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Honesty And Integrity Must Be Practiced In Sales

Successful sales people are at peace with themselves and with their customers. The peace they feel comes from their belief in their products and services and the honest and straightforward approach they have taken with their customers. When you feel right it is much easier to act right and when you act right, you do right. The world is full of salespeople who don’t believe in their products and are willing to say whatever it takes to make the sale. They willingly accept money based on hollow promises, knowing in their hearts that the product is incapable of doing what it was purchased to do. Others will say and do those things that “hook” the buyer, eliminating other options in order to deliberately lock buyers into their product with total disregard for the implications that will ultimately come to plaque the customer. It almost seems as though they live by the creed, “all is fair, as long as you make the sale”.

Selling is not a short-term proposition. Successful salespeople are always thinking long-term. Short-term relationships are built on lies and deception while lasting sales relationships are anchored firmly on a foundation of honesty and trust. Of course, there are salespeople who have enjoyed phenomenal success through deceptive practices. However, their success is not lasting nor is it satisfying. Many will eventually be discovered and others will leave sales and move on to other careers. In both cases, their success and careers are hollow, void of personal satisfaction, having left a trail of unfulfilled promises and expectations.

If you want to find the true joy and success that can be experienced in a sales career, you must not only be honest with yourself but with your customers as well. There are no degrees of honesty, either you are honest or you aren’t. In the classic tale written by Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he wrote a chapter titled “You Can’t Pray A Lie”. Huck was troubled with his life, the way he was living and the things he had done. He finally decided to seek peace for his aching soul. Here are Huck’s words as written by Mark Twain:

“It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing and go and write to that [slave's] owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie — I found that out.”

As salespeople, we represent our employers, our industry, our profession, our friends, our families and ourselves. Just as Doctors subscribe to the Hippocratic Oath, swearing to practice medicine ethically, so must salespeople for the sake of all those people who’s lives they influence, be honest, forthright and ethical in all of their practices. You will find internal peace and satisfaction while at the same time, rebuilding the image of the greatest profession in the world.

There Is No Magic Bullet Or Secret Formula To Increasing Sales

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Why do other salespeople sell more than I do?” There may be many reasons, but one of them is not because they have found a magic bullet or secret formula. However, if they are selling more than you, there is definitely a reason. I wish I could tell you that sales superstars know something that you don’t, or have discovered a sales secret known only to a few, but that isn’t the case. The plain and simple truth is this: if you did what they do, you would have the same results. And, what they do is not a secret, you can do it too.

I recently sat in on two sales presentations. I love to subject myself to salespeople to critique them and to stay in touch with the current level of performance in the sales profession. The first salesperson asked one question of me and then jumped right into his “pitch.” He was pretty good at telling me his story, but he had absolutely no idea about what my company does and no real understanding as to whether I needed his product. The second salesperson jumped right into the presentation without even asking my name. When I later asked him about his approach, he suggested that since I must have been very busy, he didn’t want to waste any time building rapport or assessing needs and thought that it would be better to just get right to the point.

Let me share 5 things that successful salespeople do, which you could also do to increase your sales. These five things are not secret or magic. In fact, they are probably things that you know, but just don’t do because you don’t understand how powerful they are in closing the sale.

1.  You should be closing the sale from the first moment the prospect first sets eyes on you. Your appearance is the first impression you make with the prospect. If you don’t have the look of a person they want to buy from, they probably won’t buy from you. Dress the part of a successful salesperson, act the part of a successful salesperson, speak the part of a successful salesperson and become a successful salesperson.

2.  The most important person in the world of selling is the customer. Treat them as if they are. Don’t put yourself above them and don’t focus on yourself. They may act polite, but they really don’t care about you. They care about themselves, their problems and what you can do for them. When you focus on the customer, you are literally closing the sale. 

3.  Diagnosing the customer’s needs, I believe, is even more important to the process of closing a sale than just flat out asking for the sale. People buy from people they believe, like and trust. Diagnosing needs, builds trust and confidence better than anything else you can do. Your prospects and customers will want to buy from you because you have gone where no other salesperson has ever ventured. You have discovered the core of their needs. For that reason alone, you have made the sale.

4.  Honesty is not typically expected from a salesperson. It should be the most important character trait of every person that sells, but sadly it isn’t. Your honest and straightforward approach, hiding nothing from the prospective buyer, is one of the best methods to close a sale. Honesty does not have degrees. You are either honest or you are not. Dishonesty will eventually lead to your failure as a salesperson. Your reputation will precede you. So remember, people buy from people they believe, like and trust.

5.  See the people. Spend time with your prospects and customers. Sales are not made in the office. Sales are made in the presence of buyers. Get out of your office and be among the people you are selling to. They want to see that you care enough to spend time with them. Romance your prospects and customers by delivering new news and repeating to them things you have previously shared. Selling takes place when you create a dialogue and you need to be with your prospects to have a dialogue. I’m not talking about bothering buyers with the two most worthless questions a salesperson can ask, i.e., “Have you made up your mind yet and do you have any questions?” Take them meaningful information and personally assist them in the decision making process.

There is no magic bullet or secret formula used by the world’s best salespeople. The difference is that they do the things that both you and they know and even though you know those things, you choose not to do them. You can quote me on this: “Successful salespeople do what they know, whereas, less successful sales people know, but don’t do.” The world of successful salespeople is characterized by doing, not just knowing.

Patience And Persistence Are Keys To Sales Success

We live in the “instant gratification” era. It has been categorized by cold cereal, instant mashed potatoes, microwave popcorn, energy bars, anything microwaveable, watching movies at home “on demand”, email, texting, and the internet just to name a few. This generation suffers greatly when they have to wait for anything. Young people demand the life-style that their parents enjoy, immediately upon leaving home. Instant gratification is also characterized by the size of consumer debt in the United States, nearly $2.4 trillion dollars as of March 2011. Average credit card debt per household is nearly $15,000. Buy now, pay later, seems to be the theme of this generation. There are a plethora of college degrees, which can be obtained over the Internet. Some of these degrees require no learning at all and a payment of just $240. For an additional $100 you can graduate Magna cum laude. This attitude of instant gratification has carried over into the world of employment, particularly selling.

The typical salesperson is not willing to prepare properly for a career in selling. They are looking for a career field that takes no preparation and will provide them a large income. They are unwilling to educate and prepare themselves to properly enter the job market. Many of these people want a salary that will guarantee them a wage as opposed to a commission that guarantees they earn the money they receive. I have interviewed salespeople who have asked for a substantial salary up front and then said that they would prove through their performance that they were worth the high salary. When I have countered with, “You perform first and then I will pay you the high salary”, they suddenly became less interested in the opportunity. The Chinese have a saying that refers to participating in sex before marriage, which translated means, “board the train first, and then buy your ticket.” Too often, the people of this instant gratification generation want all of the rewards and benefits without spending the time to prepare to earn them.

The typical salesperson will make just three attempts to complete a sale before they quit and move on. They lack the skills, patience and the persistence to complete all the sales that they could be making. Statistically we know that it takes between five and seven contacts with a prospective buyer before they feel comfortable buying from you. Without the belief and trust that you can deliver on your promises, the prospect will typically not purchase. The majority of salespeople want the sale now. They have been programed for instant gratification. They are unwilling to spend the time to romance the sale through building trust. They walk away from the sale because they don’t exhibit the patience necessary to complete the selling process. I was talking to a business owner the other day that told me he was ready to make a purchase from a salesperson that had been calling on him. He was sold on the product from the time the salesperson first approached him. The business owner told me that even though he was ready to make the purchase, he wanted the salesperson to earn the sale. In order to earn the sale, he needed to spend the time necessary with the business owner. Once he felt the salesperson had spent enough time, the owner would give him the purchase order.

