Every time I hear someone say, ?sales is just a numbers game? it sets my temper off like a rocket on the fourth of July. What makes me the maddest is that millions of sales people think and believe this out and out lie. It's one of those things people believe just because they've heard it so often.

Sales is not just a numbers game! Don't allow yourself to fall into this mindset trap because you're either too gullible to know any better, or too lazy to do what it takes to prove the falsity of this old adage. First; let's look at why people say, ?sales is just a numbers game?.

When you believe sales is just a numbers game what you're really saying is that when you randomly contact people you may or may not find a prospect. That is true. It is true because you aren't contacting specific people for a specific reason with a specific offer. Therefore, based on logic you shouldn't be bothering these people in the first place.

You are truly hunting for a needle in a haystack. You know here in the Midwest a farmer doesn't expect to harvest a crop he doesn't plant, and he surely doesn't expect to harvest corn when he plants oats. Furthermore the farmer understands there are only a couple months out of the entire year he can expect to harvest anything because it's only during this short time frame that anything is ready to be harvested.

When the farmer goes out to harvest it isn't a question of if he will harvest the specific grain it's a question of how much grain there is to harvest, and if he can gather the grain fast enough to beat the weather.

Boys those farmers are dumb like a fox, aren't they? So why can't you be more like the farmer? You can, and when you are you don't have to play the numbers game anymore.

So what's the first thing the farmer does that you should do to? Oh, that's right he plants the grain. You need to plant the seeds of interest, curiosity, and attention in the minds of the right people. The right people are, of course, those most likely to do business with you.

The farmer knows he can't harvest a crop that isn't ready and neither can you. You throw away perfectly good prospects every day because you ruin the relationship before it has a chance to start. Rather than trying to ?always be closing? how about if you found out if there was even a reason for the other person to want to do business with you?

No one is going to buy anything from you unless they have a good reason to do so. This is similar to the process of selecting the right seed to harvest the right crop. If you want corn you have to cast off all seeds that aren't corn, or all prospects that aren't a good match for you.

So like the farmer you have to plant the seeds to get the right prospects reaching out to you, and focus your attention only on the right prospects. Next you have to tend your prospects like the farmer tends his crop. All prospects will not be in the same stage of the buying process when you contact them.

If you want great sales you need to nurture those prospects who aren't ready to buy today through the buying process so when they are ready to buy they'll buy from you. You have an advantage the farmer doesn't. The farmer can't form a relationship with his crop, but you certainly can and should form one with your prospects. And you should be building on and strengthening that relationship every step of the way.

You have another advantage in that your prospects may not be seasonal in their buying patterns. Thus as soon as you focus your time and energy on the ready buyers you get more immediate sales. And it takes you a whole lot less time and effort.

Now you may think this sounds time consuming and that it requires a lot of effort. It does at first just like it takes time and effort to excel at anything. However, it takes a whole lot less time and effort in the long run than dialing the phone 100 times to secure one appointment with a prospect who doesn't have any interest in doing business with you anyway.

And it's certainly far less frustrating. Rather than reactively ?hoping? something good is going to happen to increase your sales you're actively taking positive steps to ?make? things happen. And when you do it right and get it down like the farmer you can make a pretty good estimate of your harvest .

Isn't it time you broke out of the limiting mindset that sales is a numbers game and entered the world of consistent, predictable, and profitable sales? The quickest way to increase sales isn't increasing your level of useless activities. The quickest way to increase sales is to focus on doing the right activities in the right way producing results.