My wife’s been telling me for years that I’m losing my hair on the back top part of my head. I’ve insisted that this wasn’t true – mostly because I’ve never been able to see this part of my head.
A few weeks ago she took a picture with her cell phone to prove it to me. Wouldn’t you know, she’s right.
I told her I wasn’t worried. Since I already buzz my hair fairly short, when I start to look like Friar Tuck, I’ll just buzz it down to stubble.
But it got me thinking, what would I look like with stubble vs. a buzz cut? Would it be easier to maintain? Would I look like Jason Statham or Uncle Fester? What would it feel like? So I gave it a shot.
I buzzed my hair down to stubble. Then I ran my own A/B test.
Looks
- I asked Ellen what she thought. She liked me with better with hair.
- My son came over for dinner. He said nothing about my head being shaved. That was his polite way of giving me a thumbs down.
- In the mirror, it was weird to see myself without hair, so I took some pictures to help me decide later.
Functionality
- I was surprised that having no hair was less convenient. I needed a hat to protect from sunburn and had to carefully tan my head so I didn’t look like an egg.
- My hair grows so quickly that keeping it that short required buzzing it every few days vs. once a week.
- My head sweated more. To be more accurate, when my head sweated it dripped right in my face since there was no hair to absorb it.
- It was nice and scratchy. If I could contort myself to scratch my back with my nearly bald head, that would have been a major plus but I’m not that flexible.
Scroll to the end of this post for the conclusion of my A/B test.*
You can run the same type of A/B testing hack with your Sales Team.
I can just picture my former stats guy Geoff cringing because I had no control group, didn’t use double-blind testing, drew conclusions from correlation vs. causation, and did not have sufficient data for statistical significance.
For most small sales teams and for individuals, this will usually be the case.
Marketing may have sufficient volume to do solid A/B testing with web page visitors, email nurturing and conversions. But sales struggles to even get good notes entered into the CRM.
Still, we shouldn’t let that stop us from testing new ideas.
Some A/B Testing Hacks for Individual Reps
- Prospecting emails. If you send out long emails with links to white papers, embedded videos and lengthy content then try the opposite. Send out a short plain text email asking for a meeting.
- Prospecting voicemail. Spend a week leaving long voicemails, a week leaving no voicemails, and a week leaving short voicemail. See which generates the best response.
- Closing calls. Instead of following your usual closing “pitch”, call up your favorite salesperson who you buy from and ask him to teach you his closing process. Then try it on your next few opportunities and see what happens.
If you have two or more reps, you can gather even more data if you have the reps all test the same techniques and then compare results.
One of My Prospecting A/B Tests
When I was a field rep selling network security consulting for a startup, I spent 75% of my time prospecting for new business.
In addition to cold calling and attending networking events, one of my prospecting techniques was sending out a well-crafted email explaining the security problems my prospect’s faced and how we could address them. I’d follow this up with a meeting request.
After a particularly bad month, I was complaining to our Angel investor about how difficult it was to get prospects to agree to a meeting. He replied, “Why don’t you just send an email out inviting them out for coffee?”
He then sent me an email draft that I could use. It said, “I’m Steve. I work for XYZ Network Security. Are you available to grab coffee next week?”
I was so insulted, that I decided I’d show him how stupid this was. Instead of sending out my usual prospecting email, I blasted his simplistic one out to several hundred cold prospects.
I got three meetings that week, created 2 opps and closed one.
Go figure.
If you are not crushing your sales numbers, I recommend you try a few A/B test hacks yourself.
The worst thing that could happen is your new method is unsuccessful. The best thing is that it completely turns around your business.
Most likely, you’ll discover a few surprising results that might change your approach.
* In the end, I decided I prefer having some hair vs being bald. That said, I’m now OK with shaving it all off when I get more Friar Tuckish.