Selling is a process. Every salesperson needs to learn and understand the process necessary to sell their products and services. There are no shortcuts! Each step of the process must be followed. Be patient and don’t try to rush the process. If you push, you may lose the opportunity. If you are not persistent, you may walk away too soon, leaving an easy sale for your competition. Selling is the process of discovering the needs of your prospect and then systematically providing the solution to their needs. To even be given the opportunity to discover their needs, you must demonstrate that you care about them, and are willing to do all that is necessary to earn their business. You must earn the right to present your product or service to them by thoroughly understanding the depth and breadth of their needs. The privilege of selling to them comes from spending the time to develop a relationship of belief and trust. Every phase of the sales process requires time. There is no such thing as “instant gratification” in the selling process.

Customers Want Excellent Service Regardless Of What They May Say

You have heard the oft’ quoted statement that customers can choose two of three options; price, quality or service when they make a purchase. The majority of buyers will pick price and quality. The least chosen combination is quality and service. Given the three options I would always choose quality and service. Sure, I am interested in price, but at the end of the day, if you pay too little for something, it is probably incapable to doing what you purchased it to do. Then, the money you spent, even though you may have purchased the item for an incredibly low price, may be totally wasted.

Purchasing a product for the lowest price on the planet has no value if the product is not available when you need it. I have seen people pay ten times what a product was worth just to have it available when it was needed. If you pay too little, you might be better off not purchasing at all. The product quality may not meet your expectations or it may not be available when you need it. As a salesperson you have a solemn responsibility to diagnose and understand what the customer truly needs. I can promise you this, “If the customer isn’t happy, there is no way in the world that you will be happy”.

John Ruskin, the British essayist and social thinker said this about focusing too much on purchasing for the lowest price:

“There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey. It’s unwise to pay too little.

When you pay too much, you lose a little money…that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot…it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run.
And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.”

When all is said and done, your customer will have a far greater memory and emotional attachment based on the service that you provided than either quality or price. Again, the customer may tell you that price is the most important of the three elements of a purchase, but service is what they really want and expect. Let me share a couple of personal examples with you.

Last week I drove to Phoenix to visit my grandchildren and to conduct some business. The cruise control on my car was not working and by the time I arrived in Phoenix, my leg was somewhat stiff. The next day I drove over to the Audi dealer in Chandler, just a mile or so from my daughter’s home. As I approached the dealership I could see the new car showroom, but not the service department. I parked my car and went inside to ask directions to the service department. When I asked one of the salespeople directions to the service department, he said to follow him and he would take me there. He could have given me directions, but he jumped in a golf cart and led me their. That is what I call service.

When I arrived at the service department, there was a service technician waiting for me to get out of the car to take care of my needs. After explaining the situation, he suggested that it would be well for a mechanic to test drive my car. In less than one minute the mechanic and I were on the freeway testing the cruise control. He told me that he was almost positive that the clutch sensor for the cruise control was bad and within fifteen minutes he had the new part installed and I was on my way. This dealership and service department could write the book on excellent customer service.

My second example of extraordinary customer service involves Discount Tire Company. I’ve been buying my tires from them since 1992. I purchased new tires before my Phoenix road trip. The tires are not a common size and were shipped from the distributor in Dallas. The day after returning from Phoenix, I noticed the tire pressure sensor flashing on my dashboard. I was near the Discount Tire Store, so I immediately headed in that direction. I no sooner pulled up in front of the store with my engine still running when one of their sales people greeted me and asked how he could help me. I explained the situation and he instantly checked the pressure in all of my tires to determine if I had low air pressure or a faulty sensor. He found the tire that was leaking air and within just a few minutes had the tire off my car for repair.

After about ten minutes, the technician came into the waiting room carrying my tire (not a good sign). He said he had good news and bad news. The good news was that I had free replacement coverage on the tire and the bad news was the six-inch long half inch diameter piece of steel protruding through my tire had damaged it beyond repair. He told me that he had already done a search to find a replacement tire (I’m thinking Dallas and four days). The technician jumped in his truck, picked up the tire at the local Michelin distributor and within twenty-minutes I was on my way.

Service is the only thing salespeople offer that is purely emotional. We sell the product, but we provide the service. Memory is deeply rooted in emotional experiences, so when we provide great service, we are creating strong emotions and memories in the minds of our customers. It is those emotions that generate repeat sales, referrals and letters of recommendation. You can offer quality, price or service. Even the best company and salesperson can only provide two of the three. Trust me on this; the very best combination is quality and service.

How Good Are Your Sales Skills And Techniques?

If you really want to improve your sales skills and increase your income, conduct a self-evaluation. Most salespeople go through their entire career doing the same thing over and over again, not really knowing the value of their performance. They may actually be better than they thought, or believe they are good when they are not. The evaluation process is similar to going to the doctor. The doctor will give you an examination, a series of tests and procedures that will indicate with fairly precise accuracy, your physical well-being. When was the last time you conducted a personal sales examination? If you don’t know your condition, how will you ever improve? And that, my fellow salespeople is the point of this article. If you don’t know your sales well-being, then how will you know if you need to improve, and if so, what to improve on.

Make a point every day to perform a personal diagnostic evaluation. Evaluate every aspect of your activities and your performance in each area of the sales process. Begin with the basics and then move through the more difficult and complicated activities. Don’t skip any steps or activities. Make a list of all the activities and skills you use in your daily schedule. Once you have completed your list, give yourself a grade for each area. Any level of performance less than an “A,” should be scheduled for an evaluation. Be honest with yourself. If an area needs improvement, make a note and then think of things you can do to improve. Be specific and write down each suggestion for immediate and future reference. Make notes of those things you do very well and commit to doing them more often if needed.

Self-improvement is a constant evaluation of what works and what doesn’t and then doing those things consistently that will improve your performance. Outline exactly what needs to be accomplished in order to achieve the desired result. Remember, nothing is impossible even though it may seem difficult. Committing yourself to a regular program of improvement will be the best guarantee you could possibly have against unemployment. Excellent salespeople are in constant demand, even in challenging economic conditions. You will be able to write your own ticket for success. Companies are constantly looking for top talent and will make a hiring decision when the right salesperson comes along. Guaranteed employment is one of the perks for top performing salespeople. They are recession proof, age proof, and performance proof.

Know your strengths and your weaknesses as well as those areas where you have passion to improve. After a few short weeks, you will sense improvement that will motivate you to be consistent in your efforts. The day will come when your improved skills will enable sales to become easier and more natural. A regular routine of self-evaluation and improvement focus will be your answer to enhanced performance, improved attitude and greater wealth.

It’s What You Do With Knowledge That Counts

At the conclusion of each of my workshops, I always make this statement:

“The principles and skills you have learned today are valuable and correct. I hope that you have not only been richly fed, but have had a fire lit within your soul. Nothing we have discussed and learned today will make any difference in your life and sales career unless you take action. The only thing that really matters is what you are going to do with the knowledge you have gained today. If you take action and change your behaviors, then the time we have spent is worthwhile. If you do nothing, then you would have been better off going to a movie. The only value derived from knowledge is found in its application. Take the knowledge you have gained today, apply it in your sales activities and I will guarantee that you will enjoy greater sales success. I’ve done my part; the rest is up to you. What you choose to do with this information will influence your career in either a positive or negative manner. The choice is yours. Thank you for your patience, your participation and your willingness to improve yourselves.”

I’m reminded of the story told about Socrates as he demonstrated to a student the importance of desire in learning. The story alleges that Socrates took the student to a fountain where he held his head under water. The student struggled with all his might to free himself for a breath of air. When he finally broke free and raised his head, gasping to take in a life saving breath, Socrates replied. “When your desire to learn is as great as your desire to breathe, then you will become a great student.”

In sales, there is no shortage of great knowledge and learning. The world is full of great fundamentalist teachers and practitioners. Sales training is a seven billion dollar per year industry. Salespeople are learning daily. Where the world falls short, is with salespeople who are willing to take action and apply the principles and skills they have learned. People tend to gravitate to their comfort zones and only do those things they feel comfortable in doing; those things they have always done. Regardless of how much they have learned, there will be no change in their performance until they take action. Taking action on things learned brings about the birth of change. Knowledge and action are inseparable in bringing about change. One cannot exist without the other and together they can bring about great success.

