Ask any seasoned sales person, what is the best day to make a sale? And they will no doubt tell you straight – Friday. While other professions are cutting their day short to head to the pub, celebrate a project closure or have a casual team catch up, sales people will be hitting the phones convinced this is the day to hit their quota.
According to data analysis, there is no country in the world, or business sector, that doesn’t benefit from The Friday Opportunity. In fact, according to their big data graphs, many countries find sales actually drop through the week hitting rock bottom on a Thursday, only to sky rocket on a Friday. This has been interpreted by many as Friday being the big day to dig deep and keep pushing to close those sales. But is that really the case?
Every day is a big sales day
Unless you work in a cold call sales phone bank, then the process of getting a customer across the line has a lot more to it than catching them at the right moment. Most sales people are working hard at building relationships with their clients, understand the business, and finding genuine solutions to solve real problems. Sales isn’t just about the bottom line – it is about long-term, mutually beneficial connections. And you don’t achieve that by ringing someone at 4pm on a Friday with a ‘great deal’.
Remember that repeat sales, and recommendation by word of mouth, have much greater long term value and shouldn’t be sacrificed for the benefit of a weekly target.
Research shows that the majority of marketing people agree that word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing. Recommendations result in around 13 per cent of sales spending globally, driving an average of USD$6 trillion in annual spending worldwide. According to the book Marketing Metrics by Paul W. Farris et al, you only have a 13 per cent chance of selling to a new customer, but a 60 to 70 per cent chance of selling to an existing customer. It also costs five times less to keep an existing customer than to win a new one.
Stay client-centric
What the Friday Opportunity is really demonstrating is the culmination of a lot of hard work, confidence winning and problem solving from dedicated sales people who care about the outcome for their clients. The real opportunity is in staying client-centric. Be empathetic, meet your clients’ needs, be honest about what you can and can’t do, place yourself on their problem-solving team. That way you will continue to make genuine and effective sales over and over again, any day of the week.
David Forman’s Sales Performer course can help you improve your sales technique, to make everyday a great sales day.
