Sales Excuses and Initial Resistance

This time we’ll also talk more about what causes prospects to resist your sales presentation and the sales psychology behind the proper way to respond.

Does this sound familiar:

Your prospect has agreed to an appointment, you arrive on time, take a seat, and then he tells you:

“I only have 30 minutes for our meeting”

You know you were clear when you set the appointment that you needed an hour, but somehow you find yourself in a situation where you don’t have the time that you know it will take to deliver your value building presentation.

I’m sure this has happened to you before, and I’m also sure that it will continue to happen for as long as you participate in the profession of selling.

How you response to this initial objection will likely define your success or failure in making the sale, so you better know how to handle it.  When you handle this sales excuse incorrectly you will almost guarantee that the prospect will be ushering you out the door at the end of “30 minutes,” or even worse, not returning your phone calls to reschedule if you insisted on finding a time when they could spend the full about of time you need.

Before we look at the specific response that Sales GIANTs use to overcome sales excuses like this initial resistance, let’s take a look at what the prospect is really saying so that our response is informed by the true intention of the prospect and not just the words they are saying.  As is the case so often in world of selling, there is often a significant difference between what they prospect is saying, and what they really mean.  Lets find out what this form of initial resistance and all  other sales excuses really means.

–

What the Prospect Really Means by Their Initial Resistance.

When your prospect tells you that they only have a limited amount of time for your meeting, and especially when this amount of time is less than they have agreed to earlier, they are attempting to gain control over the meeting.

And why do they feel the need to offer this initial resistance?

Because they have doubts and anxieties relative to your intentions and the way you will conduct the sales conversation.  Essentially, because they don’t know if the time they will spend with you will add value to their buying process they are seeking to establish a way out of the conversation should they feel that an escape is necessary.

Knowing this about their initial resistance, your response strategy is clear.  You need to move past this initial resistance and get into the substance of your conversation where you can convince them that you will add value to their buying process and that your intentions are to help them solve their problems.  Once you can do this, the prospect’s need for an escape is eliminated, and with it the artificial time constraint they put on the meeting.

This is the most common reason that prospects will establish time limits, but not the only one.  Thus, your response must be designed to handle this scenario, and the other two possible reasons that could be motivating this sales excuse.

The second of those scenarios is that the prospect does have a time commitment that may limit the time you have for your conversation, but that commitment is a soft commitment.  This means that they can get of of it if they needed to, and that they would if you can prove to them in the time that they give you that your conversation is more important.

The third possibility, and the least common, is that the prospect does have something that came up that will take them away from your conversation before you have the time that you would like to fully present.

Since you don’t know which of the three sales excuses you are dealing with, your response needs to work with all three.

Respond this way:

“I appreciate you telling me that up front.  I will say that normally it takes me longer than that to have a conversation about this product, especially if you have questions.  I do know that you are eager to take a look at my product and see if it can provide you be benefits you are looking for so let’s go ahead and get started.  I’ll work as efficiently as  I can and try to finish in the time we have.  If, for some reason I’m unable to finish, at the end of the time we do have at least you will know enough to make the decision if you’d like to invite me back to finish.  How does that work for you?”

And then you have your normal sales conversation.

The beauty of this response to their initial resistance is that it works with each scenario listed above, and just as importantly does not challenge the prospect by trying to reschedule the appointment.  Despite what some people may tell you, this is usually the worst thing that you can do.  At best, when the prospect does have a real time limiting commitment you will end up back at another time, however often in a less advantageous position for not having used the available time from your first meeting to establish your value, and for the inconvenience to the prospect for having to reschedule.

Trying to reschedule in the first two scenarios is much worse.  Since there is no real reason to reschedule, you are only making yourself less efficient for having to come back, and not improving the conditions of the meeting.  The prospect will still have the same anxieties that caused them to express an initial time resistance, and will find another way to express it.  Often, however, the rescheduled appointment will cancel because the prospect has lost interest or they do not feel comfortable meeting with you without the protection of their excuse for not buying.  Essentially, you lost the one chance that you had to sell the prospect on the reasons for owning your product.  With as hard as it is to get appointments in the first place, we should never loose them.

Now here is what happens next.

If at the end of the “thirty minutes” there was no other obligation (scenario 1) and you have convinced the prospect of your value and intentions, you conversation will continue for much longer that the limited time given to you.  Hopefully this results in you making the sale.  If you haven’t convinced them that you were the right person with the right product, they may take their leave using the other obligation as the excuse, which is why they set it up in the first place.  In that case, you failed to provide a compelling message in the time that you had, which should have been enough if the message was the right one.

