How Sad Sacks in Newark Ohio Became the World's Best Salespeople

This story is completely true. It is not a fantasy. It will tell you how what seems to be magic can be used to create phenomenal sales.

The last thing I wanted to do was to be a sales manager, because I loved to sell using my system of "The Magic of Numbers and Statistics in Sales." Teaching it to others would not be easy because other salespeople consider my system a fantasy.

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.

Our system had been successful everywhere, all we needed to change in Newark was the attitude.

My first action as new manager was to tell everyone they were correct. Newark was an impossible place to sell. I told them they would need to find work elsewhere. I believed it would be easier to start with a new crew then to change the attitude and belief of the current.

One young lady begged me to stay, she told me she really enjoyed her work there and she wanted to keep her job.

I warned her that I expected a lot more than the previous manager. I told her that she would be responsible for three times the amount of the previous quota.

Teary eyed, she told me she would do whatever it took to make the new quota, she said she would be excited to triple her sales, if only she knew how.

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 explained exactly how she needed to follow the system step by step and I showed her how that would lead to making her quota. I showed her every single thing that needed to be done to succeed.

I explained to her that sales was more than just coming to work. You have to actually work while you're at work. You have to believe while your dialing that the people want what you have. You have to be kind, you have to be sincere, you have to transmute the feeling you have about the products and services to the prospect on the phone. Without this, nothing will ever happened.

By keeping track of her results by percentages, I showed her how to determine the number of sales she could count on per number of prospects contacted. . If for instance, if she started out making one sale for every 10 prospects she contacted that can be a number she can count on no matter what.

She would know how many presentations she had to do per sale, she would know how many presentations she had to make each day to make a certain number of sales in a week. If she wanted to make a certain amount of money in sales per week, that she would have to do a certain amount of presentations each week in order to get a certain amount of sales.

She was amazed the first week when she actually hit her goal. And she had done it herself! The truth of my system became more real and more true to he as week after week she made that quota. Finally she understood that it was all up to her to do a certain amount of presentations, and that would lead to a certain number of sales, that would create an amount of income she could count on.

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.

As I mentored that determined young lady, I hired more salespeople, and I taught them all the same system. Eventually we had a core crew of five people plus myself, and it was a very good crew. Quotas were not a problem, everyone was making quota with the system, it was a very productive, profitable team.

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 only been able to turn the sales people from the old crew around by changing their thoughts, because we showed them that Newark was a place you could make sales. They could see it, and when they believed it, they made sales.

It was afternoon and I pulled out of the drawer the same sheets of numbers that had been used by the previous manager. They still held bookmarks of the unfinished area and notes about who had said no, who was not home, etc..

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.

They told me, we have dialed those before, and they did not work. Those are the meanest people we ever called, they slam the phone on us, they will not talk twelve even fifteen to us. If we make a sale they are never home when we try to deliver.

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.

So we started dialing. I did everything I could keep the room cheery, I made a pot of gourmet coffee, the aroma would fill the room. I brought in some doughnuts, I tried to make a few jokes. However at five o'clock we did not even have 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.

I asked everyone to stop calling for a moment. The room was dark with fear and negative thoughts, the legacy that had been part of their office life from the old manager. These non productive negativities had taken them hostage again. I knew that the miasma was not coming from the numbers, they weren't bad luck. But it seemed very much like the bad stuff was attached to those numbers. Everything had been fine before we started on those sheets.

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.

I made them resume calling, but I knew I was losing my crew. I heard whining and complaining -- things I never heard when the sales were flowing. I was getting near the end of my patience. We only had half an hour left and we had no sales.

I stopped my crew. I told them, "I have made a promise never to turn in less than 700 dollars for one days sales to my boss". We have 30 minutes left to keep this promise. I have listened to your complaints and negative comments 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.

With that, and in an angry voice, I demanded that they hand me the very worst sheet of numbers in the room. They quickly decided which was the worst, and I grabbed that one. I told them that I was going to have to do 700 dollars in sale myself.These sales had to also be delivered by our drivers before 9:30pm, and the checks picked up. So I told my drivers to wake up because they were going to get very busy.

I pointed to my number one and number 2 sales writers, "you and you, I will not have time to write down these sales, so you will need to fill out the order forms as you hear me repeat the customer's name".Our average sale was $35.00, so I was going to have to make 20 sales in about 20 minutes. I knew I had no time to take a no. Everyone had to say yes to me. I knew, that if I believed, no one could say no to me, if I was sincere, if I believed I was doing the right thing, If I believed I was doing something good for someone, and I did.

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 time clock told us the working day was over and I was down to what my people told me were the "worst of the worst" numbers, I made the seven hundred dollars of quota I told them I would make. The drivers who had been made ready successfull delivered product and collected the checks. My sales team was floored. They had seen it with their own eyes.Now they knew I would never, ever accept "bad numbers" as an excuse for lack of sales.

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."

They knew they could do it, and we still outsold many of the offices with 12-15 phones and 20-25 salespersons.Although my 5 people had to share 3 phones, and we were calling an area no one else wanted, my people knew that did not matter.

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 student learn how to become the best salesstudent. View the slideshow to see how Tim can help you be the best salesperson you can be.
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