I was asked recently what I consider to be the most important sales metric. It took me about 2 seconds to respond with an adage that one of my first sales mentors told me countless times, “You can’t steer a parked car.” The fact is, none of the other metrics matter if you are not committed to doing the daily activity that is required for you to hit your goals and be successful. Uh oh… sounds like prospecting.
He had another way of explaining the same thing when I was in a “slump” or a “dry spell” in my results. He would say, “Emotional stability in selling has less to do with closing than it does to do with consistency of effort.” When you know that you are doing the work required to get the results you need, you can rest easy each day regardless of the number of deals. They will come.
So, daily prospecting efforts are the single most important metric to track. In fact, until you have done that for a while, you don’t even know what your other metrics are or where your trouble areas are in your sales process.