Story on law of averages in sales

Tom took up a sales job; he was a service engineer but wanted to earn more and thus decided to become a salesman. He was very excited to know that it’s going to be fun, meeting new people, and all those kinds of stuff that his seniors and HR manager shared while induction training. He was supposed to sell cookware and simple gadgets used in the kitchen, door-to-door selling. Days went by but Tom could not close any deal and his energy was declining. The good part about this job was his excellent sales training program and he would glow like an LED bulb while attending the sessions but he was finding it difficult to implement the principles and techniques.

Initially, there is always the excuse “I am new” and “it will take time.” So he used to have this cushion and would slow down when things become hard. His sales coach kept telling him to have enough leads in his pipeline but Tom would not focus on it, as he believed that it is always good to go slow and focus on a small number of leads rather than working on a huge database. The result, no business and he kept following “suspects” who were wasting his time and draining out his energy.

After two months of hard work and doing nothing very significant, Tom got convinced that sale profession is not his cup of tea and he decided to quit. Being a man with great dignity, he wanted to prove his coach was wrong about the law of averages which he never believed in. So, he finally decides to give it a try for one single day.

Judgement Day: He decides to cover a whole apartment and would knock around 30 active doors and he believed that he would end up making no sales and hence go to his coach and say that it doesn’t work that way for all. He started knocking the doors one by one, getting rejected, thrashed. Some people asked to come another day and all those kind of routine stuff. By evening, he had covered 27 doors and could not make even a single sale. He kept reassuring that law of averages won’t work in sales, it’s luck that he believed does the magic. Desperate, he started after a short break and at the next door was the surprise of his life - the prospect immediately bought his items and was so happy to have him bring those to them and it was a “hat-trick,” the next two doors gave him enough sale to cover up for the whole day. He was on cloud nine and that’s when he really understood the power of the law of averages — if you hit enough numbers, the result will be positive.

Many times, new salespeople just ignore their seniors, people who have experienced such a phenomenon, and go on to have their own formulas. It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel, you just have to utilize it effectively. You keep blaming the market, the product, the price, and everything you could, except “YOU.” It’s time to look at this in a different angle and work things out, at least like the above example, I wish people do it to challenge their gurus, that it won’t work and find out for themselves.