If the prospect has a soft commitment, one that they could get out of, and you have convinced them of the importance of what you are selling and that you are the right person to solve their problems, they will make a quick phone call to get rid of the other commitment and continue on with you.  Again, if you haven’t convinced them that your conversation was more important that that other commitment, they may take their leave even if they could have moved the conflicting appointment.  You had your shot, but couldn’t convince them that you were more important than the alternative.

Finally, if they really had another commitment, they will remind you that they have to leave, to which you respond:

“It is that time already?  Well then, earlier I mentioned that if we were not able to finish in the time you had today, at least you would be able to decide if you were interested in having me back to finish our conversation.  If that is the case, let me know the day and time and I’ll be back to conclude our discussion.”

As you can see, the response works to overcome this initial resistance in each scenario and maximizes the opportunity to get into productive sales conversations despite the sales excuses of your prospects.

If this article added value to your sales career, please recommend it with the links below.

Your prospect tells you…

“We Just Want the Price.”

Well of course they do.

So do I when I make a purchase, but I also understand that I need to know more than just the price to evaluate the price in the context of what I will receive for it.

Do your prospects know this too?

Yes they do.

So why then do they tell you so often that they just want the price?

The answer is that what they really want is control over the sales conversation.

Initial resistance is based on the prospect’s anxiety over the buying process, and their fear of being “sold” something that they really don’t need or want.  This anxiety is overcome later on in your sales presentation, but in order to get to the presentation you have to overcome the initial resistance to it.

Remember, you are not responding to what the expression of initial resistance literally means, but to what the prospect is thinking he is accomplishing by saying it.

Here’s how a professional responds when a prospect tells you they, “just want the price.”

“Mr. Prospect, I’m glad you said that.  My experience is that people who are not interested in the price are not really interested in what benefits my product provides.  So I’m glad you want the price and I want to give it to you as soon as possible.  My promise to you is to get to the price as soon as I can, which is as soon as I know if the product is even right for you.  Can I ask you a few questions to figure that out?”

By validating the prospect’s desire to get to the price, even welcoming it, you can move the prospect into the initial phase of the presentation- information gathering.  If you insist on the presentation, tell the prospect that you need to give him some information first, or otherwise imply that you can’t just give him the price you will quickly cause the prospect to defend his request and further insist on getting the price first.

Like most expression of initial resistance, prospects who just want the price are attempting to gain control over a situation that produces a great deal of anxiety for them.  As a professional salesperson it is your job to help them through that anxiety so that they can evaluate the benefits of your products and benefit from a decision to own it.

If this article added value to your sales career, please pass it on or recommend it with the links below.

It is amazing that with all the prospects who are “not buying today” anyone ever sells anything.

You’ve heard all the “reasons” before:

• We’re just getting bids.
• We never make a decision on the first visit.
• We plan on selling
• We only have a few minutes

Roughly translated, these all mean the same thing- WE’RE NOT BUYING TODAY!

Or do they?

Could it be that they really mean something very different that we are not understanding?  Something that if we did understand would help us to respond to what they really mean rather than to what they are saying and in doing so help us help them to own our product?

• We’re just getting bids.
• We never make a decision on the first visit.
• We plan on selling
• We only have a few minutes

These are all the things that prospects say that indicate that they do not plan on buying today.  It is extremely important that a expert salesman knows how to handle these statements so that no conflict is created over them that would cause the prospect to own these statements and have to defend them later on.  When they are put in this position, the only option is for them to be consistent with what they said earlier and not buy. The reality is that most objections you hear at the end of the presentation, after you ask the prospect to buy, are caused by the sales person–  either because of something the salesperson said, or didn’t say

How do you close the sale when the prospect won’t tell you why they won’t buy?

Perhaps you have been in this situation before.

Perhaps you’ve been in it hundreds of times.  Most of us have.  Now let’s take a look at how to get out of it and back on track to close the sale.

Unless the customer responds to the buying question with an immediate yes, the reality is that if you can’t get to the reason they aren’t buying, you can’t close the sale. Where the prospect doesn’t say yes, if there is not an expressed reason for not going ahead with the purchase what is there to resolve in order to move the process forward toward the close of the sale?

