In an established business with consistent sales, many small improvements to the sales process will almost always yield better bottom-line results than a dramatic, expensive marketing strategy. That is because there is almost always room for improvement to raise closing ratios, shorten the sales cycle and/or increase the size or frequency of the purchase. At little or no cost these gains then translate into better results for all your marketing efforts.

Setting targets and then deliberately implementing improvements to each part of the sales process will effectively leverage every marketing dollar you spend.

A client of mine – I’ll call him Jim — is an insurance agent who first came to me to find out how to increase his income, and wanted my help in finding more prospects so he could reach his higher income goal. This is a common misperception: that increasing the NUMBER of prospects is the ONLY way to increase personal income.

In Jim’s case we did a thorough inventory of each part of his sales process and together we determined what type of improvements could give him the most leverage.

We set new goals for select parts of the sales process that represented very small improvements in outcome. So for example, we set a do-able target of two additional appointments per month for his phone work. As a consequence he went from ten opening appointments to twelve appointments.

Then we got to work enhancing his number of second or follow-up appointments. His average was good, about 76%. By having Jim listen to an excellent sales training audio and implementing some of the methods suggested, he increased his numbers by a few percentage points and enhanced his closing ratio.

Jim was already a good sales person but he was open enough to learn a few simple ways to make his closing easier and more conversational. He practiced and applied these methods, and added percentage points of success to his closing.

Next we added 20% to all his product recommendations, so that when he DID close, he had a slightly higher commission on the sale.

Now, notice the pattern.

It would have required a lot more time, money and energy to create those same results simply from marketing and attracting new prospects into the fold. Instead we focused on incremental gains in four areas…

With four minor changes to his existing process his monthly average income went from $15,300 per month to $28,546.

What small changes could you make to your existing sales processes to bring in an additional 4 or 5 figures this month? Please share with me your successes or questions by leaving a comment below.