Find the desire and motivation to gain knowledge and then take action by putting your new knowledge into practice. Knowledge and action; there is no substitute for these two principles on the road to sales success. The more action you take, the more you will come to understand this principle. Learn and apply, isn’t that the way we learned in Kindergarten? It is also the way we learn in sales. “Take the knowledge you have gained today, apply it in your sales activities and I will guarantee that you will enjoy greater personal sales success. I’ve done my part; the rest is up to you. What you choose to do with this information will influence your career in either a positive or negative manner. The choice is yours. Thank you for your patience, your participation and your willingness to improve yourselves.”

A New Approach For Increasing Your Sales

This sales article is directed primarily to those who sell products and services to businesses. There are two main avenues to increasing your sales. First, find more customers to buy your products. Second, encourage your current customers to buy more. In the first case, there is no guarantee that your sales will increase. You may have more customers, but they may not buy more. In the second case, if your customers buy more, you will sell more. How do you get them to buy more? They can increase their inventories or they can sell more to their customers. I believe that if your customers thought they could sell more, they would already be doing it.

Several years ago I had a client who was responsible for finding new agents to sell their financial services products. He was doing an excellent job in signing up agents to represent them. Every month he added dozens of new agents. Month after month, the number of agents increased dramatically and every month, sales remained about the same. All his efforts to recruit new agents were having a negligible effect on sales. We changed our focus. Think about it. What good is a customer that doesn’t buy? We put our focus on teaching the agents how to effectively sell the financial products. Sales started to go through the roof. Teaching your customers how to sell may possibly be the best thing you can do to increase your sales. When they sell more, you sell more!

Several weeks ago, I shared the concept of teaching customers how to sell, with one of my clients. For him, bringing on new dealers is a slow and deliberate process. We wanted to see his sales increase in the near term, but new dealers were a long-term proposition. The only option was to generate more sales with the current dealers. My client went to work teaching his current dealers how to sell. They were very open-minded and willing to learn. As they learned, they applied the techniques and skills they had been taught. One salesperson closed a sale he had been working on for a couple of years and stated that it was due to a sales principle he had just learned to apply correctly. My client will probably double his sales this year from teaching his customers how to improve their sales. They in turn, will remain loyal customers due to the impact the sales training has had on their sales performance and their subsequent commission checks.

I remember the oft-told saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. You can have the same impact on your customers. Find a way to help them do the one thing that will have a profound impact on their bottom line profits. Teach them how to sell. We have been implementing a training program for the past couple of years at the Business Performance Group. It is called “Client Development.” The Client Development program was developed and written with the express purpose of teaching customers how to improve their sales. If you want to double your sales this year, teach your customers how to improve their sales. Bye the way, my client who taught his agents how to improve their sales, was rewarded by being made a partner in the financial services company.

Sales Training Can Be The Difference Between Success Or Failure

Every day I have the opportunity to interview salespeople to determine whether I want to spend time training them in the knowledge and skills of selling.  I don’t want to waste their employer’s money if the salespeople are not committed to improving their skills, allowing them to produce more profit for their employer.  I feel a deep commitment to produce a fabulous return on a business owner’s investment in sales training.  I’m confident in the programs taught and trained at the Business Performance Group and I need to feel just as confident in the salespeople I work with.

I’m looking for a positive attitude and a desire to improve their situation.  I’m looking for a person that wants more out of life and one that is willing to pay the price required for success.  I’m looking for a salesperson who knows they can improve and is willing to work hard and apply new methods of achieving success.  I’m looking for salespeople who have dreams and goals, people who want more out of life than they ever imagined possible.  I’m looking for salespeople who are willing to move beyond their comfort zone and take a risk in doing things they have never done before in order to achieve their dreams.  What are you willing to do in order to achieve your own dreams and goals? 

I was speaking with a business owner the other day who asked me what he should do with his salespeople if after I interviewed them, I decided not to train them.  My answer was simple and straightforward.  I told him that I didn’t care what he did with them, that was his decision.  Personally, I wouldn’t keep a salesperson who didn’t want to improve, unless I was satisfied with his or her performance.  At that point I would have to decide if someone else could do better and if I was willing to sacrifice what I could achieve with someone else for what I was getting with my current salespeople.  I believe that a salesperson who is given the opportunity to improve their performance, should capitalize on that opportunity.  By not striving for improvement, they are telling their employer that they don’t care about the success of the company.

The world is full of mediocrity.  It can be found in every facet of the workplace.  Selling is no exception.  Sales training is a seven billion dollar per year industry and yet most salespeople don’t take the initiative to improve their performance.  I was talking to a good friend of mine who is a physician.  He told me that he spends more than ten hours each week, learning and improving his skills to remain on the cutting edge, no pun intended, of his profession.  Professionals in all areas spend time improving their skills to be at the top of their game.  Many professions require a certain number of continuing education credits each year to maintain their accreditation or license to practice.  What are you doing to improve your performance and to stay on top of your sales game?

Imagine what you could accomplish in the field of sales if you spent ten hours each week, learning and improving your skills.  Most salespeople have no idea how good they can actually be at selling.  When the economy is strong they have decent sales results and when the economy is struggling, like it has been for the past three years, their sales are down.  They rationalize their performance based on the economy.  I wouldn’t want my surgeon rationalizing my recovery just because he didn’t know the latest procedures and medical techniques.  Salespeople, get your selves trained.  Business owners, get your salespeople trained.  In the past three years there have been many companies who have flourished while their competitors have closed their doors.  The companies that have flourished trained their salespeople and the ones who closed their doors didn’t.  Sales training is not a cost, but rather, an investment in the success of your company.  It is not too late to begin.  Those companies who provide programs for their salespeople will always out perform those that don’t and in this economy it might be the difference between achieving more success than you ever dreamed possible, or shutting your doors for the last time.

The Rewards of Sales Success

You might think I’m sick and demented, but I’m sitting on the beach South of Cancun on the Mayan Riviera writing my sales article for this week. The Caribbean Ocean is crystal clear with a light blue and turquois color. The coral sand is shimmering white and the consistency of flour. The waiters, patrolling the beach, make sure I don’t go wanting for my favorite beverage. Life is great. To quote my good friend Marshal, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

The week we will spend on the Mayan Riviera is an incentive trip for 23 of my clients, wives, significant others and employees. They have all worked hard, created excessive profits for their employers and earned this trip as a reward for their performance. I must admit, it is a bit distractive to take in this magnificent beauty and try to make sense of my thoughts while pounding the keys of my laptop.

Through his efforts to learn and practice improved sales skills, Jon from Robert Love Heating and Air Conditioning increased his performance by 151% over his previous years average. He told me the experience was life changing as he not only increased his income, raised his standard of living, but made some significant changes in his personal life. All of the principles that Jon learned can be applied in every aspect of his life. He has learned that when the correct principles are applied, he can accomplish.

Scott, with Wheeler Machinery, was reassigned to a different sales division within the company. In addition to learning a new product and service, he was enrolled in a year long sales training and coaching program. His was an ominous challenge to learn and apply both product knowledge as well as perfecting his sales skills. Scott was given a goal based on what his predecessors had achieved. After one year of training and coaching, Scott’s performance was 191% of his benchmark. He is enjoying this fabulous week with his wife and two daughters.

The temptation to jump up, run across the powdery beach and dive into the water is almost more than I can stand. That will be my reward when I complete this article.