Nothing.  It’s like climbing a ladder only to discover half way up that there are no more rungs.  It’s frustrating because everything indicates that they want to buy, and nothing they say helps you understand why they won’t.

While we know that the reason is most often related to money, suggesting that is about the money is the quickest way to insure that the prospect insists that it isn’t.  That’s a natural part of a prospects resistance to buying despite it being in their best interest to do so.

A professional salesperson knows how to help a prospect through this hesitance and close the sale.  Here’s how.

First we need to understand that prospects often don’t know when it is really about the money for them, and that sometimes it really isn’t.  Either they have not been able to clarify in their mind that they really want to buy and money is the only obstacle, or they have clarified that the decision is about the money but they don’t want to tell you that.

We need to give them an easy way to realize that it is about the money, and if that doesn’t work, create a way to get them to come back to you when it is.

Start by taking the pressure off.  By now you probably have made numerous attempts to uncover an objection so you could close the sale, with each subsequent attempt bringing the prospect closer to the point where they will end the conversation.  The prospect has told you that they like everything, but they just need to look around and do some research.  Break the pressure by starting to pack up your materials.  This signals to the prospect that you are finished trying to discover why they won’t buy, and allows them to lower their defenses.  As you do, say something like this:

“Mr. Prospect, I appreciate the time you spent with me today exploring if my product is right for you.  I think at this point I have a good understanding of where you are in your decision making process.  You like the product, the company, and the terms that we can offer you, but you just need to be sure that you don’t like another product just a much.  Am I correct?”

“Yes”

“Great.  I’m sure that over the next several days you are going to give this decision some very careful consideration.”

“I will.”

“At some point, Mr. Prospect, this decision will come down to money.  After you look around and do your research, you will come to a conclusion about what our product is worth to you.  When you get to that point, I just ask you to do yourself and me one favor in exchange for the time and effort I have put into showing you how our product can help you.  When it comes down to price, I just ask that you give me a call before you come to your decision, to give me one last chance to work with my company to meet your expectations on price.  Can I get your commitment on that?”

“I can do that.”

“Of course I would do that for you right now, but it’s not about the money yet.”

Now let’s take a look at what you’ve accomplished and what you hope happens next.

At the very least, you’ve decreased the likelihood that the prospect will make a decision to buy from someone else without first giving you a call to see if you can increase your value by lowering price or offering better terms.  As you probably already know, it is usually the last sales person to be in front of the prospect that gets to close the sale.  By interrupting the decision to buy from someone else who’s value may seem to be higher you can get to the prospect last with an opportunity to best the other offers.

That’s what you have accomplished.  Now lets look at what you hope will happen in those situations where it really is about the price, but the prospect just hasn’t clarified the decision that far.  Your last statement is designed to use curiosity to bring the discussion back around to price and get you back on a track that can lead you to a sale.

“Well what is it that you could do on price?”

“I’ve done all I can.  You have my best price.  But what my company might be willing to do beyond that would depend on what you need us to do.  If you will share with me what you value the product at I will see what I can do to meet your expectation.”

With their response you are back into the sales conversation.  What they have essentially done it resolved the decision to price.  From there you can make the phone call to get approval to meet their price.  Either you can or you can’t, or you can counteroffer.  By naming a price they are starting a negotiation and would probably agree to buy at a price somewhere in the middle of your offer and theirs.

Remember, before you call for an approval on their offer, get a commitment:

“Before I make the call, I need your commitment that if my company is willing to meet your valuation of the product you are willing to go ahead with the order today.”

Then make the call, negotiate the final price, and close the sale.

If this article added value to your sales career, please pass it on or recommend it with the links below.

More of the Best Sales Advice and Tips from a Career in Sales

Last week I wrote an article that contained 9 of the best sales tips that I have learned over my career in sales.  In this article I will offer 9 more pieces of the best sales advice for success in the profession of selling.

Again, even the best sales advice and sales tips will not make you successful, because success in sales is the result of an integrated system of beliefs and practices developed and perfected over time.  But pieces of sales wisdom in the form of the best sales advice or sales tips are valuable for how they reminds us of what we may have forgotten and point us in the direction of those things that should become part of that system of belief and practice that will result in success.

Here they are, 9 more pieces of the best sales advice from my career in sales.

