I am often approached by sales associates who ask how to be more successful in sales. They are frustrated with their performance and they want to know how others make it look easy. They often believe they are doing everything right and are looking for an excuse that will get them off the hook. I explain to my discouraged people that success in sales is the result of many good habits combined with massive effort. A lot goes into being great and if you are weak in one area it will show in your results. The best salespeople have adopted key fundamentals that ensure that their attitude is right and their pipeline is always full. To dominate in sales you will have to adopt and master the principles I outline in this post.
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All great salespeople are committed
Not many people truly know what it means to commit. Simply put it is an obligation you place on yourself to do something. And not only do you have to do it but you have to do it right and see it through. Success is the reward that you get from commiting and getting it done. I consider commitment to sales as the most important part of this post. Everything that we unpack here will require a full commitment. Anything less than 100% will result in mediocrity at best.
Top producers are coach-able
Stop being so sensitive and argumentative. Take the critiques of managers, coworkers and clients as opportunities to grow. All Salespeople have big egos and a good salesman thinks they know everything. However, great salespeople know that they don’t know enough. You miss the opportunity to improve if you get upset every time someone is critical of you.
Recently, a sales associate who came to me to looking for a contact list to call. I appreciated his motivation so I gave him a solid list of 30 – 40 clients. These were highly qualified clients. Most had bought from us before, their salesperson was no longer with our company and their product was older. In addition they already had an appointment wirh our service department for the the next day! When rhe call plan is executed properly the the conversion rate was at or above 10%. 25% would end up buying a new product. We roleplayed how a call should go and then I turned him loose. The salesperson called on the list for three days and then stopped asking me for the list. When I asked him about his results he shrugged and said that he wasn’t having much luck and that some people were getting angry with him. This was alarming to me. Up to that point I had never had rep having a negative experience with this particular call and he had zero appointments from 120 calls. I asked him to take me through a call and immediately found that he was not using our call plan and was pushing the sale too hard. After all the clients were not coming in for sales they were coming in for service. I coached him up and gave him a demonstration of how to make the call. He was very reluctant. I could tell he was not sold, thought it wasn’t going to work and he was a upset that I would question his strategy. However the next day he came to me and asked me for a new list. At the end of the day he set 6 appointments and 2 eventually purchased. Bottom line, he became coach-able and now is one of my best phone reps.
Find a mentor
It is tough to be a sales person lost in the sales environment. I think back on my origin story and I do not know if I would be in sales if it wasn’t for my first professional Mentor Dave. Dave had a great attitude and you could bet your paycheck that he would close a deal that everybody else thought was dead. A great mentor is someone who you respect because they have mastered their craft. They need to be an authority in their field and you. Your mentor also needs to be someone who wants you to succeed as much as you do. I prefer someone who is local and accessible. This guru doesn’t have to be from the same sector that you are in as long as they can help you get over your hurdles and give you the right encouragement when you need it most.
Become a Professional
This sounds simple but it isn’t. I see unprofessional everyday. Clients make a judgement about us based on our appearance, words and actions. Usually within the first few seconds of our call or contact. You must be clean, pressed and dressed for success. If you are meeting with upper level execs in a high rise and they will be wearing suits you should be wearing a suit too. If you are meeting engineers out in the field a pair khakis, jeans and a polo might be fine but they should look clean and fit right. I do not judge if you are a smoker but make sure the customer never sees you or smells you. Clean up and have your next vice after you leave your client. I once witnessed a client approach a group of salespeople who were distracted by the ribbing they were giving another salesman. The conversation became offensively crude and the prospect walked out the door but she made sure to let me know why she was not giving us her business and that she would never return.
Put in the time and make it quality
“Time is more value than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn
A common lie we tell ourselves is “I don’t have the time.” Great salespeople view time as an invaluable commodity. They find time and use it to outperform everyone else. I have had reps that come into the office 10 minutes late regularly. They miss our important morning meeting and coaching session. Shortly after they arrive they step out to go grab breakfast and a coffee (because they didn’t have time to do it before work). Upon their return, they stuff their faces with greasy food, read the paper and complete a crossword because it is too early to call customers. This keeps them occupied until 9:30 when they finally get around to following up their hottest prospects… maybe 2 or 3 of them. After their failed attempt at productivity they get discouraged and go to lunch. They disappear for an hour or more and upon return spend their afternoon waiting for the end of their shift. Somewhere around 30 minutes before their shift they swing by my office and ask to leave early because it has been a tough day. I don’t even want to know what they do with their free time… pitiful. Notice that I said that “I had reps”. They miss over and hour and a half without accounting for all the other slacking they are doing. That is 7.5 hours a week, 375 hours a year or 7.5 weeks of selling time missed. How much do you sell in 7.5 weeks? How much more successful could you be if you had another 4-5 days in your month? Another 12-15 days in your quarter or a whole month in your year?
