Ed V. posted on the Recoil forum this excellent question that i had also meant to post here, so i will now.

when do you find it is the best day of the week to make sales calls or return calls to prospects?

Ed related that he finds it best to do so Thursday / Friday. i was surprised by this, because my brief new encounter with commercial sales calls has generated the most business for me in the early part of the week, Monday - Wednesday.

it seems to me that possibly most prospects / decision makers, are busy at the end of the week, frantically finishing up projects. if not that, then they seem to have "weekend-on-the-brain", and arent as concerned with clean carpets at this time as they are with the fun times / relaxation they are looking forward to in the next couple of days off.


i was glad to hear Ed say he had / has great success in the latter part of the week. i will give it a try and possibly find it was just a fluke and can feel free to make calls all week long!

thanx --- Derek.

My findings are the same as yours. Friday is worthless. I prefer any other day.




Rick Gelinas

Rick;

That may have been your experince; however, I never personally found that Fridays were "worthless".

It may have been somewhat true at times, that several might have taken off earlier from their work ;however, the rest were in a laid back, and more opened attitude ready to shake hands and seriously consider my services.

No, I would have to say that I made some of my biggest sales toward the end of the week in regards to professional carpet Cleaning. And, lets not forget that many times all one needs is only ONE YES too!

Just my thoughts and explaination. Thanks, Derek for this opportunity to explain myself too.

Good Fortune to small business;
Ed Valentine
Cross-American Corp.

I agree with with what Ed said that people are more laid back on Friday. That's been my experience too. And that relaxed attitude may be a good thing. But as a rule, I haven't found that Friday's have panned out too well. Maybe that's just been my experience.

I've noticed that people are in a "shutting down" mode on Friday. I target high end commercial accounts when I market our commercial carpet care. And here's where it is a problem - often times it takes multiple contacts to get the decision maker involved. In other words, I talk to Sally on Tuesday who needs to talk to Bob, Bob gets back with me on Wednesday and I get to do my presentation and demo on Thursday. I can easily burn up a week working with a client.

I like to start sales calls on Tuesday and in some cases on Monday. If I start the process at the end of the week it will invariably spill over into the following week. But I don't want the excitement that I'm building to be dulled with two days off over the weekend (that would just about put me back to square one). So earlier in the week is what works for me. But I'm sure that there are different situations and exceptions to this all over the place.

I guess the best rule of thumb here is to just get out and DO IT! For instance, if you're sitting around with some time on a Friday afternoon don't wait till next week to get started. Go on out and get busy. Make some initial calls and then make return visits on those same people. The hardest part is overcoming the effect of gravity - that's the part where you get your butt off the chair and out the door. At this point inertia takes over as you get rolling and then you'll start to see some results. Bottom line; if you'll stay busy working on your target market you can expect to develop a nice commercial customer base over time.




Rick Gelinas

In the past 12 years I have found the best day is when they say YES, LOL. Hey Rick, I got a hold of Todd.

thanx fellas for the great responses!

thanx --- Derek

Rick brings up a very good point in regards to making sales.
"Just get out there and pound the pavement". In other words, if you shake enough trees, leaves will eventually fall.

Many times in this industry, we forget that we should be Professional Salespeople FIRST; then, Service people SECOND. We need to sell before we ever do the job.

Good posts guys.

Good Fortune to all;
Ed Valentine
cross-american corp.