Is Sales is a Game of Numbers?

If you sell in the insurance, real estate, home energy, or mortgage sectors, I’ll bet you’ve heard that phrase a few times. It can be interpreted a number of ways, but all of them point to this idea, that leads and sales may be more the result of serendipity than strategy. Of course, the sales experts won’t like that kind of messaging. 

They hit you with: 11 steps to closing mastery, how to perfect the 9 stages of motivating buyers, or 15 sure fire steps to clinching the deal.  Non-experts would say “Screw dat”, just get lots of traffic and let the easy ones come to you.

Some sales consultants proclaim that sales is not a game of numbers, but rather a rifle-focused technique or strategy involving specialized skills and tactics. Yet that seems to defy their own basic formulas that leads come from a percentage of prospects and actions taken.  Simple math.  “Keep phoning and using that script and the sales are sure to happen.”  Is this you?

“But for those who understand that sales is often a numbers game, and more importantly, know how to use numbers to propel them towards their goals; sales is more of a process than it is a task… Using our examples, we will assume that you need 5 calls to set 1 appointment, 2 appointments to deliver 1 proposal and 5 proposals to close 1 deal. Once you have your total number of sales needed to hit your income goal, just work backwards to arrive at your specific numbers. In our example, you will need 1,500 prospecting calls to secure 500 appointments, that will yield 250 proposals, resulting in 50 sales.”

Time to Start Thinking High Volume with a Big Fast Moving Number of Prospects

Raising the volume of prospects should be your top priority and this post is a reminder of it. How to build that volume is actually the key matter.  It requires a digital marketing strategy that accelerates reach via a wide range of content, to create a lot of touchpoints with consumers.  These touchpoints (Google referrals, social shares, content views, blog referrals) give you a shot at reaching the golden nugget prospects.

Your network isn’t a few old contacts and former customers — it’s the millions of people out there you could reach who might refer someone to you, and whom may share your content on the web or social sphere.

Here’s your Game of Numbers Game Plan

If you create huge exposure, a massive lead pipeline, you’re likely to create more leads than if you relied on a precision-targeted, deliberate short list of targets, whom you ply your strategies, proposals and drive-arounds. Get the big numbers first and then learn more about how to cull good leads from that massive volume. And maybe, just maybe, with your huge volume, you won’t have to work so hard to convert. Many of them will be well targeted and easy to convert. Wouldn’t you rather work with the ones who are eager?

In the Internet era, good marketing is all about letting them find you by laying out messages about what you can do inside topics they care about.

Here’s something to ponder: If the first 10,000 contacts you generate never become clients, you’re wasting your precious time trying to nurture them personally. It may be only later out of 100,000+ contacts that you get the high quality prospects you’re hoping for. If you don’t build the huge traffic foundation first, those golden prospects who can be converted will never appear.  Your sales techniques are a waste of time, until you have the volume.

So if your current lead channels are looking a little rocky on a  barren wasteland, then high online traffic volume might be what you need to do.

The real estate agencies and techno-experts want to impress you with technology rather than maximizing leads through high quality content, social media networking, and SEO.  That’s harder work where fewer experts exist to help you. In the end, the exact targeted audience created via rifle strategy may not like your website, voice, face, or nationality. All your work goes down the drain. Hummph, some pipeline that is!

The underlying truth is that you create you own luck — time to start building your big pipeline

There’s the other numbers game too where you make more calls, network with more people, and that’s all good if you’re tapping into a bigger pipeline of prospects to make it more worthwhile. That’s because as anyone who has panned for gold will tell you, the more dirt you pan, the more nuggets you’ll find.

Statistically Speaking: Higher Volume contains more nuggets

You may have tried a service such as Zillow leads, Commissions Inc., Bold Leads, or Home Values, and gotten a good number of awful leads and aggravation. These low quality lead generation services begin with shotgun advertising on Google and Facebook, and a few much lower quality lead sources such as Craigslist. Out of all that bulk come a few good leads.

A lot of digital marketing is still a lot like outdoor advertising; your billboard near the shopping center or the one plastered on the transit bus are the ones that work.

Bus ads and billboards generate leads out of shear volume of impressions (from people driving cars). Out of thousands of eye balls that see the ad, a few of them belong to ­home buyers and potential home sellers.

Examples of high traffic websites that attract general, unfiltered audiences are Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, CNN, Baidu, Amazon, Reddit, and Tumblr. Blogs are a huge pipeline alone and one worth focusing on. Blog referals and links are often free and can be reasonably well targeted. They may be on the topics of homes, lifestyle, or investment as many mommy blogger sites are.

How To Build a Huge Lead Pipeline for Free

Simple, create a lot of useful content on your blog. Google loves good, helpful blogs, and interesting useful content tends to get shared via social media.  Less useful content, known as thin content isn’t so valuable, so avoid your current agency’s advise about keeping it shallow with short posts. Save a few of them for your customers who like to visit your site. The rest of your site must be devoted to attracting new leads.

There are other ways to build a huge pipeline of leads but to discover that, you’ll need to hire me. And what could be a more wonderful outcome than having me turn you into a millionaire?

The Toronto real estate market is very bright.  Demand for homes is strong. And see the latest stats on the US real estate housing market.