• Sales Advice #1:  Learn and use proper commitment questions.  I know you’ve heard this before, but do you really understand the power of commitment questions when they are used properly?  A commitment question gives the prospect the opportunity to convince themselves that they are convinced.  It is not your information that convinces, it is allowing the prospect to react affirmatively to that information that does the job.  A strong commitment question also allows the customer to leave behind the reasons for their commitment and move forward with a desire to own rather than just an inventory of benefits that they won’t remember by the time you get to the price.  Learn more about commitment questions in this post.
• Sales Advice #2:  Wait two seconds after the prospect has finished talking before responding.  Yes, two whole seconds.  Why so long?  Because it insures that the prospect has finished her thought.  Interrupting a prospect tells them that you are not interested in what they have to say, and there is no quicker way to loose credibility and trust than talking over a prospect.  Try it and you’ll be amazed at how much better you are perceived by your prospects.

• Sales Advice # 3:  Have a pre-sales call ritual that gets you ready to win.  Great performance in sales requires the right mindset, but there is a lot about selling that tends to bring us further from that right frame of mind rather than closer to it.  How do you ensure the right mindset on every sales call?  You have a pre-call ritual that preconditions you for success and prepares you to perform at your best.  Simply put, the pre-sales ritual should involve:  Remembering your best sales successes.  Imagining the outcome of this appointment as being just as successful.  Taking a deep breath and smiling.  Learn more about sales call preparation here.

• Sales Advice #4:  If you can’t sell it, sell them on letting you have the last look.  We know that you can’t close every sale as soon as you would like, and sometimes a prospect will just not allow the closing process to reach a conclusion- they want to look around, see other options, check their finances, etc.  When this happens, get the customer’s commitment that when they know what they want, and before they make a decision, that they will give you one last chance to make them an one last and best offer.  Why can’t you do that now, they may ask?  Because they don’t know what you need them to do yet, you respond.  Perhaps this gets you back into a negotiation of terms, but a least it gets you in front of the prospect last.

• Sales Advice #5:  Teach others what you know.  One of the best ways to learn is by teaching.  It will remind you of the fundamentals of selling, the things you may have forgotten, and push you to learn new things yourself.  Teaching is also your legacy in the profession of selling.  Isn’t it nice to think that after you are long retired a conversation will take place between your protege and a new salesman where you are credited with their great success.

• Sales Advice #6:  Smile even when you don’t feel like it and you soon will.  It sounds simple.  Maybe too simple until you understand that positive expressions create a positive mindset as much as they are a reflection of it.  Want to take it one step further?  Get in front of a mirror and smile.  You will be amazed how quickly a forced smile becomes a real smile that you can take with you on your next sales call.

• Sales Advice #7:  Focus only on what you can control and leave the rest alone.  Have you ever heard the expression, “his life is out of control” and it’s opposite “he is really in control?”  I’m sure you have, but maybe you haven’t thought of them in this way.  I would suggest that someone who’s life is out of control is experiencing a negative condition because they are focusing on what they can’t control.  No wonder things aren’t going well.  They are spending all of their effort on changing what can’t be changed.  In contrast, the person who is “in control” is in a good situation because all of their effort is spent on changing for the better what they actually can control.  It is where you focus your energies- on either those things you can control or those you can’t- that will determine your success.  Your advantage is a focus on what you can make better, and forgetting about what you can’t.

• Sales Advice #8:  Take excellent notes.  Life is a great teacher, and in life there are many people who will teach you great things.  The key is not to forget those valuable lessons along the way.  Taking notes is a way to do that, and I don’t mean just at seminars and quarterly meetings.  I am talking about taking notes everyday on the things you have learned and the things you want to learn more about.  Buy yourself a nice notebook, carry it with you, and when it is full put it on the bookshelf next to your other great books.

• Sales Advice #9:  Remember to give thanks.  Appreciation is the greatest currency we have to spend in life, and the more you give the more you have and the more you get.  Give thanks for the successes, give thanks for the challenges, give thanks to your customers, and give thanks for the opportunities that the profession of selling presents.

And there you have  it- the best sales advice I have to share.

I’d like to hear your best sales advice.  Let us know in the comments below, and if you liked this article please pass it on or recommend it with the following links.

What the Best Sales Tips Can Do For You?

Can a collection of the best sales tips make you a great salesperson?

I doubt it.

But can the best sales tips give you something to think about, point you in new directions, help you rediscover sales techniques and practices you may have forgotten, remind you of why you sell, refresh the reasons that you got to where you are, or show you how to get to where you want to go?

