A number of Truths

Truth #1

The biggest obstacle a salesperson has to overcome is not the competition or price points or delivery schedules. The biggest impediment is inertia, or even ‘active inertia’, the status quo. Your customer has been doing business in a certain way for X number of years. Unless a significant problem pops up, he’s going to continue doing business the way he does. It’s only natural. Your job, somehow, is to change the prospect’s mindset, to prove that what you are selling is so much better, so much cheaper, so more likely to be delivered on time that it is worth her getting off her duff and initiating change.

Truth #2

Customers aren’t the only ones who suffer from inertia. Salespeople do, too. They give the same canned speech, the same canned presentation to every client. It doesn’t work. For example, a a salesperson @ an exhibition in Milano called on me. It was the first time we’d met. We shook hands and talked, and he immediately launched into a completely thorough presentation . . . one with eighty-seven PowerPoint hardcopies.

Truth #3

A good salesperson’s goal isn’t to clinch the sale—right away. Certainly getting the business is the ultimate objective. But selling is a process. The problem involves sowing seeds. You can probably harvest them before they are ready. But any farmer who does that loses the full value of his crop..

Truth #4

The biggest enemy a salesperson has is the clock. Time is limited. You have to learn how to prospect properly and to get your ratios up so that you not only get a sufficient number of appointments but appointments worth pursuing.

Truth #5

Your prospect will help you. People generally like to be helpful. If you ask the right questions, you will find the key to success. And yes, it sounds like a fortune-cookie aphorism—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Next will deal mainly with one aspect of the sales process: the presentation. It obviously is a key step in the process. But it does not exist in a vacuum. It is a culmination of a number of steps. Ideally, you will make these truths your mantra. You will utter them when you wake up. You will utter them before you go to sleep.

Some Thoughts…

You cannot teach someone sales. You either are a salesperson or not. And by salesperson, I mean you’re an it’s-in-yourgut- and-you-have-to-clinch-that-sale-or-you’ll-get-acid-reflux kind of guy or gal. However, you can learn the process. Understanding and following the process won’t necessarily make you a better salesperson, but it can help you clinch more sales.

It’s difficult to attach a weight to the different parts of the sales process. They are interconnected. So you can’t really say cold calling is more or less important than presentations. If you don’t make successful cold-calls, you won’t be making any presentations. If your presentations stink, even the best cold-calls are moot. But certainly we can all agree that if you don’t get off your duff, if you don’t fight the temptation to slide through another day, if you don’t pick up the phone, you might just want to go to work for the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Remember that your competition isn’t the enemy—the status quo is. You have to show prospects that they will be more comfortable with you as a supplier than they will be sitting back and doing nothing.

Think about it. The thoughts you have inside your head do not reflect who you are as a friend, partner, parent, or worker. This is an important point. So many people get caught up feeling sorry for themselves or worrying without even realizing it! And then they beat themselves up about it when they realize the negativity of their thoughts.

But here’s an interesting fact:

Most of the thoughts that roam around our heads are completely inane and useless! Your thoughts do not make you a bad person, because guess what? Your thoughts aren’t real. They are just fleeting ideas that you can control if you take the time to learn how.

It’s pretty obvious, but the way you handle your thoughts will massively impact your life. Those of us who get caught up with spiraling negative thoughts when things don’t go our way will find it hard to progress in life and get stuff done, as we’ll be dealing with things like fear and anxiety. Whereas those of us who work at “controlling” those thoughts and reactions to difficult situations in life will find it much easier to achieve and be happy. Imagine if you escaped the arms of self-pity and negativity and converted most of the thoughts inside your head to positive ones. Imagine what you could achieve!