Page 44 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

California, USA, I gave them our system. They adapted it and took it to a higher level.
When licensees were not performing, with low closure rates and unit numbers, I knew they weren’t following the system. How? I used to regularly test it in the home myself. It worked, so why change it? It was not about being a good sales person, it was about following the system.
One of our first licensees had a terrible closure rate of 35– 40%. I went out in the field with him and got him following the system, and one sentence changed his world: ‘Mrs Jones, when are you thinking of doing something?’ Overnight his closure rate went to 75%. It is not only about systems, ‘It’s in the words’ (see Part 3: Chapter 7).
After the in-home selling system, I systemised everything from telephone answering systems to calling architects.
I reiterate that performance dropped when the systems weren’t followed.
With systems in place, onboarding (induction) became a lot easier. Now, here is a key: systems should control the people, not people control the systems. There is a thing called ‘drift’. I mentioned the low closure rates. Using systems takes discipline, and it is so easy for people to drift: change or drop a system all together. For example, one time I asked a person one week into their new job answering phones, ‘How are you finding the Five-Step Internal Selling System?’ Possum eyes all around. I was not a happy chappie!
It is so easy for management to slip up, and it is so hard for some to systemise things. They don’t get that putting systems in place and