How To Avoid Sales Mediocrity – If You’re New In the Profession
We get a lot of emails and requests from our Advanced Selling Podcast listeners about how to break into the profession of selling.
There is no shortage of tips and techniques out there, but here are five things that we believe you really need to “get” for you to be successful out of the gate. As a new salesperson in 2012, you have platforms and technology available to you that older people like us would kill for when we were starting. So one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to not take advantage of what’s been handed to you.
1. Get clear. This could pertain to many things like your personal goals, your income goals, the number of new clients you want in a 12-month period etc. But I think the biggest thing you can get clear about is “the problems you solve.” Clarity in that area will help you communicate your value and your intentions to your customer in a much more savvy way.
2. Get a method. 90% of sales people don’t have or don’t use any kind of a selling system or method to help prospects walk through the process. My contention is that most methods are just manipulative enough that sales people don’t like to use them. A great method should be less about convincing someone to buy from you and more about a process of sorting those who are tire-kickers and curious only, to those who are serious buyers. Sorting is the thing. Amateur sales people close 15% of their proposals; professionals close 80.
3. Get a coach. I know what you’re saying, “How can I afford a coach when I just started in sales?” My reaction to that is “It doesn’t matter. You must have a coach.” You must have someone there that you can confide in, whose shoulder you can cry on and who you can party with when things go well. But don’t make the coach your sales manager. They have too much skin invested in your success. Find someone, pay them if you like, who is unconditional about your success and doesn’t benefit in any way from it other than just the sharing of feeling of success, other than the feeling of knowing the coach contributed to your success in some small way. 
The Questions You Should Be Asking
How many times have you become aware of a tool that you didn’t know existed–and as soon as you saw it, just had to have it?
There are tons of examples, computers, email, the lightbulb, The Clapper (OK, so maybe you didn’t “have to have” that). But imagine yourself doing without the first three.
The issue is that if you don’t think a problem is solvable, do you really spend a lot of time searching for a solution? No.
In sales training, we hear all the complaints that sales people have about the way they’re treated, but seldom do we hear the questions we should be hearing.
- “Bill, is there a way to keep the prospect from lying to me?”
- “Bill, what can I do to keep the sales process from stalling?”
- “Bill, how can I create a stream of prospects lining up outside my door to buy?”
- “Bill, is there a way to communicate my message so it is more compelling?”
- “Bill, is there a way to differentiate myself from everyone else that calls on that prospect?”
- “Bill, is there a new method of selling that would help me avoid the frustrations I’m feeling in this economy?”
We Should Be Getting These Questions
But we don’t. We wonder why. Is it because we don’t think there are solutions for these–so better to save our selves the frustration of looking for something that isn’t available?
Or, have we relegated ourselves to a sales life of mediocrity and sameness?
We hope it’s the former–that until someone gives us a tool–we don’t even think about a solution.
There Are Tools Available
There are ways around these issues. In fact, over the next several days, I’m going to be addressing each of these six questions in six different posts.
Hope you can join me–and see that there are solutions to problems you didn’t know you had--but that might be costing you money.
