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How many deals did you close this week? How many deals did you close today? How many deals did you close yesterday? How many deals did you close last week? These are the kinds of questions that sales managers, business owners, country reps, territory managers, distribution managers, you know, people in the entrepreneurial space. You have a startup, you have a team. These are the sorts of questions that you're probably asking people who sell for you because you're trying to ginger them,
because you're trying to motivate them so that they can close more deals and get sales done. Unfortunately, this kind of question, how many deals did you close this week is not a very helpful question to ask. And that's what I want us to explore in today's episode. So if you're a sales manager, if you're a business owner, you have a startup, you have boys and girls selling for you. If you're a country Rep, if you're a distribution manager,
if you're a territory manager, if you are the kind of person who has to oversee a team, whether it's two people, three people, five people, 20 people and you're anxious, you guys are not meeting your numbers, you're not meeting your goals and you want people to sell well so that the business can move forward. Then asking these kinds of questions, how many deals did you close? Ikeja department, I'm not seeing any numbers.
Why are there no numbers? Why are people not moving? Why are you not selling product Abuja? Those of you in charge of Abuja, why the numbers is low? People are not selling or are selling now. Sell, Go, go, go, go, go, go. So today we're going to look at why this is not a very helpful approach. And these are not the kinds of questions that you should be asking your sales team or your associates to be able to get them to sell.
Better for the business, better for the organization, better for the department. Now before we get to the meat of the matter, if you'd love to connect with me, you can call me, send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 0806466 2140. If you're interested in the 15 minute sale audit, business audit, any kind of process audit in your business, then WhatsApp me on 08064662140. If you'd like to join my WhatsApp channel, then WhatsApp me on the same number and I will hook you up.
So let's get back to the Coco, to the meat of the matter today. How many deals did you close this week is the kind of thing I hear over and over and over again when I'm brought into a business. They're struggling with their sales. They're trying to get the sales up routinely. They think that the orca, they think that the business manager, the thing that the sales manager, they think that whoever is in charge does every single day or every single Monday for those of you who have Monday meeting or every single Friday for those of you who have the meetings on a Friday.
Shah is the same thing. They all say how many close? Kenichi, how many deals did you close this week? Chukwudi, how many deals did you close this week? Abdul, how many deals did you close this week? You're not being very helpful. However, if you are a business owner, if you are a sales manager, if you are a country Rep, if you're a territory manager, if you're a distribution manager, and you have been asking these questions, I have to give you a thumbs up because I know that the reason why you're trying to do it is you're trying to motivate people.
You're trying to put some fire under them, You're trying to put some ginger under them because you want your team to be the best that they can be. It's not just about making money because you can see one or two people on the team. You can see that this is a correct guy or that is a correct babe. Meanwhile, then they slack, they're not doing anything. So you mean well when you call people on Monday morning and you shout or you call them on Friday and you shout, begin the rake,
begin the provoke, you mean well. So the goal is to motivate people. However, if you're going to keep shouting at people like this every single day or every Monday or every Friday, you're just causing stress in your organization because you're repeating the same thing over and over again. How many deals did you close this week? How many deals did you close today? How many deals did you close last week? You're repeating the same thing over and over again.
Things not going to get you the results and in the beginning, you're going to cause acute stress. Now I've seen this first time because my sister used to be a salesperson for I won't call the bank anymore because I've called the bank before. And you know, I shouldn't continue blasting the back because actually my sister stopped working with them over a decade ago. But in the beginning, you know, she'd come back from work and she would be stressed out, like stress the F out, serious stress because the manager would call and abuse them.
So that's what you're causing your organization stress. But then something really interesting happens. After a while, people get used to the drama. They get used to the fact that Oga Chuks is going to call everybody on a Monday and shout and nothing happens, and then next week is going to shout and then nothing happens. So if you're that boss, if you're that Oga Chuku, if you're that Madame Kemi, if you're that you know whoever, think about it, you have been shouting every day for five days in a week.
That is 20, right? 20 days in a month, that's 200 and something days in a year. Don't you think that your team has actually gotten used to you shouting right now you're just background noise. In the beginning, yes, used to terrify people because of like forget you could you don't call me again. But after a while, you are honestly, you're just background noise and you're not making any progress. So people are just acting the same drama every single day,
every single week, repeating the same thing over and over and over again. But this is one reason why if there's an Orga Chukudi or a Madame Kemi or you know, Aceo type person listening, one of the reasons why this is not going to work is because a lot of times you're calling people and shouting at them. How many deals did you close this week? Because you have an expectation that people can actually close a deal this week, but meanwhile the business that you're involved in is a complex sale.
