Is Sales a Numbers Game? Why I Don't Believe It Is

Maura Schreier-Fleming
Fri, 14 Mar 2025 19:51:47 +0000
Customers, Ideal-customer, Lead-conversion, Lead-cultivation, Lead-generation, Leads, Numbers-game, Potential-customers, Prospecting, Prospects, Qualifying-leads, Qualifying-sales-leads, Sales-analytics, Sales-funnel, Sales-numbers, Sales-pitch, Sales-process, Sales-prospects, Sales-strategies, Sales-tips, Sales

A few years ago, I worked with the wonderful people at the New York Press Association.

When I work with a group, I often hear different ideas from the participants about selling. In this case, one participant wanted to talk about something she had been told by another sales instructor. He had told her that sales is a numbers game: Successful selling is all about calling on more prospects. If you make more sales calls, you will sell more.

I couldn’t disagree more. Sales is not a numbers game—it’s a prospecting game.

Why Sales Is a Prospecting Game, Not a Numbers Game

Everyone Is Not a Prospect

I can tell when a sales professional believes what that other sales instructor says when I ask them a simple question.

When I ask a sales professional to tell me who their ideal customer is, they should be telling me specific descriptions of the types of customers they call on who will most likely buy from them. They may include demographics. Demographics are data about your prospects, and could include company revenue, number of employees, years in business, company location, size of building, or other data.

Their description should also include psychographic data: how people think. You can sell more effectively when you know how your customer thinks and is going to buy. Psychographic data might include whether your customer is a risk-taker or not, whether your customer is health conscious or not, or whether your customer is a status-seeker or not. You can do well selling to risk-averse customers if you're able to communicate and reduce their perception of risk; you'll do worse if you're unable to reduce their perception of risk.

I know a salesperson is in trouble when I ask them who their ideal customer is, and instead of tell me specific demographic and psychographic data, they tell me with a great big smile, “Well, everyone is a prospect for me!” (I groan.)

Salespeople don't have limitless budgets nor the time necessary to be able to sell to everyone. When you recognize that not everyone is a prospect, you also recognize that sales is not a numbers game. You should be finding more customers who are like your ideal customer.

Wasting Time Is Bad for Selling

Think about the time you spend trying to sell to prospects who will never buy from you. First, you may be spending time on the phone trying to get an appointment. Hopefully, you aren't dealing with too much voice mail and are able to reach your prospect on your first try. While I don’t think that’s likely, you do have to consider all the time you spend calling on the phone, and traveling to a prospect, selling face-to-face, creating a proposal if needed, or gathering needed information specific to that prospect. Whew! And then when you don’t sell to that prospect, it all ends up being wasted time.

When you think everyone is a prospect, you can waste a lot of valuable selling time because you're spending valuable time on prospects whom you should never be selling to in the first place.

Here’s What Good Prospecting Looks Like

Instead of trying to sell to everyone, successful salespeople take the time to identify who will most likely buy from them. They focus their sales resources on finding prospects who are most like the customers that they have been successful selling to in the past.

It’s not that they never call on prospects who are less than ideal, but these less than ideal customers are more work to sell to and have a lower probability of buying. These successful prospectors are simply starting with a focus that will more likely result in a sale compared to someone who doesn't have a focus and thinks everyone will buy.

You have the choice to believe what you want to believe about selling. Is everyone a prospect for you? Then you had better have a lot of resources. I prefer to be a lazy salesperson. I want to do the least amount of work and get the biggest reward. That’s why I think sales isn’t a numbers game; it's a great prospecting game.