Robert has spent his career in operations for the Halverson Company. Most of his time has been in the field, managing projects and people. After a career of hard physical labor, he was given the opportunity to manage the department and to generate sales. This past year he has learned that selling, even though it is vastly different from operations, is hard work. He was benchmarked against the performance of another employee who had been selling steel fabrication work for several years. Robert did not see results for several months, although he became a student of sales, learning and applying the principles and skills he was learning. He completed his first year with a 189% increase over his benchmark. His life will never be the same having learned new skills and demonstrating that through effort and discipline he can achieve more than he ever dreamed possible in his new career. Robert and his wife are enjoying a dream vacation all because of his outstanding performance. By the way, in the first three months of the new sales year, Robert has already achieved 70% of his new goal that was set at five times his previous goal.

Jon, Scott and Robert are my heroes. They have demonstrated what we have seen time and time again. When you work hard at applying the correct principles and skills of selling, you can accomplish goals that others can only dream of.

I’m enjoying a fabulous day on the beach with my wife, employees and clients. We all work hard and then we play hard. To say it is worth it, is an understatement. Sales is the greatest career in the world. It doesn’t get any better than this. I’ve got to run, I can’t resist the turquois water any longer.

10 Sales Myths

Since most salespeople do not have a formal education in selling, other than the schooling of experience and mentoring, they become fair game to believing myths, urban legends and partial truths. I have listed ten common myths accompanied by the true sales principles. In most cases, the myth and the truth are not far apart. However, the results of applying the true principle versus the myth are miles apart. Apply the true principles and enjoy a significant increase in your sales performance.

1. It is good to either be the first salesperson or the last to talk to a prospect. Some salespeople think that by being either the first thing on the prospect’s mind or the last thing on their mind gives them an advantage. It doesn’t really matter. The key to making a sale is to discover what the prospect really needs and then help them to achieve it. Build rapport and trust and then demonstrate that you really understand their needs. Present the right solution based on your knowledge and experience with a vast base of happy customers. This will put you in the best position to make the sale.

2. The key to sales success is found in hard work. Working hard is important to sales success, but you must be working hard doing the right things. If you aren’t doing what needs to be done, it doesn’t matter how hard you work. The most successful salespeople know their sales process and they work hard doing only those things that will bring them closer to making the sale. Just as motion is not necessarily progress, neither is working hard the solution to more sales. Working hard at doing the right things is the key to sales success.

3. Practice makes perfect. All of my early life, I believed that practice made perfect. Practice makes permanent! If you practice religiously doing something incorrectly, you will become extremely good at doing something incorrectly. If you want to become perfect at something, you must practice doing that thing perfectly. Repeat after me, “Perfect practice makes perfect.” Learn the correct sales principles and skills and then commit yourself to practicing them perfectly.

4. The one who speaks the most wins the sale. Nothing could be further from the truth. Telling is not selling and will never be the answer to more sales. The salesperson that engages the prospect and learns all they can about the needs, wants, desires, ambitions and dreams of the prospect will learn enough to make the sales. They key to selling is found in listening. The person who listens the most will know what to do in order to make the sale. You can’t talk and listen at the same time. If you can only do one, make it listening. Your sales will increase dramatically.

5. Getting thru the presentation without any objections is good. There is an ill-conceived notion that if the prospect doesn’t verbalize an objection or concern, then there must not be any. Not true! People don’t buy if they have concerns or objections and just because they don’t express them doesn’t mean they don’t have them. Objections and concerns are good. This is a sign of interest. Give the prospect an opportunity to express their concerns. Get them all out on the table so they can be understood and resolved. Talk about them. Resolve them and then make the sale. Ask the prospect to tell you their concerns. Ask the question, “Besides that, is there anything else?” Keep asking until they tell you there are no more concerns. The resolution of concerns creates a dialogue, and the dialogue is critical to closing the sale.

6. The customer is always right. Guess what? The customer is not always right. Sometimes the customer is very wrong. However, the customer will always be the customer and if you don’t treat them right, no matter how wrong they may be, you will never make the sale. Lead them and guide them to the right conclusion through diplomatic questioning. Never forget, without a customer, you are out of business.

7. Sell the prospect what they tell you they want. This one sounds good, but sounding good has nothing to do with the truth. A customer will never be happy if you sell them what they want. You will lose future opportunities to sell to them and you will lose potential referrals if you sell them what they want. The subtlety here is to sell them what they need. Very often the prospect will tell you what they want which isn’t what they need. After realizing that what you sold them is not what they needed, they will be unhappy and blame you completely. After all, you are the one who sold them. The prospect doesn’t care that you sold them what they asked for if it doesn’t solve their problem. Sell the prospect what they need or you will wish you had.

8. Telling is selling. Selling is the process of understanding the needs of the prospect and then helping them to achieve those needs. Listening is selling. By the way, listening is much more difficult than talking and delivers a more profitable result.

9. Great products sell themselves. I would be willing to venture that there are more incredible products that never gained approval from the buying public than there are incredible products that we all buy and use. Why? Great products don’t sell themselves; salespeople sell them. I don’t care how wonderful, unique or perfectly engineered your product might be. If you don’t present it as a solution to someone’s needs, they probably won’t buy it. From a salesperson’s point of view, it is an absolute advantage to have the best product or service within your industry. However, if you don’t sell it, no one will buy it.

10. The same salesperson can’t sell effectively in different industries. Every business wants to believe that their product is unique and special. Because of this thought, they believe a salesperson must be specialized with years of experience in an industry to be successful. Don’t flatter yourself with this narrow band of thought. Selling is Selling and the same principles apply regardless of product or industry. Selling is comprised of 40% sales skills, 40% attitude and 20% product knowledge. A salesperson that has excellent skills and a great attitude is capable of selling any product or service.

The Four Plagues Of Sales Success

The other day I was teaching a group of seasoned salespeople a handful of basic, core principles that will make even the best salesperson better and when applied, make an average salesperson excellent. As I began the workshop, I asked the question, “What are you trying to accomplish as a salesperson?” All of their answers were in the ballpark. We agreed on this definition: “The purpose of a salesperson is to bring profitable sales to the company;” simple, yet profound. We then discussed several reasons why salespeople were not as successful as they could be. I’m going to list a few reasons we discussed accompanied by my thoughts relating to each one. These reasons may seem similar to the ones that plague you and my responses may be a solution to your own sales dilemma.

1. Not enough time: There will never be enough time in a day. There will be constant challenges for the time you have and emergencies will endlessly raise their ugly heads. The only way to deal with time is to begin your day with a plan. Plan to be on time for work and leave after completing a full day. Make a written plan of all the things that must be done, along with all the things you would like to get done during the day. Prioritize and then determine how much time you will spend achieving each item on your list. Remember, the number one “time waster” in the world is spending more time on a task than it deserves. Now, move each item to a time frame. Block out as much time as each task requires. Move from one task to the next throughout the day, maintaining a constant vigilance against the ever-present distractions that will throw you off track. Don’t take the complacent attitude that you are too busy to plan. Planning takes work and application and will improve the effective use of your time by a minimum of twenty percent. Once you have made your plan, do everything within your power to avoid distractions and strive to stay on course.

2. Don’t have enough prospects: Make prospecting a major part of your daily activity. Even during the busiest day, dealing with all the detail and drama of selling, make sure that you still spend even fifteen minutes prospecting. Stay in the habit of daily prospecting. The definition of prospecting is to engage yourself in those activities that will allow you to discover profitable sales opportunities. The most effective source of prospecting centers on your current and past customers. To be effective you must know their business as if it were your own. Look for opportunities to solve problems through the use of your products or services. If there are no current sales opportunities with current or past customers, ask them for referrals. Also, make sure that you have a current letter of recommendation from each customer that can be used to influence other prospects.

3. There are too many distractions throughout the course of the day: Guess what? There will always be distractions. You can avoid the majority of them through the daily practice of planning and scheduling your day. You must make a constant effort to stay focused on the achievement of your daily plan. Success doesn’t just happen, and luck is not a component of the success process. Planning and then following the plan is the main ingredient of success. The perfectly executed day, void of any distraction is about as rare as a colorless, flawless diamond. Be vigilant, constantly on alert for those distractions that will move you off course.