The best reps I see show up at least 30 minutes early. They use their extra time to get their admin duties squared away so they can sell uninterrupted and plan their day so they can be as productive as possible. They only miss the meeting when they have a client; often an early bird client that falls into their lap because they were first in to the office. These same reps are in the office late, work their day off and when they are out of the office they are networking. When they need food, they buy and someone else flies. The best reps keep themselves where the action is and stay in the zone. Since we did the math for the underachiever. If my top rep comes in 30 minutes early and leaves 30 minutes late he adds an hour to his selling day. Multiply that by 5 days and you get 5 extra selling hours a week. Multiply that by 50 work weeks a year and you get 250 extra selling hours a year. That is 5 more 50 hour work weeks than the next rep who is working in reverse. I didn’t factor in the days off the top rep works or the shortened lunch break but I do not want to blow your mind.
To get your self going in the right direction you will need to take serious actions. Make a list of all the things that help put you into sales situations and then block the time to do more of it than usual. If you spend two hours to make 40 calls everyday and you set 2 appointments; block your time so you can make 60 calls and set 3 appointments. You will have to either find an extra hour a day or become more efficient with your calls, but you get where I am coming from by now. When you find more time and block the time you have into productive selling units you will have more success.
Commit to written goals. Cliché, I know. Top salespeople hold themselves accountable and are goal and results driven. You probably come from one of two camps. Either you think that you are going to end up where you end up based on circumstances that are out of your control OR you will make the universe deliver everything you ever wanted just by desiring it with all your heart. I contend that both are true and both are false. You do need a positive attitude and the law of attraction does seem to be a thing. However I know plenty of people who wanted something so badly and failed. Miserably. Bumper stickers happen and you cannot prevent that. What you can do is decide to set a goal. Set a massive goal. I am telling you to set a goal so big that you will probably not hit it. One that is so big that everyone around you thinks that you bumped your head. After you set the goal you need to focus your thoughts, energy and actions towards this goal. If circumstance wins you will still end up in a better place than if you set an average goal and missed. If you miss an average goal you are below average. On the other hand if the universe wins and you hit that massive goal… whoa buddy. Shoot for the moon, if you miss you will land among the stars.
Prospect
Top producers are always looking to generate their own business. They spend a lot of time on the phone with prospects or leaving voicemail. They use email, text and social media to get their name and product out in front of the right people. They do not do this sometimes; they do it all the time. If you are missing your mark you probably are not prospecting enough or you suck at it. There are a lot of things you can do to get better at prospecting. You can get books on the subject, train with others and ask your mentor or coach. The better you get at it the more you will do it. The more you do it the better you will get at it. The next practice goes hand in hand with prospecting.
It is ok, even good to be uncomfortable and afraid
I know what you are thinking. How the heck can it be good to be uncomfortable or even afraid. News flash, you will always be uncomfortable. You will experience fear. Often times you have to disrupt your client at the worst time for them facing possible anger. You will eventually have to put yourself on stage to present your idea or product and risk getting rejected. You have to ask for the business and push through objections. And you never truly know if your deal will go through until the ink is dry and the product is delivered.
A good example of fear in sales that I see daily is phone calls. If you make phone calls you are bound to have call anxiety. Cold calling new business is painful. Following up long shot unsold customers sucks. Because of the crappiness of the phone you may find yourself delaying the things that you should do with “busy work”. You may tell yourself that these things need doing but your job is to sell. Selling will require you to call on prospects and deal with more than your fair share of rejection. You need to be willing to fail over and over until you get the result that you want. Get uncomfortable and pick up the phone! If you make a living on walk in customers or business to business sales you have to get uncomfortable and approach the client. If you don’t, someone else will. The best reps all feel uncomfortable and have doubts they just mask it better. Put yourself in more situations and you will be able to conquer uncomfortable too.