Yes, the best sales tips can do that.

The Best Sales Tips From My Career in Sales

• Sales Tip #1:  Talent is a myth, effort is what makes salespeople successful.  In business, sports, life and the profession of selling talent matters much less than effort applied to the mastery of the skills that lead to success.  Those who succeed outwork those who don’t every time.  Because effort is a choice, we all can be successful in sales.
• Sales Tip #2:  Attitude is the most important element in consistent sales performance.  Attitude is the lens through which the mind receives information.  It assigns value to the experiences we encounter in selling.  When it is positive even negative events are perceived as encouraging, hopeful, and opportunities to learn.  When it is negative, even positive events are seen as discouraging, hopeless, and without value.  Consistency in selling is about maintaining a positive outlook, and a positive attitude make that possible.  The good news- attitude is a choice that you make.
• Sales Tip #3:  Start every sales conversation by asking the prospect what they need to know about your company and product.  Rather than telling them what you think they should know, ask them what is important to them.  Once they tell you, what you say in response is no longer selling them, but rather a much less threatening answering of their questions.  Prospects are much more receptive to this, leading to less resistance to the information and the greater likelihood that they will receive it positively.  Learn more about eliminating sales resistance.
• Sales Tip #4:  Dress and Groom yourself exactly as you want to be perceived.  Anyone who tells you that you can’t judge a book by its cover is missing the fact that if the cover doesn’t look good no one will open it.  As a salesperson your image creates an impression that influences all aspects of your customer interaction.  If you want to sound smarter, seem more trustworthy, be perceived more credibly, then let your dress and grooming represent those things.
• Sales Tip #5:  Practice every day.  There isn’t always time to practice for hours, nor is there probably the need after you have established your skills, but you should make the commitment and get in the habit of practicing something every day.  When you practice, don’t just read or review dialogues in your mind, practice by saying it out loud.  Learning is contextual, and what you learn by reading doesn’t do much for your ability to use the information in a conversation.
• Sales Tip #6:  Get comfortable with talking to yourself in the mirror.  From time to time we all need a good talking to, and who better to do that than the person who knows us best- ourselves.  You can’t always rely on someone else to pick you up when your are down, or scold you for not doing the things you know you should be doing.  So do it yourself, in a mirror, out loud.
• Sales Tip #7:  Be meticulous with your follow up.  For every company I ever worked the number one cause of customer dissatisfaction and lost sales was lack of communication.  Excel at followup and you will excel at selling.  Because people have come to expect poor follow up, when you are different you get noticed and that attention will get you sales.  When you need to call someone back, give them an exact time and then call them back at the promised minute.  They will be amazed and likely to put complete trust in everything else you say.
• Sales Tip #8:  Set goals that you look at every day.  Far to often sales people set goals and then forget about them until it is too late.  Don’t be that person.  Sales goals only work when they serve to convince you of the inevitability of the outcome.  It’s not about having an objective, is about subconsciously creating the outcome so that your mind can figure out how to get you there and motivate the behaviors that will.  Read them every day- out loud- and into a mirror when possible.  Learn more about sales goals
• Sales Tip #9:  Sometimes it’s OK to give yourself a reset.  We all have bad weeks, and sometimes those weeks turn into a month when we just can’t seem to make the sales happen.  Oftentimes the momentum of a bad streak becomes to much to overcome and we suffer from the pressure of being unable to hit our targets.  Get out from under this pressure by giving yourself a reset- forget about the first two weeks of the month and set new goals for the last two weeks- starting over at zero for zero.  Taking the pressure off of coming back from insurmountable odds is often enough to turn your slump around and get you back to making sales.  As a sales manager you can also apply this advice to managing your team.  Learn more about getting out of a sales slump.

I hope your sales career will benefit from this collection of my best sales tips and advice.  As I wrote this I realized that there was more than 9 sales tips that I wanted to write about, but I’ll save those for the next post.

To your ultimate success,

The Sales Giant

If this collection of the best sales tips added value to your sales career please pass it on with the links below and +1 it on Google.

The How-To Sales Guide for Aspiring Sales Superstars

So you have a job in sales.

Now what!

You have to learn how to sell, that’s what, but how exactly do you go about doing that?

Let me share with you how to learn how to sell so you can insure that you will be successful in the profession of selling.  Essentially, this article will share with you exactly how to organize and implement the process of learning how sell by starting with the resources and processes that you need to put into place.

