Sales superstars have a cookbook. A cookbook is a layout of actionable tasks that will result in a desired goal. It is laid out for an extended period. It shows all the separate activities that a salesperson needs to do to reach their goal. It provides a quick reference to guide us through our behaviors.
A cookbook gives a salesperson specific objectives, in small increments, to target their long-term goals. Poor salespeople “wing” what they do. They put out fires and scramble to meet their numbers. The problem is they never took the time to figure out what has to happen to meet those numbers. Sales superstars have a map before they get started. It lays out exactly what activities will result in what amount of sales. They do the math on their sales goals and break that down into manageable numbers and look to meet those smaller goals. The cookbook is that map.
Create a cookbook. We recommend a yearly cookbook. Start with what your year-end goal is and write that down. Now list all the different ways in which you can initiate deals. It can be upselling clients, referrals, prospecting programs, cold calls etc. Take your results from previous years and figure out how many of each it took to get a certain goal. Then just do the math. Let’s suppose it took 48 appointments from referrals to get $30,000 last year. 18 of those 48 closed. Then to get $60,000, we have to make 96 appointments and close 36. That means our monthly goal is 8. That’s 2 a week. Now we have a goal. 2 referral appointments a week. The last step is how many referral asks do we need to make 2 referral appointments. If we have a 50% appointment rate than we have to ask 4 times a week for referrals. If we do that we should make our $60,000. That is something we can work toward. Asking 4 times a week for a referral is something we have complete control over. Do this for all of your activities and you’ll find that instead of having sales goals we want to achieve, we will have small activities we can do.
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