And The thing is, complex sales, most of them don't close week to week for complex sales. It's nice if you talk to somebody January 1st, then by January 10th they have transferred money. Now it happens. But I'm just saying that perhaps it's an unrealistic expectation, but we'll have to take this on a case by case basis. So let's say you sell clothes, jeans and T-shirts. OK, no problem. You can't be shouting at your staff.
How many days did you close this week? How many days did you close this week? You can look at the security footage and you can see that 200 people walked into the store. And from security footage, maybe you can see that your sales staff, they just sat back behind the desk. They didn't engage, you know, the one on their phones or on their tablets or whatever. So yes, if you sell jeans, you can shout at people. How many deals did you close this week?
How many deals did you close last week? How many deals did you close yesterday? Because it's a simple sale and we can expect reasonably that if 200 people walk into the store, if I engage with them, even if I don't have any kind of training, surely, surely, surely sales Moss, we must hear pinging, we must receive deposit. Surely, Surely. But that's when you're dealing with a simple sale. Now, for a lot of us who have our managers shouting at us, OK,
I don't have a manager anymore. But for lots of you managers who are shouting or for a lot of you who are receiving the shout from your CEO, from your CEO, from a sales manager, from the business owner, from the territory manager from the country Rep, you guys are in complex sales situations and things are not that easy in complex sales. Things just don't close. Anyhow, now the reason why I'm making today's episode is because actually I'm one of my clients who is in the business of selling and ad tech, ad tech software.
So basically what they're doing is they're trying to sell an advertising solution that is going to be much more cost effective than using Google to advertise or than using Facebook to advertise. So it's supposed to be much more cost effective, and it's also more supposed to lead to increased conversions. That's what they're selling. So this is a complex sale. Unfortunately, the country Rep is in the habit of shouting every single day.
How many sales did you close this week? Now, of course, I was brought in by an individual salesperson. So my, you know, not enjoying me country manager because he's not my client. But looking at this dynamic and that's the reason why I'm making today's episode because I have, I've worked for different clients, you know, people who sell computer gadgets, for instance. So you own the business, you have a sales team of four or somebody who sells solar, you own the business, you have a sales team of 6 or like in this case Antec Software, you are the regional distributor, you have people for different countries and then Niger, they have a sales team of you know, XYZ
number, what else you know, on and on and on and on and on these kinds of situations. So when you're selling a complex product and usually multiple decision makers are involved because like in this case ad tech, you might have to talk to founder, might have to talk to CEO, might have to talk to a person who is in the marketing manager, people who are in charge of customer acquisition, people who do online marketing. You know, you have to talk to a bunch of people.
Then this is also the kind of thing ad tech software, for instance, where decisions, decisions have to be justified based on ROIROI just means return on revenue. Return on revenue just means if I put down 500K, how much money do I expect to get back? So they run the calculation and they see that we drop 500K, we only get 600K to say, you know, 2 tap, you know, 2 pure. Or if I drop 500K, let's say they're used to dropping 5500K
and they only get 200K on profit. And then you come and say, look, if you drop 5500K with me, what you get is 700K profits. And I cannot see somebody's ear will go up to say really that is just what ROI means. For every single naira that I put down, how much do I get back? So for them in the ad tech software space, they're looking at customer acquisition costs. You business owner that you're advertising on Facebook, you advertising on Google, how much are you spending to acquire 1
customer? How much money in total? What's your ad spend? How much money did you spend last quarter, last year, last week, last whatever last decade last, you know, whatever the evaluation period is? How much did you spend in total on advertising then? How effective was your targeting? You know, things like that. These are the kinds of questions that people are act asking when you're selling ad tech software because it's a complex sale.
These are not the kind of things that just close, you know, you call somebody on Monday, Friday, they'll transfer you money. So in that kind of environment, shouting at your boys, saying how many deals did you close this week? Shouting at your girls, saying how many deals did you close this week? Or guy, No, they help at all. No, they help. You're not helping. No boy, you're causing stress. And then #2 by the time you shout from January 1 to January 31st, then you shout from February 1st to February 27th,
by the time you start shouting in March, everybody's used to it like natural goodie. Now that should be and when you hire a new person, they will tell the new person, I don't sweat it, don't worry that now. So it's just the daily rhythm or that you could do a shout. It's just that's how we use no mind. That's how it is. So it's not helping. You've been a complex sale. Let's say you own the architectural firm and you want your architect, your junior architects to be responsible for revenue.
