In this 10 Key article series, learn how to catapult your career, your sales, and your life through learning superior 'Saleswoman-ship.' Key #3 is Create Daily Segments

Create Daily Segments

Why do we put so much stress on daily sales targets and daily activity targets? It's because we've seen so many failures by talented, hard working, well-meaning people who deserved to succeed. No one ever sat them down and said, "Look, success comes by doing the right number of activities day in and day out."

Calculate

What is the right number? If we need one sale per day and we have to see three prospects in order to convert one to a sale, then we need three sales visits per day. That's if we can do one-call closings, in that we only need to see each prospect once. But what if we need to see each prospect twice on average? And we need to make one sale per day. How many sales visits will we need to do every day? Six.

We'll need time for making appointments, and following through with promises we make during the appointments. Therefore, the need for planning our targets and breaking them into daily workloads is essential.

Is 'our best' a measure?

What if you didn't do the calculation? What if you just worked as hard as you could? What do you think the result would be?

For example. On one of my speaking engagements in Singapore a journalist approached me and asked, "Why do you so often stress the importance of daily targets? Isn't it enough for people to just do their best?"

"Look at it this way," I suggested. "What if you were training to be an Olympic champion runner?" Would you go out every day and practice running any distance at any speed, just doing your best? Or would you know exactly how far and at what speed you had to run in order to meet your defined goal?"

"Oh yes, I see," she responded. It seemed to click for her. It's painful for people to work hard and do their best, to have high expectations and then be let down. However, with daily targets set, you are able to work sharp and with purpose. With that mindset, you won't fail by thinking sales will come to you magically, suddenly or later.

Pitfalls for business owners too

New business owners have exactly the same problem, and we can learn from them. Here's an example. Two very talented young dress designers with their own shop asked advice for succeeding in their business. They had a lot of loyal customers, but they were afraid they wouldn't make enough money to stay in business.

Here are the questions that need answers:

How much money do we need to make?

What are our expenses?

How many do we need to sell per year to cover all our expenses and leave us with a profit?

How many is that per week?

What do we need to do in order to sell that many each week?

They hadn't thought about it that way. They were just going to do the best they could. Were they unusual? No. That's the naive approach you want to avoid regardless of your industry.

There are 10 Keys in the Great Sales Success for Women Series.

Visit http://great-sales-training.com for more information

Business guru Christine Harvey is the author of 6 books sold in 24 languages by 48 publishers, including In Pursuit of Profit, Successful Selling in a Week, Secrets of the World's Top Sales Performers, Public Speaking and Leadership Building, and Can a Girl Run for President? Harvey's high-energy books can be considered the ultimate sales and marketing success guide. For more information visit http://christineharvey.com/