4. I’m really busy but not making much progress:  Probably the most common words spoken by a salesperson refer to always being busy. That may be true, but busy has nothing to do with profitable. The solution is to set goals. Sales goals must be realistic, challenging and achievable. Every sales goal must be time and date specific and should have a list of activities that, when completed, will result in the achievement of the goal. You can monitor your performance by the completion of the goal activities. If you are not doing the activities, you are not making progress and if you are not making progress you will not achieve your goals no matter how busy you are.

Now that you understand the four plagues of sales success, you can apply the solutions and enjoy even greater success. Remember, it is not what you know, but rather what you do with knowledge that makes a difference.

True Salesmanship Is Focusing On The Prospect, Not Yourself

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to understand the other person’s point of view and see things from his eyes as well as from your own.

Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire and the best piece of advice which can be given to would-be persuaders, whether in business, in home, in school, in politics, is: first, discover in the other person an eager want. The person that can do this has the whole world on his side. The person who cannot, walks a lonely path.

If you want someone to do something, give him or her what they want. They don’t care what you want; their only concern is achieving their wants and desires. When you go fishing, you bait the hook with what the fish wants, don’t you. The fish couldn’t care less what you want to put on the hook; it only cares what it wants to eat. If you want to catch fish, bait the hook to suit the fish. Dealing with people is exactly the same. People are only interested in what they want. They don’t care what you or I want. The only way in the world to influence another person is to find out what they want and then show them how to get it.

Everything you or I have ever done in our lives was done for just one reason; we wanted to do it. You might be thinking that you were forced to do something. It might seem that way, but you chose to do one thing to avoid another. In other words, even though your choices might have been limited, you wanted to do one thing instead of another. In the world of sales, when you put your efforts into trying to persuade someone to do something, you should stop and ask yourself this question. “How can I make this person want to do it?” Finding a “want “ or a “need” in the other person is much easier and more successful in the world of selling than trying to cause someone to do something you want. No one cares what you want! People only care about one thing and that is, what they want. When you promote your agenda, it is similar to pushing a rope on a flat surface, which can be frustrating and ineffective. Discovering what the other person needs and wants is like pulling a rope, which is easier and more effective.

Every day millions of salespeople are pounding the pavement, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why? Because they are thinking of just one thing – what they want. They don’t understand this one fundamental truth. Prospects are only interested in one thing and that one thing is what they want. They don’t care that a salesperson wants to make a sale in order to pay the mortgage, put food on the table, gas in the car or to put shoes on their children’s feet. People don’t want to be sold, but they do want to solve their problems. If salespeople can help other people see how their products and services can solve problems, then they don’t need to sell, people will want to buy.

Salespeople might struggle their entire career trying to persuade prospects to buy when all they need to do is understand the prospect’s problems and needs and then show them how the product or service will solve their problem. Once they see your product as a solution, they will gladly buy. It is all in your approach, just like moving a rope along a flat surface. You can try to push it, similar to focusing on your own needs by trying to sell someone something, or you can pull the rope, which is analogous to focusing on the needs of the prospect and showing them how your product will solve their problem. Instead of struggling through your sales career by focusing on yourself, take the easier and more successful approach of focusing on the other person and solving their problems. When the prospect is happy, you are both happy and you will be able to pay the mortgage, put food on the table, gas in the car, put shoes on your children’s feet and build a strong financial future.

Romancing The Sale

Several years ago as I left the office of one of my clients, I hollered back into his office, “Don’t forget to romance this week.” His administrative assistant turned to me and said, “How do I enroll in your training program?”

 Romancing the sales has proven to be one of the most effective selling principles applied by my clients. The number one reason that salespeople aren’t as successful as they could be is due to the lack of professional skills. Just to verify this point, how many of you have a degree in sales? The number two reason for lack of sales success is due to poor follow-up. Most salespeople don’t know when to follow-up or what to do if they follow-up. Either they follow-up too often and bother the prospect or they don’t follow-up often enough and lose the sale to the competition. Further, very few sales people understand the principle of romancing the sale which is very similar to the courting process leading to marriage.

Let me explain the process of romancing and then leave you with several lists of items that will be helpful as you embrace this most essential element of the sales process. Romancing is different that following up with a prospect. It has a much deeper meaning that focuses on the relationship between you and the buyer. Romancing takes only a few minutes and should not exceed three minutes with the prospect unless they invite you to stay longer. Romancing is best when it involves a personal contact, but can also be effective if your sales process only involves phone contact due to time and distance constraints. Romancing always involves the leaving of a physical gift of knowledge or benefit. When romancing by phone, send the gift of knowledge or benefit via fax or email and then discuss it briefly with the prospect over the phone. The romance is planned and schedule by you but is typically not a formally scheduled contact between you and the prospect. It is presented as a “drop in” to leave the prospect some information that will help them make the proper buying decision.

5 Reasons to romance:

1. People buy from people they believe, like and trust (BLT).

2. Your competitors don’t romance.

3. Romancing creates the opportunity for dialogue and dialogue promotes sales.

4. Romancing promotes understanding.

5. It is the most successful means of building a relationship with the buyer.


10 Things romancing can achieve

1. The average business –to-business sale requires seven contacts before the sale is closed. Romancing provides those contacts.

2. To build trust, you need to delve below the surface where most sales people never venture. Romancing allows the forum to learn what your competitors will never know.

3. Romancing involves bringing gifts of knowledge to help the prospect make informed decisions.

4. Romancing puts you in the middle of the decision making process

5. When you are walking your prospects through their concerns and resolving their questions, that means your competition isn’t.

6. Romancing allows you to assume the role of assistant buyer or partner in making the buying decision.

7. Romancing confirms your commitment and concern for the buyer’s well being.

8. Romancing puts you on the inside while most salespeople wait patiently on the outside for a decision.

9. Everyone likes to be romanced so your prospects will like you.

10. If you don’t make the current sale, you are well positioned to make the next one because you have the “buyer’s ear.”


How often should you romance?

1.  If the purchase is to be made within 30 days, romance 2 times each week.

2.  If the purchase is to be made within 2 months romance every week until the last 30 days and then romance 2 times each week.

3.  If the purchase is to be made within 12 months, romance 1 time per month until the next to last month and then romance 1 time each week until the last month and then romance 2 times each week.


The types of gifts you should leave with your prospect when romancing:

1. A list of high profile customers you have done business with.

2. Company brochures and cut sheets.

3. Letters of recommendation.

4. Industry articles that promote your products and services.

5. Information about your company and affiliates.

6. Pictures and success stories

7. Videos of products, uses, applications, demonstrations, etc.

8. Hard copy of monthly newsletter.

9. Company honors and recognition, press releases.

10. A list of high profile sales of your products and services.

11. Any information relating to the buyers hobbies or interests.

12. Referrals or introductions that can benefit your prospects business.

Every Salesperson Can Learn A Lesson From Bill Porter

In one of my sales training workshops, I ask my clients to list the most difficult products and services to sell. Often, those that comment refer to their own product as the most difficult product to sell. Admittedly, after hearing of some of their products and services, I tend to agree with them. I silently express thanks that I sell training; after all, I could be selling something really difficult. I then conclude the thought by asking the question, “is the product impossible to sell or just difficult”?

Several years ago I was introduced to the story of Bill Porter in a segment of the popular news program 20/20. He was a door-to-door sales person working in Portland, Oregon. After hearing Bill’s story, I made a firm resolve in my life that nothing was impossible and that I would forever be grateful for my life with all it’s unique challenges and obstacles.
When introducing the segment on Bill Porter’s life, ABC’s 20/20 host Hugh Downs said, “This is a simple story about a simply remarkable man.” Born with cerebral palsy, Bill was told by many that he was unemployable. With the continual support of a dedicated mother and the indomitable spirit that is his trademark, Bill Porter has supported himself for decades selling household products door to door for the Watkins Company. While the people on his route didn’t always need what Bill was selling, they grew to understand that we all need people like Bill Porter in the world.