So you're trying this thing about how you can get your junior architects to start networking more and start bringing in deals. Architecture is a complex something. You can't be shouting at people. How many deals did you close this week? Because it's not as if an architect can go for a networking session today or Friday and then, you know, next week Friday, somebody will now transfer money. How how it's a complex deal.
Things like this are pricey. Things like this require relationship nurturing, relationship building. Things like this require qualification and discovery. Getting to know the person, getting to know the problem, getting to know the vision, getting to know the mission. As an architect, you can't just design bungalow for everybody. Now you need to know exactly what it is that the person does That will determine whether you design bungalow or duplex or triplex or Skype or skyscraper or underground bunker, you know,
So if it's a complex hill, you can't be shouting at your boys and your girls. How many deals did you close this week? Don't be. So that's not how you do it. In fact, for these people with clients of mine, they're in our tech software space. You know what they sell is expensive and it's dollar denominated. And you know why in Niger, once you put here dollar, you know that I who does, you understand there's way people just shake anytime you call dollar.
So if you tell somebody $2000, they will say what you know, they have a heart attack. If you tell somebody 2.8 million, oh, you know, they'll think he's high, but it's not as if they're going to bug out because he had 2.8 million. But funny enough, guess what? Actually it's the same thing as at this date of recording, $2000 is 2.8 million naira. You're selling products that are dollar denominated. You're going around, you're telling people that is going to be $2000.
Of course people will shake you say you say how much $2000 so long as they hear dollar that I will draw. So this is not something you can be shouting at people and be saying. How many deals did you close this week? How many deals did you close yesterday? How many deals did you close last month? Shouting every day is not going to make this thing go quicker. Shouting every week, shouting every month is not going to make this thing go quicker.
What you need to do instead is you need to look at some key metrics or some key behaviors, some key activities, some key yardsticks, some key signs that normally show that a deal is progressing or that a deal is moving. You need to track those things. Let's assume you're the shouting kind. Instead of shouting, how many did you close this week? You need to be shouting. How many XYZ did you do today? Now the activity, you suppose the track, you get me?
You don't want shout. How many deals did you close today? So you track the activity. So now for our tech sales. Now, for instance, calls are important. How many people did you call today? How many brand new people did you call today? For the people that you spoke to last week, how many of them did you call again? Then meetings are also going to be important in closing the deal because we can't collect money from somebody until you know,
you have a meeting. Now you will see yourself, you judge or you understand. So how many meetings did you have? There's also a matter of meeting. If you attend meeting but you don't drop proposal, no, the people can say yes or no to anything. You have to drop a proposal before somebody can say yes, I'll do business with you or no, I don't want to do business with you. How many proposals did they drop? Then in some industries, there's somewhere we call proof of concept.
Some other different industries call it defense. Defense just means basically that look, we've given them the proposal, they've looked at it. Then I want to ask us question to say how we one or two things work. So it's not for every single industry. Boys like that. So tech boys like to call it a proof of concept. So how many proof of concept meeting do you have? Proof of concept is just like in this case where you know, you tell them that look, you are using Google, this is how much it's costing, this is how much we can do for you, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. Then they will fire you, question you answer that. No, we, we work like this. We do, we go down like this, we go down like that. This is how we'll justify this. This is how we do like this. I will do all of that. That's proof of concept or some people call it defense. So how many proof of concept? How many defense did we do? So these are the activities, these are the metrics, these are the yardsticks, these are the hurdles, these are the whatever that when people do them steady every day, every week, every month, then it will lead to progress.
So if you're the shouting kind, that is what you should be shouting. Don't be shouting. How many deals did you close this week? Go and shout Chukui. How many calls did you make today? Chukui will say I only made two calls, then you can shout Chukui and I say, chukui, are you mad? OK, I'm just kidding. Don't talk to your stuff like that. That's what you can now say. True Cody. Now, look, the time is currently 12. You've been in the office since 8:30.