Let’s get started.

How-To Sales Guide:  Before You Learn How to Sell

First things first–

You start the process of being successful in sales by understanding this:

Sales success has very little to do with natural talent, and everything to do with practicing a set of skills known to produce sales success.

Talent is largely a myth as it relates to success.  In sports, in business, in life, and specifically in sales, it is not the most talented person that has the greatest success, but the person who applies the most effort to perfecting the skills that lead to success.

This is great news, because it means that effort will make you great, and effort is a choice that is completely up to you.  If you want to learn how to sell successfully there is nothing beyond your control that is needed to do so.  The greatest salespeople that I know, every one of them, have worked harder than their peers on the skills of selling, and it is this characteristic alone that has created their success.

So you have no disadvantages, and every advantage if you are willing to choose to make the effort.

How-To Sales Guide:  Who to Learn How to Sell From

Every sales organization has top performers, and most of them have poor performers.  Both of them are your allies.

Learn how to sell by utilizing both effectively.

The Top Performers

You’ll want to learn how to sell from the best, but the top performers in any organization are not always easily willing to share their secrets with the new sales representative.  This is understandable.  In their career they have probably seen hundreds of new salespeople come and go, and are justifiably reluctant to spend their time with someone who may not be around next year or even next month.

You need to convince them that you are worth the effort because you are committed to doing whatever it takes to succeed

How to you do this?

It’s not too hard.  You tell them.

“I am serious about being successful and I want to learn from the best.  I promise not to waste your time, get in your way, or not put in the time to master what you teach me.  Give me the time and won’t regret it.”

A little flattery, a bit of appeal to the ego that most great salespeople have, and you should have yourself a teacher.  Great salespeople all had teachers, and at some level are looking for someone to pass that knowledge onto.  Convince them that years from now you will be their legacy in the profession of selling and they will gladly teach you how to sell.

Now, follow through on your promises, take excellent notes, practice what they teach you, and never forget to thank them for their assistance.

The Poor Performers

Don’t forget the poor performers.  You can also learn how to sell from these people by learning what not to do.  These salespeople are not where they are for lack of talent (you’ll remember that talent is a myth), but because they have not put in the effort to learn the skills that would make them successful.  By observing what they do you will understand what doesn’t work, and most often reinforce the idea that the difference between this group and the high performers is that the former has put in little if any effort into learning how to sell correctly.

How-To Sales Guide: How to Use Resources to Learn How to Sell

Hopefully your company teaches you how to sell, but how do you use that education to learn how to sell.

There is a big difference between being taught how to sell, and learning how to sell.  Anyone can sit in the class, nod their head, ask a few questions and take a few notes, and convince themselves that for having done so that they’ve got it.

You haven’t

Learning is an active process– a very active process.

Hearing information will likely result in a retention rate of around 15%.  This is far from what is needed to actually apply the information to a sales situation.

Here’s how you really learn.

• Take great notes.  Don’t repeat the information on the printed materials you were given but rather supplement it.
• Review the information each night.  Each day will present new information that builds on what you’ve learned the day before.  There won’t be much time to go back and review if you’ve fallen behind.
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.  Since you will be speaking to prospects, practice by speaking.  Learning is largely context based, meaning that if you practice by studying notes you will become proficient at recalling written information– hardly effective in selling.  But if you practice by speaking the information you will be prepared to deliver the message to your prospects.
• Organize a study session.  This sounds like you are back in school but it really works.  The only thing better than practicing the presentation of your sales information out loud is doing it in front of people that can offer feedback and give you the additional context of presenting to a real person.

How-To Sales Guide:  Learn How to Sell by Living Sales

To complete the process of leaning how to learn to sell, you need to learn to be a salesperson.  By this I’m not referring to what you do, but who you are.  You need to learn to be a salesman by involving yourself deeply in the life of a salesperson.  Here are some ways to do that:

• Read sales books.  There is some great information about the profession of selling from people who were great salespeople.  Learn from them and apply it to what you are selling.
• Associate with other salespeople.  You will rise to the level of your peers more often then not, and by associating with successful salespeople you will give yourself a pattern to emulate.
• Be an active member of the sales community.  There are several great online resources and forums where professional sales practices are discussed in great detail (salesgravy.com, salespractice.com, changingminds.com).  Join great salespeople there to learn how to sell, and teach other where you can.

That’s it.  Not complicated but is does involve some effort like most worthwhile things do.