Become a student of your business.
Good reps think they know everything but the best reps know they that they have much to learn. You need to study your product, your competetors offerings and your customers. You need to know your sales process inside and out. Your business can and will change. Sometimes slowly and sometimes overnight. Superstars stay up to speed on what is happening and what is coming. They read books, listen to audio, watch video and attend live training.
There are experts in your field that are putting information out there. Go find it and consume it daily.
Avoid negativity
For some people the sky is always falling. They love to tell everyone all about how bad things are. I find there are two types of negatrons, we I call them type 1 and Type 2.
Type 1 are negative without ever realizing it. Nothing goes their way. They tell you all their personal problems and tend to talk about others behind their backs. This group thinks they know how everything should be and criticize everyone else. They are the victim. If they are your friend let them know how their negativity makes you feel and let them know you will be there for them, outside of work. But don’t turn them into a fixer up project. It is their personality and who they are.
Type two are a dangerous. They approach as a friend and use negativity as psychological warfare. In my industry it’s called spreading rats. They know if they can change your thinking it will hurt your performance thereby making their performance look better. They will tell you business is off, customers aren’t buying. The product sucks. Management sucks. There are too many reps not enough customers. Leads aren’t distributed fairly. There are no leads. The list is endless for this group. If you really want to piss them off and shut them up state the opposite back to them. “Really? I feel business is picking up”, “I have several customers in my pipe”, “Mr. Manager helped me close a tough deal yesterday “, “I noticed we have more reps, I assume they are getting ready to replace someone” ,”You aren’t getting enough leads? I can ask Joe to give you some of mine… there is just too much on my plate right now”. Giving a type 2 a sympathetic ear only encourages them to continue. If all else fails just walk away.
Train every day
To be a top performer you need to present like top performers. To do this you will need confidence, conviction and coolheadedness. You do not possess these traits naturally so you will need to obtain them. You could gain them by paying your dues and awkwardly stumbling through client after client, but you will have a higher fail rate and it will be discouraging.
Another method is to role play various scenarios and steps in your process. Team up with management or other associates and show them how you work your process. Ask for coaching and repeat until your pitch is second nature and doesn’t sound like a pitch. You do have to be careful with this one. Some people over prepare. They get analysis paralysis. They never get in frint if clients because they are always preparing. Sometimes they prepare so much they miss the sale while other times they freeze up when the client throws a curve thhqt they have not prepared for.
Because neither of the two approaches are perfect I recommend the hybrid approach. A little traing everyday, then get in a selling situation. Whatever the result is, role play it out with someone. What went right? What went wron? It really is that simple.
Use your support staff
If you have people in place to support you, use them! A lot of successful salespeople build huge books of business from selling and servicing clients. They give them their mobile line and tell them to call them with anything. “I will handle it” they proclaim. However these well intentioned reps eventually reach a tipping point were they are servicing more than selling. Remember the thread on time? How can you reach full potential if you spend only half of your time to sales?
You do not have to do everything for everyone. You sell, other people do the service. I am not saying to ignore your customers after the sale. Help them find the best person to answer their questions or fix their problem. Let them do their job. Monitor from a distance and check in but you don’t have to solve the issue. And when they do a great job let them know how much you appreciate it.
No excuses
Everybody has them and nobody wants to hear them. They are basically lies or half truths that people use to explain away failure and mediocrity. Excuses are addictive and the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem with excuses. Begin by identifying the excuses that you use most and then rephrase them so that you can change it from a situation that is out of your control to one where you can fix the problem.
For example an excuse sounds like this: I didn’t hit my goal in January because everyone was paying off their charge cards from the holiday and they just weren’t buying.
Say it like this instead: I didn’t hit my goal because I failed to prospect enough which resulted in a weak pipeline. I failed to account for the decline in sales due to people paying off debt from last year.
The first example implies the situation was out of your control while the second takes responsibility. Once you take ownership and commit to no excuses you will be able to make action plans for improvement.
Prospect more than you can handle, then prospect some more
My best associates are hunters who target and collect customers. They draw them into the sales pipeline, qualify them by determining if they will need our product now or later. Then they follow up with the mission of moving them through the pipe. If you are waiting for prospects to seek you out you are going to be less than successful..
Sales can be one of the most challenging and rewarding career paths you can take. Choose to commit these principles and you will achieve all the success you could ever want.
