In the area of entrepreneurship, I often seek out advice from people with more experience than me. Naturally, I give their opinions a lot of weight since being a new entrepreneur, I can’t really counter their advice with experiences of my own. A dilemma arose when I found that I was receiving conflicting advice from my ‘circle of experts’.
The topic of controversy was sales strategies. I wanted to know the best ways to generate sales for a new business. The first expert told me to use the direct mail and cold calling methods. “Sales are a pretty much a numbers game”, I was told. “You make X number of calls from which you can expect to book X number of appointments, leading to the final result: X number of contracts. Typically the conversion rate is around 10%, which can vary depending on the industry, the quality of the leads, etc.” I was eager to apply this new knowledge but doubts began to surface when I spoke to the next expert. Read more »