Best wishes on your journey toward sales greatness.  If I can help in any way, I am available at thesalesgiant@salesgianttraining.com or in our sales forum.

The Sales Giant

If this article added value to your sales career, please pass it on with the links below.

Achieving Sales Goals- Why Some Do and Some Don’t

As salespeople we were all taught to set sales goals, and told that by doing so we would sell more, make more money, and reach the top of our profession.

If you are reading this as a salesperson, past or present, I want to ask you- has that promise come true for you?

Yes?  No?

For most people the answer is no, or at least not completely.  I can say this with certainty because I know thousands of salespeople who have set sales goals and only a few who have consistently achieved all of their goals.

Please read on to discover why sales goals often fail to work, and keep reading for a method that can make anyone consistently achieve even the most difficult sales goals.

Let’s start by understanding why sales goals don’t work for most people.

On day one of any sales training class or in the first chapter of any sales book you read you are taught that in order to find success in sales you must set your goals.  While this advice is correct, it is at the same time very incomplete and fails to reveal the the real reason that goals sometimes work, and why they often don’t.

An entire industry has been created around goal setting with the promise that salespeople can sell more by setting better goals using better methods.  The problem is that none of these traditional methods address the reasons why goal setting just does not work for most people.  While some of these traditional methods may work better than others, the truth is that goal setting works better for some people than for others, regardless of the method.  It is the characteristics of the individual that cause goal setting to work or not, and that is the variable we need to consider.

To understand how to make goal setting an effective means to your success we need to take a close look at the relatively small group of people for whom goal setting works like magic in achieving their desired outcomes. From these people we can discover the missing secret to achieving sales goals by examining what certain characteristics they possess that others don’t.  Once we know what those characteristics are we can begin to make the changes in ourselves that will cause us to achieve that same high level of sales success.

The Secret of People Who Achieve Their Sales Goals.

Their are two characteristics or abilities that those who consistently reach their sales goals have that most people do not:

• The ability to convince themselves that their sales goals are a reality even before they are achieved.
• The ability to maintain a laser-like focus on their sales goals until they are achieved, prioritizing their goals above all other things.

The reality is that a relatively small number of people have the natural ability to both.

Let’s look a little deeper into these characteristics.

For a goal to motivate its own achievement it must be believed to be a pending reality in the subconscious mind, and not just a possibility that may occur.  If it is believed to be an absolute certainty, then the effort required to achieve it will be motivated by the certainty of the outcome.  If the achievement of the goal is believed to be uncertain, then the effort applied to achieve it will reflect that uncertainty, and usually be insufficient.

The difference is exemplified in the following two patterns of thought:

• “I am the top sales person in my organization, all I have to do is do the the right things every day.”
• “If I do the right things every day I will become the top sales person in my organization.”

The first pattern is characteristic of goal achievers, and the second defines those who fail to reach their sales goals.  The problem is, most people are naturally oriented or conditioned toward that second pattern where the achievement of the goal is uncertain- as embodied in the use of the word ‘if’.  In this case, the outcome is seen as the product of, or dependent on, the effort.  In contrast, the goal achiever expresses the outcome with certainty, and in the present tense as if it has already occurred.  He has no doubt of the reality of the outcome, and the effort is the product of, or dependent on, the belief in that outcome.

The second characteristic of goal achievers is their ability to focus on the goal and prioritize it about all else.  So often sales people set sales goals only to loose focus on those goals well before they are achieved.  Perhaps this has been the case with you and your sales goals.  The goal had your attention when it was first set, but soon became lost among other priorities.  While it was still important, it was not your focus.  For goal achievers the goal remains the number one priority and focus in their life until it is achieved, never falling our of focus despite all of the possible distractions that life can bring.

Now that you know the characteristics that separate goal achievers from those who set goals that they never achieve, lets take a look at a surprisingly simple technique that anyone can use to achieve all of their goals.  If you weren’t born with the characteristics of the natural goal achievers, don’t worry, this technique will make you every bit as effect in achieving your sales goals.  It just takes a little time and effort.

How Anyone Can Achieve Their Sales Goals

First, we are going to set a goal, but a little bit differently then you may be used to.  For natural goal achievers the method is not very important, but for the vast majority of us setting goals in the way I’m going to teach you will allow you to gain the advantages of natural goal achievers.

For this goal setting exercise you will need a pen and paper.

