More Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Sales Success - You're Gonna Get A Ride - For Sure.

If you’re reading this you are either aware of "closing ratios" or you’ve been hitching long enough that now you want to start earning some coin!

When you decide to hitch-hike you make a real commitment. You are there to get a ride. And you keep your thumb out until you do. One thing about hitch-hiking that prepared me for sales was the “No” to “Yes” ratio, known to salespeople as the "closing ratio."

In many sales jobs an effective closing ratio might be ten to twenty-five percent. Ask 10 people for the business and one or two will say “okay.” Nowadays it seems sometimes like a realistic closing ratio might be closer to five percent. But even that's favorable compared with hitch-hiking. For you sales people, imagine a closing ratio of .0033. A closing ratio of .0033 assumes that one car in 300 will stop to offer you a ride. You hitch-hikers are thinking that seems a little optimistic, I know.

Nevertheless, imagine you’re about one hundred miles into your journey on US-40 heading out of Maryland into Pennsylvania and you’ve got about 1,800 miles to go. Vehicles are whizzing by at freeway speed. The noise is a steady drone and you can feel the breeze created by the traffic – especially when some anti-social type purposefully drives a little close!

So, you stick out your thumb and start counting the cars as they go by. Now, I never counted cars so I don’t have actual numbers here, but any of you who have stood by the roadside know that if you did count cars it would be very discouraging!

But, you have to know you are going to get a ride. And you can know it.

First of all, the mere fact of all those cars means eventually someone’s going to stop. Secondly, what else are you going to do anyway? So you keep your thumb out until you get a ride. And eventually you get a ride to the next intersection on your route where you start all over again.

Just as in sales, sometimes you don’t get ride for a very long time. Don’t worry; the law of averages will always work out.

I spent three hours once on the eastern edge of Santa Rosa, New Mexico in late June. Now the eastern edge of anywhere near Santa Rosa in late June is a hot place. Thankfully "it’s a dry heat."

The temperature was over one hundred degrees. I was becoming more dehydrated and tired with each passing motorist, getting so dispirited that I had to have appeared less and less worthy of giving a ride to. You salespeople who’ve had a long stretch of “No's” understand what a dangerous place I was entering!

But you know you’re going to get a ride, and sure enough, a guy stopped.

Here’s where the law of averages worked out well for me. The fellow who stopped expected something of me. This guy wanted me to drive!

“Look here son, I’ve just driven from Denver through Albuquerque today (Google Maps says that’s about eight and a half hours of driving) and I’ve got to make it to Tulsa tonight (seven hours forty-three minutes from Santa Rosa, according to Google Maps). Would you mind driving?” I drove for about six hours until we reached Oklahoma City where he turned north and I was still east-bound. He napped while I drove. Win-Win. After three hours of doing the “Wicked Witch” routine (I’m melting!) here I am, Joe Hitcher, driving a powerful, late model, air-conditioned, luxury sedan!

About two in the morning we parted ways and I thought I’d spend about ten or fifteen minutes trying to catch another ride before I unrolled my sleeping bag. Sure enough someone stopped almost right away! Here’s where the law of averages worked out unfavorably for me. But well return to that later.

Now Google maps tell me it’s about a day and a half of driving from New Mexico to Maryland, but that assumes non-stop driving. Personally 18 hours of driving is pretty much my limit. I remember driving with my dad from Albuquerque to Maryland when I was six. That trip, with Dad doing all the driving (I offered...), took three days.

I got enough rides hitching to get me from Albuquerque to Maryland in the same three days.

So, if you get discouraged by your closing ratio it’s because you haven’t done enough hitching. Or could it be that after all that hitching I’m just glad to have a job?