly lose a customer or prospect. Obviously, it’s much easier to ensure your message gets to the right party when the voicemail box identifies a person’s name. However, what do you do if you don’t have a name? If you’re not sure you’ve got the right mailbox, be careful about what information you leave. Simply identify yourself and either ask the person to call you back or let them know you will call them again. Don’t discuss confidential information or deliver bad news. Instead, try calling again later or attempt to make contact with a gatekeeper or office manager – someone you believe you can trust to ensure your message is delivered to the intended recipient.

And if you do leave a message with a company that just has a general voicemail box, be sure to call back within 48 hours if you don’t get a response. Preface your discussion by explaining that you had tried to leave a message once before, but weren’t sure the message made it to the intended person.

Always remember it’s your job — not the customer’s or prospect’s — to ensure your messages are delivered to the right person.

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I recently had a conversation with the VP of Sales for one of my clients who was stumped and asked for my advice. He has a sales team member that has consistently been one of the top two or three salespeople for his organization, never missed a goal and was generally in the 115-120 percent range. This salesperson has been struggling recently and the VP had observed a big difference in his attitude. Without some type of intervention, there would be no way for this salesperson to hit his goals. While the salesperson is not in danger of losing his job or anything quite so severe, the VP was nevertheless concerned and asked me what I recommended.

I said, “Let’s get him on the phone and ask him.” After a few minutes of talking to the salesperson I asked, “How much news do you watch on TV?”— to which he responded, “…maybe three to four hours every night.”

Upon hearing this, both the problem and a clear solution became very obvious to me. I said, “Stop watching the news!” The salesperson was becoming depressed from watching the news and the continuous negative stimulus from all those doom and gloom pundits on TV. He was becoming addicted to the negative feedback and it was affecting his outlook on life, business, etc.

I am not a psychologist, but if there is one thing I do know about salespeople – Optimism is essential! We do not have the luxury of ever being down. Salespeople need to be the eternal optimist to survive the ups and downs that are part of the business and sales cycles. It doesn’t do us any good to subject ourselves to negativity or worry about things we have no control over.

To all the ‘optimistic’ salespeople out there – Good Selling!

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Here at The Brooks Group, we value all our clients and feel a genuine sense of satisfaction when we learn of their successes.

Today, we take particular pride in congratulating two of our client organizations — the military recruiters from the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard. We have had the honor of partnering with these organizations since 2000 and 2007, respectively. Both organizations completed their recruiting cycles for Fiscal Year 2008 with record levels of productivity, despite the unique challenges posed by recruiting in a wartime environment.

The Air Force Reserve’s recruiters attained 104.9% of goal, accessing 8,390 Airmen against a target of 8,000. 2008 marks their eighth straight year of surpassing their recruiting requirements.

The Air National Guard recruiters also produced spectacular results. They accessed 11,935 new Guardsmen against a target of 11,243 – an impressive 106.2% of goal.

By achieving their recruiting goals, the recruiters enable their respective branches of the Armed Forces to maintain the highest levels of readiness necessary to ensure the security and safety of all Americans. They also provide tremendous opportunities to the young people of our country who commit to military service.

To all the men and women who recruit for the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard, we congratulate you on your remarkable achievements and offer our sincerest thanks for your service to our great nation. Your work is immeasurably important to all of us as Americans. You are indeed ‘America’s finest!’

Best of luck in 2009.

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I’m always intrigued and even amused at times by statistics — particularly when the subject is sales data! We’ve all heard the stories about the validity of statistics, especially those related to the performance of sales professionals.

I believe there is good value — and certainly good discussion material — to be gleaned from most of these findings. Occasionally, I discover data from outside sources which correlates strongly with data collected here at The Brooks Group.

Take, for example, data drawn from the 1500 firms included in CSO Insight’s Sales Performance Optimization – 2008 Survey Results and Analysis. Their reports indicate:

• 64.7% of firms plan to increase the size of their sales team.
• Hiring ‘new’ or ‘raw’ grads pays off with 64% quota attainment vs. 62% prior- quota attainment among prior salespeople.
• Only 61.2% of salespeople make or exceed quota for the year.
• 46.9% of salespeople accrue 40% or more of their compensation in variable pay.
• 63.5% revenue comes from existing business; 36.5% from new business.
• 63% of revenue is earned by the top 20% of reps.
• 55% of sales professionals have closing rates of 50% or less; 26% have closing rates of 50-75%.
• 51.5% find that leads their existing lead-qualification standards need improvement.
• 57.7% have an average deal size less than $50,000.
• The average number of calls required to close in an average sales cycle: (1-5 calls) 56.2%; (6 or more calls) 43.8%.

This data definitely supports the information The Brooks Group has gathered internally for the purposes of developing our existing training programs. How about your sales performance data – what’s your picture look like, and what are you doing to shift your numbers?

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