In her book, Ten Things I Learned From Bill Porter, Shelly Brady who worked with Bill for more than twenty years, writes about ten specific character traits that guided Bill Porter’s selling career. These ten characteristics should become a foundation for every salesperson. With all the physical advantages we enjoy in our sales careers, applying these ten characteristics should allow each of us to achieve greater success than we ever imagined possible. Here they are with my own annotation.

1. Follow your passion. When you follow your passion you can’t help but be successful. Passion is contagious! Develop a passion for selling, for your products, for your company and for your customers. Passion has the ability to overcome every challenge.

2. It doesn’t matter how you got here, only where you are going. We must have direction in our lives to achieve the full expectation of our careers. We all need to spend more time focused on achieving success and less time talking about it and thinking about it.

3. Mother knows best. How can you argue with that principle? When you do the right things (our mothers would never lead us astray), you get the right results.

4. Persistence pays off. While recounting some of his more than five hundred regular customers, Bill Porter identified thirty-four of them that told him after his first visit to never come back.

5. Don’t take no for an answer. An astonishing 84% of all people who eventually say “yes” to a sale said “no” before they said yes.

6. Know your limits and reach beyond them. The problem with most salespeople is that they have no idea what they are capable of achieving. They have never reached far enough to know the power that lies within.

7. Be a team player. There are two meanings to this simple principle. The first, no salesperson can be successful alone. It is through the support of every employee of the company that allows you to have the success you enjoy. Second, be part of the buyer’s team. Become a partner with the buyer to help them achieve their objectives.

8. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. When you find those things that are successful in your sales process, apply them consistently. Write down your success stories so you will remember them and make them a regular pattern in your life.

9. There are no obstacles. The human character and will to achieve demonstrate a pattern throughout history that nothing is impossible. When we focus on a thing that seem impossible, we soon discover a way to make it possible. Selling is difficult but it is not impossible.

10. Live your values. We all need to sell within ourselves. We can’t be someone else and expect to be our best. To truly be your very best at selling you must have integrity in all you do and say.

Bill Porter graduated from high school at the age of 22, having to first go through a special school for the disabled, even though his disabilities were physical, not mental. Rather than receive disability assistance from the state, he sought a job and eventually was hired by the Watkins Company as a 100% commissioned salesman. He took on a territory no one wanted in order to close the deal. Bill went on to become the top producing salesman at the Watkins Company in Portland, then the Northwest and ultimately for the entire United States. If Bill Porter could achieve that level of performance with all of his physical challenges, what might each of us accomplish in our sales careers if we consistently apply the same ten principles he practiced?

Let Salespeople Sell

Management makes a big mistake when they interfere with a salespersons ability to sell. One of the biggest errors a company makes is to promote their top producing salesperson from selling to managing. It is very seldom true that the best salesperson makes the best sales manager. They might possibly make a great sales manager, but so might someone else who is not a top producer. You lose a big book of sales with the hope of stimulating the performance of the other salespeople. It rarely works as planned. The typical end result is reduced overall sales, disappointment in the performance of the sales manager and a sales team that is frustrated with the unreasonable demands of a mediocre manager.

Another common mistake made by management is to require top sales performers to get involved in other, non-sales related tasks and assignments. One of my clients asked their top salesperson to handle all of the company’s IT and computer issues. It so happened that he was the most qualified person within the company to handle those issues, but at what cost to the company. They were looking to save money by not hiring an IT Technician or to bring in a consultant. An IT professional hired full time might cost the company a minimum of $80,000 and they would only need his services twenty-five percent of the time. To hire a consultant might cost $85.00 dollars per hour for five hundred hours per year at an annual cost of $42,500.00 per year. Facing those two possibilities, management is looking to save a big chunk of change by assigning the task to someone within the company. Let’s take a look at what it is really costing the company to take their top sales person out of the sales arena.

The numbers I’m using may not be accurate for your company, but use the formula and substitute your own numbers. Let’s assume that the salesperson to whom you have assigned other duties is selling $1.5 million to total sales. The margin on sales is 23%, making the gross margin $345,000.00 dollars. Assuming the salesperson is spending twenty-five percent of his time solving computer issues, we can reduce the total sales and gross margin by twenty-five percent or $86,250.00. This calculation assumes that the salesperson, turned computer technician, can solve problems as quickly as the professional. In reality, it may take the salesperson a lot longer to do the work of an IT professional. It will never make financial sense to take salespeople out of the sales arena. The lost sales and profit is far greater than their contribution in other areas.

At The Business Performance Group, we deal with the salesperson, sales manager dilemma every day. Do you promote great performance? Do you provide training “in house” because we have been raised in a culture that suggests that “you should never hire someone to do something you are perfectly capable of doing”? The best salespeople are not always the best trainers and managers. You must consider what you really want to achieve and evaluate what it will actually cost you. If you are looking for ways to reward a top salesperson, it may be to leave them in sales and to allow them to write their own paycheck in the form of commissions. As far as sales management is concerned, selecting someone who is a great manager of people, with skills in the area of goals, accountability and achievement may be the best choice. Very few sales managers know how to teach and train sales and even fewer actually do it. Hire a qualified professional sales trainer to work with your salespeople. They will produce far better results on a consistent basis, day in and day out. The investment will be less than the cost of doing it within and the return on your investment will be far greater. In fact, the difference in cost and the subsequent increased results between in-house training and hiring a part-time sales trainer, will pay for the training many times over. Let salespeople sell, that is what they are best at and that is where you will find your greatest profitability.

What Is This Thing We Call Selling?

In a meeting last week with a group of business executives, we discussed the definition of sales. It was very interesting to hear their perspectives and to help them realize the true meaning of selling. I later shared this definition of selling with a new student of mine who is committed to learning the principles and skills of salesmanship. Simply stated, “selling is helping the prospect understand their true needs and then helping them achieve those needs.” The actual process is more complicated and detailed, but the meaning is basic and simple. Selling is not about what the salesperson wants for him or her self. It is not about what your company wants. It is one hundred percent about discovering what is best for the prospective customer and then working to help them achieve it.

Along the way, you want to make a profit for your employer. After all, the only reason a company is in business is to generate a profit. Without a profit, companies cease to exist. It is the process of creating profitable sales that allow companies to provide a wide variety of employment opportunities. Production, distribution, finance, management, marketing, legal counsel, human resources, customer service, sales, and many other positions exist because companies generate a profit from the sale of their products and services. The responsibilities of selling do not fall only on the shoulders of salespeople. Every employee within a company should consider themselves a salesperson because every word, act or deed becomes part of the process of persuading the prospective customer to engage your company to discern and satisfy their needs.

In order to be successful at selling, your must focus on what the customer needs and not what you want, even though helping the customer will allow you to achieve what you want. The focus of selling must be on the customer. The customer doesn’t care what you want. The customer is not concerned in the least about your company. They are only interested in one thing: solving their needs. Let me tell you about a sales experience I had the other day. This experience reconfirmed the need for sales training and the commitment I made eleven years ago to improving the financial performance of my client companies, one salesperson at a time.

After several phone contacts from a salesperson representing a company that I was familiar with, I finally conceded to meet with him. The salesperson was enthusiastic and persistent so I decided to spend a few minutes with him. Because of my busy schedule, we established a broad time frame in which I would stop by his office. When I arrived, I was greeted by staff members and then introduced to the salesperson. I received a welcoming handshake, but was not called by name. As we sat down at the conference table, the salesperson immediately pulled out a product-pricing sheet, handed it to me and began talking about the services his company had to offer. He went into great detail describing exactly what was offered in each package and made a recommendation as to which package he thought would be best for me. I could tell that he was very focused on selling me one of his service packages and he wasn’t going to let the pressure off until I committed to his desires.

