As a Canadian living in the US it was interesting to watch the election unfold this week. I have no horse in the race so I can watch with a different view point. As I see it there were 2 major winners:
1. The voters. American’s vote with passion. They wait in long lines (some as long as 5 hours), they read long ballots (some as long as 20 pages) and they vote on an amazingly long list of issues. They love the voting process and ‘m convinced they do so because they know their votes count. In many of the battle ground states the votes were close. In Florida, the candidates ran 50/50 for a long time into the night. When you have elections that are this close I can see why voting is critical and passion is high. Congratulations to the votes in this election. I am impressed and will admit that my perspective has changed which will affect my voting habits.
Wouldn’t it be great if your customers bought from you with such enthusiasm?
2. The numbers. If you followed the detailed analysis of the state by state numbers (from an unbiased research perspective on Nate Silvers 5thiurtyeight blog) you will see that the predictions were very accurate. He miss called only 2 predictions. As John Stewart remarked – “Arithmetic was the real winner”.
From a sales perspective I thought this was an interesting reminder that the unbiased numbers never lie. Your pipeline, when analyzed objectively is an accurate predictor of your success.
- Full pipeline? Healthy sales.
- Pipeline less than 2X required income? You won’t hit your numbers.
There are very few acceptations. Talk to our clients. They will tell you that learning to objectively measure their pipelines has resulted in a 95% accuracy in revenue forecasting.
The big lesson this week? Pay attention to the numbers.
Dedicated to increasing your sales,
