African Bank Knows Its Numbers

Do you know your numbers?

I am constantly saddened when I meet salespeople and ask them for the first time what their numbers are. This is because they almost always haven’t a clue.

Knowing such is fundamental to a winning sales process. What’s more, if you don’t know your personal ratios, you’ll never take that step change improvement to a higher level.

So I was happy to pick up data from a former bankster about a Joburg unit of Nedbank from the previous decade.

Their job was to sell existing savings account customers that life, and returns, would be so much better if they entrusted their money to their investment arm.

The world rightly has a low opinion of such salespeople.

In this set-up, you can judge for yourself where they were at, by part of their induction training actually including being shown the 2000 movie, Boiler Room.

New recruits were apparently instructed that (the fictitious shares bit apart) their way was the invigorated way to sell.

As part of the tuition, they were also informed of the numbers expectation.

The team in question were to sell from an effectively coldish list. It featured recently opened savings accounts with less than about USD5k. (After a year and still in the job you get rewarded with savings account holders over thirty times larger.)

The tried and trusted ratios broke down like this.

25 contacts : 5 appointments : 2 sign ups

Incredibly, they were assured 100 contacts a day was feasible.

Not dials, but actual conversations with a pitch delivered. That’s some going. A track record of consistent results you do find hard to believe.

Still, the point is straightforward. Whether you’re selling in a cold call boiler room or not, what are your numbers, and do you know your ratios?