Let’s step back for a minute and evaluate this situation. He didn’t call me by name, or spend one second to build even the slightest amount of rapport with me. I asked him a few questions but he never showed any personal interest in me. Further, the only question he asked about my company was the number of employees I had. That was it! It was very obvious from his presentation that he knew nothing about my business, my needs, customers, or objectives. He was only focused on telling me about his product and why I should buy it. I felt like I was in a doctor’s office being told to take a prescription and to report to the hospital for surgery without once being examined to determine my illness. There was no introduction to company or self. There was no building of rapport or common interests. There was no diagnosis of my needs. There was no understanding of my business and customers. There was no resolution of concerns or objections. There was, however, disappointment that I didn’t buy after several attempts of telling me why I needed his product. He gave me his card, accompanied with the promise that he would be in touch.

Selling is a process focused on the needs of the prospective customer. In a very simple and abbreviated fashion this is what should have happened:

1. Greet the prospect with a warm smile a firm handshake and call him by name. 

2. Spend a few minutes to build rapport and demonstrate genuine interest in the prospect. 

3. Ask questions that will allow you to diagnose the needs, wants and desires of the prospect. Focus on what is important to them. 

4. Present your product or service as a solution to their specific needs. If your product is not the right solution, make a recommendation for a better solution and then pack up and leave. 

5. If your product or service meets their need, resolve any concerns they may have. 

6. If the prospect has not already asked you, ask for the business. 

7. If the prospect is not ready to purchase, set the agenda and discuss the next steps. 

8. Romance the sales and help the prospect feel comfortable with the solution you have mutually discussed. Build value and close the sale if appropriate.

Remember, people buy from people they believe, like and trust. One of the best ways of building that type of relationship is to understand their needs and to help them meet those needs. And finally, telling isn’t selling. People don’t want to be sold, they want to buy and they will buy from you when you discover their needs and provide a solution to those needs. You won’t make every sale, no one does, but you will make far more sales by following the steps of this sales process than any other way.

Selling Is A Process

Just as making a cake requires following a recipe to get the perfect result, selling successfully also requires that you follow a recipe or a process. The process dictates what needs to be done while at the same time determines the result. Several years ago when I lived in Ohio, our neighborhood decided to have a summer street party. Games were planned for the children and activities were organized for the adults. The food committee had previously circulated a recipe for lasagna to those neighbors who had volunteered to make the main dish. The recipe had been written with exactness with the expectation that ten people could make the same main course without variation. That was a real eye opener. The food was delicious, but did not resemble coming from a common recipe. It looked different and tasted different. We had ten different lasagna dishes all from the same recipe. The recipe was not followed with exactness and order.

Why would I recite this incident relating to selling and its process? Too often salespeople look at their efforts and activity as isolated events with no common thread. They are reinventing the sales process with each new sales opportunity. These salespeople start all over again with the closing of each new sale. They don’t know how to follow a pattern of success based on each proceeding sales situation. The secret to achieving more profitable sales is to develop a sales process and repeat it each time. Experiment with it and fine-tune the process until you achieve the exact result you are seeking. Then, by following the process with each new sales opportunity, you will be maximizing the result and those results will become highly predictable. Here is a list of activities that should become part of your sales process, your recipe for sales success.

1. Plan and schedule your time and activities every day. Begin by making a list of those things that must be done today. Then determine other activities that should be done. Once you have made the list, schedule a time to do each activity.

2. Prospect every day. Look for new sales opportunities in every situation. You will find them with current customers, past customers, past prospects, current prospects, leads, referrals, introductions, etc. Sales opportunities are all around you if you will just pay attention. Set a goal for the number of new prospects you will find each day.

3. Meet with prospects every day. The key to being successful at selling is centered on “see the people.” If you were to meet with and tell four or five people each day about your products and services, you couldn’t help but be successful.

4. Follow-up with your prospects every day. The number one cause for poor sales results is lack of follow-up! When you plan and schedule your day, plan and schedule who you will follow-up with that day.

5. Identify which prospects you can close each day. You may not close a sale every day, but you will at least be aware of each of your prospects and be planning when the sale will be completed.

6. Ask for and receive no less than one new referral each day. Receiving referrals is the difference between average and excellent salespeople. Make the process of asking for referrals part of your daily sales process without fail. If you knew that for every two referrals you asked for and received that you would close one sale, how many referrals would you ask for each day?

7. Review your sales process and activity every day. Know where you stand and what is needed to get to where you want to be. Estimate your success for the day and week and month. Work towards the achievement of your goals and get excited about your success.

8. Review the status of every prospect every day. Even if you won’t be doing anything with a particular prospect every day, review their status and make sure you have a detailed plan for turning each prospect into a customer.

Selling doesn’t just happen because you are a salesperson. The act of selling is a process of doing the right activities in the right order at the right time. Closing a sale is the result of following a process even if you are unaware that the events followed a process. As you follow the recipe for sales success you will achieve success; more success than you ever imagined.

How To Make This Year Your Best Sales Year Ever

Ever salesperson has made the silent declaration that this year will be the best sales year ever. You hope and you wish and you think about it and talk about it, you might even think about it a little bit more. You have a great day one day and the next day turns into a disaster. After a few weeks you can’t possibly believe that anything will be different, so you consul yourself by believing that your past results are about as good as anyone could expect–considering the circumstances, whatever they may be. You have rationalized (rational lies) your results instead of truly calculating what efforts are necessary to achieve your goal.

Let me share with you my approach to making this year the best sales year ever. There are several steps that must be followed to turn your dream into a reality. You have already tried your approach with less than satisfactory results, so open you mind to a different method. Here are the steps:

1. Review your historical sales by month and by customer. Come to an understanding of what you have done and what it took to achieve those results.

2. Based on your prior sales results, set a goal that could be achieved this year if you were able to reach the average of the top six sales months of the past year, each month of this New Year. You have achieved those results six times in the past, so you ought to be able to do it again.

3. Evaluate the lowest performing six months of the past year. How much more would you have needed to sell to raise those results to the average of the best six months of last year? Is it humanly possible to achieve that kind of an increase? Would it have taken just one more sale, or two or even three?

4. Take a few minutes and evaluate the amount of effort you put into your sales last year. Did you prospect effectively? Were you asking for referrals and introductions to prospective buyers? Did you assess the needs of the prospects as well as you know how? Was your focus on solving the prospect’s needs? Did you follow-up effectively? Did you resolve all of the prospect’s concerns? Think about your sales process and how well you performed each step of the process. If you believe that you could have done better, then determine by way of a percentage, how much better you could have performed.

5. Make an honest evaluation of the amount of time you spent last year focused on selling and following your sales process. National statistics reveal that the average salesperson spends only about 4-5 hours each day working their sales process. The rest of the time they are busy, but not selling. Could you spend more time this year actually selling than you did last year?

6. What did you sell last year? Do your have products or services that could have been sold but you didn’t focus on them? Did you sell the easy items, the low priced items; those things you felt most comfortable selling? Sometimes it doesn’t take any more time to sell multiple items than single items. As an example, if you are focused on selling parts, maybe you could also offer service.

7. Evaluate your historical balance between finding new customers and servicing existing customers. Are you spending too little or too much time with either group? Remember, you lose existing customers if you don’t spend time with them and you will soon wonder where all your sales have gone if you don’t develop new customers. Are you getting all the business possible with your existing customers? How much more business could you discover if you just spent the time and asked the right questions.

8. Top salespeople are not born that way. Selling is not a genetic trait. Like most other professions, the skills and knowledge are learned. “Get your self some learning.” Read books, listen to CD’s, enroll in sales training programs and improve your skills. A Doctor will study and train for ten to twelve years and then spend an average of ten hours each week learning new techniques just to stay current with their profession. Attorney’s, Accountants, Professors, Engineers and every other professional person spend years in college to qualify themselves in their profession. How much training and education do you have to qualify you for a career in sales? Let me say it again–educate your self in the field of selling. To be great, takes more than experience, it takes knowledge applied correctly. You will never be the best salesperson you can be, until you have studied and practiced those things that the best salespeople know and do.

