Selling Success: Six Attitudes and Strategies to Make You a Winner

 

Sales can be a great way to make a living, but it isn’t an easy way to make a living. But then, neither is being a research chemist or a bull rider or a teacher or a long-haul truck driver. If you are going to work for a living (as opposed to winning the lottery), then you are going to have to WORK. While every job has its pros and cons, every job involves certain keys for success that require concentration, dedication and real effort. There is no mystery behind becoming a rip-roaring success at sales; you just have to work hard and work smart. I would suggest that you start by working on the following six attitudes and strategies. If you work at it long enough and hard enough, you will soon become a selling success!

1. Get over this attitude of "I am just not cut out to be a salesman."

Don’t believe the lie that you don’t have what it takes to be a salesman. Everyone is born with a little bit of the salesman inside of them. What makes the difference in an enthusiastic, confident sales rep and one who struggles with depression and discouragement is not natural talent, it is TRAINING. If you want to succeed, YOU CAN. You just need to find and follow the kind of training that will unleash the hidden sales success that is already within you.

2. You Gotta Believe!

Sometimes sales people fail to perform because they find it difficult to develop pride or enthusiasm for their products and services. I can promise you this; if you don’t care about your product, neither will your customer. Spend some time studying all the potential benefits of the products and services you sell. Does your offering really provide a performance benefit that nobody else does, like greater cleaning and disinfectant power in half the time? Or are you selling a relationship based on excellent customer service and long-term professional integrity that your customers can always count on? Find something about your company that you believe in and focus on that.

3. A Positive Attitude Is Contagious

People tend to connect with, and put their trust in, those who are genuine, warm, and caring. If you are all hype and hustle – if all you do is show up and start rattling on like some kind of talking brochure– people will tune you out. Maybe you have a great product, and maybe you have memorized every one of the amazing technological features that is going to revolutionize the world. But, unless we are talking high-tech electronic gizmos, most of the time people don’t buy based on technical data, they buy based on personal trust. Do you care about people, do you care about meeting the needs of this customer in a way that is going to really be good for her, or do you only care about making a sale. People can tell the difference.

4. Practice Makes Perfect

What do you consider to be your strength as a sales person? Generating leads? Qualifying? Setting appointments? Presentation? Closing? Just for the sake of discussion, let’s say you are great at closing. How are you going to get to a closing if you are no good at generating leads? You could be the greatest closer in the world and still starve to death! You have to practice every single aspect of the sales process on a regular basis. You are never too good to need practice. How old do you think Roger Clemens was when he first learned to throw a fastball – maybe 9 years old? Do you know why he was able to win his seventh Cy Young award at the age of 42? Because for 33 years he practiced throwing fastballs every day!

5. Be a Big Picture Person

I am constantly telling people that sales is a process, not an event. Put another way, selling success is based on keeping a balanced perspective as you work through all the stages that will eventually produce a sale, rather than obsessing over just one or two items. As I have already pointed out, too many sales reps believe that sales is a matter of pushing the features and benefits of your product, and then employing some kind of killer closing strategy. There is so much more to selling success than that. You may occasionally get lucky enough with that strategy that you decide to stay in the game, in much the same way that a golfer with poor fundamentals may sometimes accidentally hole out a long putt. Both are inspiring, but they are no substitute for working on every aspect of your game until you are winning consistently.

6. All the above, plus a great work ethic, will turn you into a selling success in no time.

I mentioned at the beginning of this article that selling is work. Reading articles won’t make you a success. Going to training won’t make you a success. Talking about what you intend to do and what you hope to accomplish won’t make you a success. These things can help prime the pump for success, but, in the end, you have to show up every day and follow through. Become great at every aspect of the sales process. Practice it over and over again. Generate how ever many leads it takes. Set as many appointments as you can. Be a friend to your clients, not just a sales rep. Know your stuff. Make great presentations. Become a capable closer. You have to do all of it. But when you do, you will discover that selling success is not just a dream reserved for a few gifted and talented prodigies, it is simply the result of doing your job every day with enthusiasm and excellence.

 

Re-Print Permission
This article may be reprinted in it's entirety if the following conditions are met:

1. The complete tag with the author's name and contact information is included immediately after the article.
2. A copy of the printed article is mailed to the author at 10101 SW Freeway Suite 630 Houston, Texas 77074 within 30 days of publication.
3. The article is presented in a positive light as part of an appropriate business related publication.

November Sales Quick Tip of the Month – Lead On

Make sure you have a process in place that regularly generates plenty of leads. Surely, by now you know that one big secret behind selling success is based on simple mathematics in the form of statistical probability. The actual numbers vary slightly by product and industry, but the formula is always the same: For every X number of appointments you set, you WILL receive X number of sales. You must make sure that you are paying as much attention to the beginning of the sales process – generating leads and setting appointments – as you are to the end, i.e., presenting and closing. You can’t close an appointment you never made. You can’t set an appointment for a lead you never developed.