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How Newark Ohio Down and Out Sales Crew Peformed Sales Miracles

This is not just a story, it is a true story. It is not just a story, it's a set of instructions that can awaken your amazing sales potential.

I did not want to be a sales manager. I loved to sell using my system of "The Magic of Numbers and Statistics in Sales." Initially I didn't want to teach it to others because I knew they would have a hard time accepting my system.

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.

Because of his attitude, and belief, not only had the salespeople believed him so did the management that I was working for. Originally, I was to shut down the office but I asked for a chance to redeem it.

I knew this was a last ditch effort, and all the salespeople had been infected with negative ideas. I knew I had to correct that or Newark wouldn't produce any sales.

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.

I believed it would be easier to start with a new crew then to change the deeply negative thoughts of the current group. I told everyone they were absolutely right, and that Newark was an too hard to sell. I advised them to find work elsewhere.

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

But, I had to explain that I expected a lot more than the previous manager. Before she was expected to sell only five hundred dollars per week. I, however, would expect three times that as a minimum.

With tears in her eyes, she said she would be willing, even excited to triple her sales, but she did not know how to do it.

I could truly feel this woman's sincerity. She was clearly open to learning a new way. And I knew that if she could accept it, I could show her the way to make those sales.

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.

"Sales, " I told her, "is more than just being physically present at the workplace. You must work while you're at work. If you believe while you're dialing that the people you are calling want what you have, if you are kind, if you are sincere, this will come through perfectly on the phone and the feeling you have about the products and services will influence your contacts positively."

I showed her how to determine the number of sales she could count on per number of prospects contacted by keeping track of her results by percentages,. . After keeping track for a while, she would see that, say if she started out making one sale for every 10 prospects she contacted that she now will know she needs to make ten presentations to count on one sale.

I showed her that to make her quota of 1500 dollars per week, that she would have to do a certain amount of presentations each week in order to get a certain amount sales.

It seemed amazing to her, but after her first week when she actually hit her goal, it started to become possible to her. The second, third, and fourth, week it became almost gospel. She believed that her certain amount presentations would create a certain amount of income.

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.

Over time two salespeople from the old crew had come back to me and I allowed them to come back one at a time, and I taught them the new way. At this point I had a blended crew, some new members, and some members from the old sales team. Everyone used the new system, everyone was successful with it. But the greatest challenge was yet to come.

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.

In the drawer of my desk lay the same sheets of numbers that had been used by the previous manager. These shame-filled pages still held bookmarks of the unfinished area and notes that detailed that sad results of the old way that did not lead to sales. One afternoon, I pulled those numbers out of my desk drawer and showed them to the sales staff.

When the old crew saw me pull out the numbers, a chill shot across their face. They asked, we're not going to dial those are we? I said yes we are. These are wonderful numbers we are going to do great with them.

To say they really didn't want to call those numbers was an understatement. Hang ups, complaints, faithless sales that could not be collected.

I explained to them, you are now a powerful crew. You are some of the finest people in this company. We have been setting records over every other office in the company.

At this time the company was covering three states, so it was quite an accomplishment for this crew. I looked at them and I told them you have the ability to call the same people on this list that told you no before, but this time they will say yes. The reason you'll do this this time, is that now you believe, now you have a different attitude, now you have new sales skills, now you know you have something to offer that is good and that these people want it. They said "we will try." But I knew I had a problem.

To keep spirits up, I created a positive party-like atmosphere in our office. I made coffee, and brought in refreshments, and tried to keep the tone light with humor. But near the day's end, we had not made even one sale.

I had never left at the end of the work day without having made at least $700 in sales. .I had made a promise to my supervisor to never leave at the end of the day without at least $700 in sales. But all day my team had been calling, and the day was winding down. Normally we did $1200 or more per day in sales. I wasn't worried yet, even though we had made no progress.Certainly my people together could sell at least $700 in sales in only one hour if they put their skills to work.

Two hours left now. I told everyone to stop. The room was gloomy with fear and negative thoughts that had been part of their office life from the old manager. These old thoughts had taken control of them again. It was almost as if the negative thoughts had been imprinted in the number sheets and was rubbing off on all my sales crew.

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.

Calling resumed, but I knew I was losing them. They were whining and complaining. I was losing my cool. Half an hour left and no sales.

I asked everyone to stop. I told them that I had made a promise never to turn in less than 700 dollars for one days sales to my supervisor and I am going to keep that promise even if we have less than half an hour left today. I have listened to your concerns, even your complaints and whining all day.

I know that you are the best crew I have ever had, and probably one of the best I will ever have. But you have let me down.Now that is fine, because I have let people down also. But mostly I am concerned that you have let yourselves down. You have let this poison of negative thought infect you, and I have to show you that it is only yourself stopping you. It is not the people we are dialing.

They knew I was angry when I asked them to give me the very worst sheet of numbers in the room. They agreed with little delay on a specific sheet on numbers. I took it, and I announced that we would make that $700 today if I had to do it all myself. I told them to get the drivers ready to deliver product and pick up checks. I warned them that we were going to be very busy in a short while.

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.

I picked up the phone and I started dialing, I sold the first person I talked to, I sold the second person I talked to, I sold the third person I talked to. No one could say no to me. My concentration was higher than it had ever been. I had to prove to my crew, that this poison in their mind was at their control. That they could get rid of it if they chose to do so.

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.

Although my 5 people had to share 3 phones, and we were calling an area no one else wanted, but now they knew that success was up to them. That was just the beginning. My five person sales team outsold other offices with twelve, even fifteen people on sales staff. We were given what they considered the worst sales territory to try to bring us down, but we were undaunted. We made our highest sales figures ever in the "worst territory."

Although my 5 people had to share 3 phones, and we were calling an area called a disaster, my crew knew that did not matter. They believed they could do it, and we still outsold many of the offices with 12-15 phones and 20-25 salespersons.

The rest of the company averaged 5 sales out of each 100 contacts. But in our sales room, at least half of everyone we talked to became a sale. 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 knew it was true, because they were doing it.

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Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. is still helping people learn how to become the best salespeople. View the slideshow to see how Tim can help you be the best salesperson you can be. Click here for other unique selling articles.

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