Make this year your best sales year ever. Follow the steps I have listed and commit yourself to them. They are simple, yet basic principles that will allow you to achieve a level of success that you never thought possible. By breaking down each aspect of your sales process and activity, you can clearly identify those things that will produce the results that have escaped your grasp until now. The only thing standing in the way of realizing your best sales year ever, is you.

My Wife Hates Salespeople

That fact alone makes my life complicated.  We have been married for the most wonderful, incredibly happy 39 years of our lives.  Four of those years I was a student and for thirty-five years I have been a salesperson.  When I act like a salesperson, Peggy suffers tinges of regret.  When I ask her what it is exactly that she hates about salespeople she said, “When they try to sell me something!”  Risking bringing emotions to the surface, I asked her what she meant by that.  She continued, “You know, when they try to make me buy something I don’t want!”  I know this is true because I recognize those same feelings when I try to persuade her to watch a movie or go to a restaurant that I want to go to, knowing that she really doesn’t want to.  Peggy will often bristle and tell me to quit trying to sell her.

When you really take the time to think about it, my wife isn’t any different from any other person in the world in one respect.  She doesn’t want to be sold.  She loves to buy, and she truly respects people who help her discover what is best for her, but she doesn’t want people telling her what to do if they don’t know what she needs or wants.  Salespeople can learn a great lesson from Peggy’s experience.  First, build a relationship with the prospective buyer by letting them know that you care enough about them to understand their needs and wants.  Second, after learning their needs and wants, help them find that specific need or want.  Third, once they have discovered what they are looking for, give them the opportunity to buy it without feeling the pressure of being sold.

When Peggy and I go shopping, it is truly an adventure.  Throughout the process, she is critiquing the salespeople, and I am taking mental notes of her interaction with them.  When they do their job properly, she will tell me the sales associate was great.  When they try to sell her, she will tell me that she really doesn’t like that salesperson.  She has made a mental and verbal distinction between good and bad salespeople and even calls them by different names.  Being referred to, as an associate is good and being called a salesperson is bad.  We all have different names for the good and the bad of any profession and Peggy has certainly found her names for the sales profession.  Here are five suggestions that if followed, will earn the respect of buyers and will generate the income that only the best in our profession of selling will ever realize.

1.     People buy from people they believe, like and trust.

2.     People don’t want to be sold; they want to buy.

3.     Discover the other person’s needs, wants and desires.

4.     Do everything within your power to help them acquire those desires.

5.     Give them the opportunity to buy without feeling the pressure of being sold.

Don't Believe For One Moment That Your Salespeople Are Even Close to Being the Best They Can Become

As business owners we have been gradually lulled into believing that the performance of our salespeople is satisfactory.  After all, if our sales people could do better, they would.  Wouldn’t they?  Salespeople come and go, some staying longer than others, some better than others.  We tend to judge current and future performance based on past results.  Bottom line, I’ve never met a business owner who truly understood the potential for sales of his products or services.  In good years, salespeople are busy taking orders and in bad years they are complaining that no one can sell in the current market.  In reality, the salespeople had nothing to do with the level of sales of the product in either the best sales year or the worst sales year.  In both cases they were just taking orders.

There is a formula for sales growth and increased profitability.  Unfortunately, business profits are held captive by mediocre salespeople and by management that naively believes the excuses offered by their sales department.  You can’t really blame either side.  The salespeople don’t know that they can sell more and management has never seen evidence that performance could be better.  Management has been conditioned by the sales performance they see day in and day out and believe they are getting all there is to get.  I’ve never met a salesperson that couldn’t double their sales within twelve months.  I’ve known some salespeople who doubled their sales every year for several years in a row.  Here is the three-step formula.

Desire:  No person will ever change their level of performance unless they have a compelling desire to do so.  They’ve “gotta wanna” do it.  There must be some external situation that causes them to take an internal evaluation of their situation, which in turn causes a desire for change.  We often refer to this as internal motivation.  We want something different than our current situation and the purpose has enough meaning in our soul that we are willing to do whatever is necessary to bring that situation to fruition.

Belief:  You must believe that you can achieve that internal desire.  You must believe in your ability to do the things necessary to acquire the desired result.  You must be able to objectively review what you have achieved in the past, consider what others have done and then visualize yourself reaching that new level of accomplishment.  Every salesperson has experienced a best month ever.  If you achieved it once, why can’t you do it again?  If you achieved that level which represents your best month ever for six out of twelve months, you would probably double your sales for the year.  If you don’t believe, you will never take action.  Looking at what you have done in the past can help you believe what you can do in the future.

Education:  Top salespeople are educated in selling.  Unfortunately there are not a lot of top salespeople.  Maybe 5% of all the salespeople in the world fit into this category.  Most salespeople are totally uneducated in selling and worse than being uneducated; they don’t believe it would make a difference in their performance.  These average, mediocre salespeople look around at other salespeople who are just like them and see no need to do anything different.  After all, they are like every other salesperson out there.  Management is just as much to blame.  If they believed that sales education would make a difference, they would require it.  If management had the slightest clue as to the profits their companies could generate from trained salespeople, they would make sales training a requirement for employment!  Salespeople do what they do because they have always done it that way and that is what they have seen other salespeople do.  As an industry, we have perpetuated poor habits and practices.  Doing the same thing over and over again makes permanent, it doesn’t make perfect.  Doing the right things over and over again makes perfect.  There are too few salespeople consistently doing the right things.  There is no investment that a company can make, that will generate a larger potential bottom-line profit than training salespeople.  Make this year the year that you take action as a salesperson or management and get your salespeople trained.

We Have All Been Given A Great Gift - TIME

Everything we do in life relates to both time and activity.  We have a choice every day regarding these two precious gifts.  Time comes with birth and requires no effort, whereas, activity is born of knowledge and belief.  Time continues regardless of what we do, but we do have a choice as to how we use our time.  Activity is truly a function of what we believe and our willingness to take action on those beliefs.  You might be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with sales?”  It has everything to do with sales.  These two elements, time and activity, combined with knowledge comprise the three raw elements of sales performance.  How well are you using these basic materials in your sales career?

Time is a continuum without beginning or end.  It just keeps moving and we have a choice every day how we use our time.  We can use it for value or we can use it for waste.  Time doesn’t care, but we should.  Time is a gift given to each of us.  With this gift of time, we can create wealth.  However, wealth is created as a result of the activities with which we engage ourselves.  In his core teachings, Stephen Covey introduced the four quadrants of time.  Everything we do in our lives falls into these four quadrants.  They are described as “important and urgent”, “important and not urgent”, “not important and urgent” and “not important and not urgent”.  Most people spend their lives working in the quadrant labeled important and urgent.  These people are doing important things, however, they are under extreme pressure to get things done now because they are urgent.  Your best effort will never be achieved working in this quadrant.  This quadrant of time represents perfectly the statement, “Too much to do and too little time to do it”.

The most successful people and particularly salespeople spend the majority of their lives in the quadrant labeled “important but not urgent”.  This is where your best efforts are achieved.  This is where you have time to deal with emergencies and unplanned events.  This is where you can actually work on the achievement of your long-term goals and feel as though you have control of your life.  This quadrant of time will free you of stress, which is damaging to both your health and your sales performance.  If you want to manage both time and activity in your life in order to reap the maximum reward, live and work in the quadrant labeled “important but not urgent”.  Here are a few ideas to help you focus your time and activity into this quadrant.

1.     Plan what you want to accomplish every day

2.     Schedule time for each activity

3.     Determine how much time you will spend on each activity

4.     Take action, don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today

5.     Prioritize events in your life

6.     Consider the value of your time and commit to using it wisely

7.     Set goals to keep you focused on the important things in your life

8.     Find purpose in your life and then live to achieve your purpose

9.     Resist the natural temptation to be lazy

Take time to ponder and enjoy your new level of achievement