I got rejected 5 times when I was in college.
No, I’m not talking about my dating life (although I got rejected many times in that too), but my attempts to join Strictly Funk, a college dance group I loved. Every semester, I auditioned, danced my heart out, only to get a heartbreaking rejection. This happened over and over again for two years.
The worst part? I didn’t understand WHY I was rejected. Was it my technique? My energy? Did they just not like me? 😭
In my senior year, I switched tactics and asked a dancer friend to coach me. Most people think dance is something you either “get” or don’t, but there are actually many factors that contribute to a good performance—musicality, control, timing, technique, expressions, etc. In a marathon 3-hour practice session, my friend and I systematically worked through them.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but that experience taught me a lot about how to get better at sales.
Most Sellers Focus On The Wrong Thing
If you work in sales, this might sound familiar: Your sales are falling short of targets, and the pressure is mounting. Your VP demands an explanation. So, you spend hours analysing the numbers: Which markets are declining? Which customers have cut back? Which products are underperforming? You assure your VP that you’ll keep an eye on the data to reverse the trend.
Of course, it’s important to know your revenue, but what you REALLY care about is what you can do about it. In other words, you’re better off focusing more on your input metrics than your output metrics.
Let’s say that I wanted to lose some belly fat. My output metric would be my body fat percentage, and my input metrics would be my daily calorie intake, minutes spent exercising, and steps taken.
In sales, your revenue (an output metric) is largely out of your control. There are thousands of factors at play – the economy, budget cuts, or a customer just being in a bad mood. But you can control your actions (measured by input metrics) that influence your outcome.
Amazon’s legendary Weekly Business Review (WBR) focuses heavily on input metrics. They prioritise controllable actions over results. As Cedric from Commoncog writes (emphasis mine):
You are not allowed to discuss output metrics during the WBR, except in a reporting sense — the way to hit your output metric targets is to seek out controllable input metrics for each of your output metrics and drive those.
Reading this was an aha moment for me. What if I applied this mindset to sales? What if I stopped overanalyzing my revenue, and started seeking out controllable actions to test?
If (and it’s a big IF!) I could do that, I could create something really powerful: A causal model of sales.
A Causal Model of Sales
What’s a causal model? It’s a framework that shows how different factors influence an outcome. It’s actually a concept from manufacturing and supply chain management.
Take Disney’s causal model from 1958. It outlines which levers drive Disney’s success: TV shows inspire records, records fuel movies, movies attract Disneyland visitors, and so on. Even back then, Disney knew exactly what levers to pull for growth.
(Hat tip: Sam Taylor from Xmrit who shared this with me!)
What does this have to do with sales?
Most sellers experiment with new tactics—a fresh pitch, new insights, or even a different shirt to wear. We try it out, see what sticks, and hope for the best. But at the end of the quarter, we still don’t know what really worked.
Few of us take the time to draw clear connections between our input and output metrics. Like scientists, we need a more empirical approach to measure effectiveness.
How I Would Build A Causal Model
First, I’d start with a few input metrics – actions entirely within my control. These are educated guesses, but here are a few:
- The number of meetings I schedule per week
- The number of insights I share with customers each month
- The number of questions I ask during a meeting
- The number of “Implication” and “Need-Payoff” questions I ask per week (based on Neil Rackman’s findings in SPIN Selling)
- The number of coaching sessions I take to improve my pitches
Second, I’d test them. I once had a customer who never paid attention during meetings. I’d be presenting a deck, and she’d be on her phone or laptop doing something else. It frustrated me, because I often spent hours preparing all the insights, stats and recommendations. So one day, instead of preparing a deck, I tested doing an idea brainstorm… and it worked. My customer set her phone aside, shared her opinions, and asked really good questions.
After trying this out a few more times, I slowly realized that she didn’t care about the numbers. What REALLY motivated her was the thrill of winning an industry award. The thing is, no one would ever explicitly admit this. I could only uncover this insight by testing a metric like “Number of award ideas raised”
Third, as I start seeing patterns, I’d sketch out a causal model of my sales process. I’ll probably get it wrong at first, but as I test more factors, I’d refine the model to move it closer to the truth. To be clear, this is extremely hard and time-consuming! Sales is a notoriously uncertain business with many variables, and you’ll probably never get full certainty of your causal model.
But imagine how powerful it would be to reach even 50% clarity on what drives revenue. Could you uncover some counterintuitive actions? Could you hit your quotas by cranking those levers? Could you scale it across your org?
Epilogue
Sales is a lot like auditioning for a dance group. Preparation matters. First impressions count. Adaptability is key. But most importantly, they’re both skills you can learn, if you’re willing to break things down and practice.
While preparing for my audition, I realised there were several factors (input metrics) I needed to work on – control, precision, and musicality. Instead of worrying about the outcome, I systematically worked on each input to get better. Without knowing it back then, I was building a causal model for dance in my head.
I internalised those lessons, danced my best at the auditions, and finally got into the group. And I spent the BEST senior year dancing with them.
I’m hoping that you can do the same in your sales journey as well.
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