How can you tell me that between 8:30 and 12:00 now only two phone calls you have made since then. You guys will have that conversation. I might realize. OK, True. Cody needs to learn how to manage his time better, prioritize his tanks better, you know, do time blocking better, you know, things like that. But you can see that when you start asking these kind of questions on the metrics, on the fundamentals, on the specifics,
on the yardsticks, on the host, on the hurdles, on the whatever it is that you want to call it, on the revenue generating activities, you know, we call them different things. When you start tracking all these things, small, small, small, you will now see where the problem is. So if you more shout, don't shout. How many days did you close this week? Line up all your sales people, line up all your, you know, whatever you call them, sales associates, your rainmakers,
your associates, your whatever they shout. How many calls have you made today? Now we'll make progress after that. You now shout again, How many meetings have we had today? If you talk and then chemist says oh, today she has had three meetings and you say 3 meetings from 8:30 to 12:00, you have three meetings so far. You see that from having that kind of specific conversation or you had those meetings. What do you discuss?
What did you agree on? What did you, what's the plan? What's the follow up? What is the next appointment? You see that you are now making progress coming and shouting. How many deals did you close this week? You're not making any progress. People are just shaking, shaking, shaking. In the beginning, after two months, they're used to you. They're not taking you seriously. You will shout, they will stand up, they will go outside, they will, you know, drink Coke, eat gala, come back.
And then the day continues as normal. And like in my sister's branch, the branch that she worked for, they started calling it Abuse Friday. That's it. Do we even give they won't give the team a nickname Abuse Friday. So your boy Alpha in the office and Abuse Friday wants to show, show, show. So these are the questions you ask. How many calls did you make today? How many meetings did you get this week? How many proposals did you send out last week?
Proof of concept on call? How many people have called us or proof of concept and we're dropping proposal? People are not calling us or proof of concept. Well, I mean, there's a problem. These are the things that you should shout if you're a sales manager, you're a business owner, you're a CEO, you're a founder, you're a country representative, you're a distribution manager, you're a territory manager. These are the things that you'll be shouting because if you are shouting, but at least you're shouting is getting people to look at what kind of activities are we doing, Then over time you should start getting the right results, all things being equal.
When I say all things being equal, it means first of all, you had the right kind of people that reasonable somebody's Step 2, you're giving them some level of training because if you take a novice, you take a jam bite, somebody will not get background in, you know all of these things, you just throw them inside. So why I begin a make call? There's no how that person will be effective. Now you put him down and say I'll begin the call as in begin the call.
How like OK, when I call, what should I say? You understand, So assuming you've hired the right person, you don't give us a level of training. So I begin to make up, OK, the person knows, OK, this is who I'm calling. When I call, this is what I will say. This is what the outcome of the phone conversation ought to be. If I'm able to achieve this on this phone call and set a meeting for a follow up dates, then this is going to be a good phone conversation, you know?
So all things being equal, assuming these things have been met, you have the right person in the seat, you've given him some training. Good. Then the more calls that Shukudi makes on a daily today, the chance that business will come in next month or in two months time goes up. So don't be shouting. How many deals did you close this week? You're helping nobody. In fact, you are giving yourself high BP because you shout requires, what's the word?
But you know what I mean, To shout every day, you know, you have to this way, you have to motivate yourself to shout. And then of course, you know, you're not a professional actor now. So generally when you are shouting 20 days a week, 200 and something days a year, generally you're concerned if you're putting yourself under so much stress, so much stress. Meanwhile, your sales people, they've gotten used to it. Everyone started laughing.
So the right activities are going to lead to the right results over time. Shouting how many deals did you close this week? That is not the right approach at all. Now, understanding these principles can be tricky. So if you need me to look at your particular circumstances, that's not a problem. Just connect with me, call me, send me a text message or WhatsApp message on 0806466 2140. You want a 15 minute audit of your business, of your, of your process.
WhatsApp me on the same number 08064662140. If you think I'm a cool guy, we'll be nice to stay connected. You just want to sit on my WhatsApp channel, you know, just the watch status. In the meantime, while you're figuring out what to say, that's not a problem. Send me a WhatsApp message on the very same number and then I'll hook you up. So that's it pretty much for tape, if you've gotten value for today's episode, then subscribe.
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I'll hook you up. I'll let you know anyway. So that's all for today. If you've gotten value from the episode, connect with me, call me, send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 08064662140. Thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you all at the next episode.