Just what is the salesperson's job in the age of the Internet and AI? At one point, we were the sole source of product/service information (features, pricing, performance specs), but that has changed. Often we find ourselves at the very end of the buying process, when, after using the Internet and AI tools, the prospect has already developed their short list. And often, the prospect knows as much about our offering (sometimes more!) than we do. HPS seems to define the salesperson's role as finding people who want what you sell and have the resources (money, time) to buy (caveat: I've never taken the course--but have the read the book a couple of times). My experience has been that if you find a prospect that meets these criteria, they've already whittled their lists of solutions and vendors down to a handful. Adding another vendor to the list just complicates the process--not to mention that they've probably been to your website AI'd you, and have checked out reviews, and that's why you're not on their short list in the first place. This might make an interesting topic for one of the Friday meet-ups. BTW, Paul's experience buying a new vehicle is a case in point: He did his own discovery, needs analysis, and "demo" before reaching out to a salesperson. Did I get that right, Paul?

In the "primer", Jacques talks about the numbers all sales people should know: 1. What is the average number of prospects that you attempted to call (dials per week?) 2. What percentage of those dials resulted in contact with a decision maker (not voice mail or a gatekeeper)? 3. Out of all the dialing you did in #1, what percentage resulted in talking to the person who could sign a contract, issue a purchase order, or cut a check? This number is crucial: This is the number of genuine prospects you contacted. 4. What percentage of those decision-maker contacts resulted in an appointment? This number is important for two reasons: 1) You need to know how many contacts it takes to secure an appointment, and 2) You need to gauge, measure, and refine your High Probability Prospecting offers. 5. What percentage of your appointments resulted in a sale? 6. What is the average number of sales appointments, per prospect, does it take for you to close a sale? Over the past 6 months, exactly how many appointments did you make, and keep? 7. What is your closing average per prospect? What is your closing average per appointment? For one of my SaaS companies a typical week looked like this: 200 dials/wk ->10 appointments -> 7 sales We also track completed meetings vs no-shows. Anyone else care to share their numbers? Please include what it is you sell. A good book on understanding the numbers game is Stephen Schiffman's Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!). Just disregard the non high-prob stuff 😁

How do you high-probbers assign a probability to an opportunity? Or do you? Are all your prospects 90%+? I'm working with a couple of sales managers who want to reduce (or eliminate) "pipeline fantasy". The goal is more accurate sales forecasts. Besides the prospect saying that they "want" your product /service (I know I've greatly simplified this), what other criteria do you use for determining opportunity probability?

Wondering if HPS has to be updated to reflect this reality. If a prospect "wants" a particular product/service and has the resources to purchase it, they've probably done a ton of research via Google, ChatGPT, etc, and have already narrowed the field down to a short-list of solution providers. At least that what I'm finding on many prospecting calls. Any similar experience? If so, this might be a great discussion topic for one of the Friday hangouts.

Curious what the needs or gaps are for high probability practitioners for crm and notes about calls. What's a wish list. I'm thinking we can roll our own