1.  Start with what you want to achieve.

I want to earn $200,000 in the next 12 months

2.  Now imagine the moment that you achieve it.  Close your eyes and see yourself at the very moment that it becomes a reality.  Picture it like a movie scene complete with sights, sounds, and emotions.  Really immerse yourself in the scene; see the people, notice how you feel, think the thoughts you would have in that moment about yourself and the people in your life.

We need to do this because your mind works in sensory impressions, not words.  Just think of the last newspaper you read:  You can remember the pictures, but can you see what the words are?

3.  Write down that scene in 6 to 10 sentences.  Keep in mind that your goal setting scene can be a little vague.  This just allows room for your mind to fill in the details with an outcome even better than you imagined and doesn’t limit you to only one possible version of success.

I’m sitting at my desk at the end of June, 2012 looking at my commission statement for the last 12 months.  At the bottom of the page is printed the figure $200,000 which represents my commissions over that period of time.  I set the paper down, lean back in my chair, and reflect on all the hard work and smart decisions that brought me to this point.  I smile and put my hands behind my head, allowing myself a well deserved moment of complete relaxation and enjoyment of my accomplishment.  I think of my family and the opportunities and lifestyle I can now provide for them.  I look forward being even more successful in the year to come.

Once you have written out the first draft continue to revise it until it sounds just right.

4.  Now I’m going to ask you to do something with your written goal scene.  But, before I do I want to ask you to pay careful attention to your reaction to what I am telling you.

Write out your goal scene 100 times.

What was your reaction?

If you are like most people, your reaction was something along the lines of, “One hundred times! That will take forever! Are you kidding me?”

That you had this reaction indicates to your subconscious mind that the effort required to realize the goal is not worth the effort, and that it is not really that important.  This is the thinking that has likely held you back from achieving your sales goals in the past and the exact opposite of the thought characteristics of goal achievers.

This is not to say that if you have these though patterns you are not successful and have not achieved things in your life, just that those achievement came harder than they had to and fell short of what you could have made possible in your life without them.  Fortunately you can reverse these patterns by writing your goals scene 100 times.

Why This Will Make Your Sales Goals a Reality

Writing out your sales goals scene 100 times will give you the advantages that natural goal achievers already have:  The ability to convince their subconscious mind of the reality of the goal before it manifests, and the ability to prioritize the focus on the goal above all other things.

Because it is a scene rather than a traditional statement of intent your mind can see it happening and believe that it is real because it has all the details of something that really happens to you.  When it is believed absolutely by the subconscious, your mind will generate the motivation and actions to make the belief a reality.

The repetition makes the goal a priority because each time you write your scene it creates an impression on your mind.  After 100 repetitions it becomes the dominate impression, which tells your mind that it is more important than anything else.  This gives your sales goals the primary focus and constant attention from your mind that is needed to achieve it.

If you are still thinking something like, will 50 repetitions work or maybe I can just read it 100 times, you have already limited your outcome.  Fortunately you can turn yourself boldly in the direction of your goals by committing to this practice and sending a message of high achievement directly into you mind where it will fuel the achievements you always dreamed of.

This article is far from a complete discussion of the mechanics of achievement.  For more information you can learn from the masters such as Joe Vitale and Stuart Lichtman.

To your ultimate success,

The Sales Giant

If this article added value to your sales career, please pass it on with the links below.

We all have sales slumps: Those times when you just can’t find your selling rhythm.  When you can’t seem to close the sale despite your best effort.  When each sale that you do get seems much harder than than it ever was before.  When you are working harder than ever but your volume is down and the pressure is on.

This phenomenon is not unique to sales.  In economics it is called a correction, a recession, or even a depression.  In sports it is a slump or a cold streak.  In life it is a “rough patch” or a rut.  It poker it is a bad run.

If you are a sales person in the midst of a sales slump, you know you have to get out of it, and fast.  After all, selling is how you make your living and without sales you are without income.  While we will all go through sales slumps from time to time the key is to minimize them when they do occur, and get out of them fast.

The problem is, sales slumps have a way of self perpetuating, with the lack of sales eroding our confidence and expectations of positive results, which in turn makes it even more difficult to return to the good form we have lost along the way.

How does a sales slump start?

Usually a sales slump starts by chance, an unfortunate set of circumstances or bad luck that costs us a sale or two.  Why it continues has to do with the self perpetuating nature of a slump.  When those bad circumstances cost us a sale, rather than recognizing the short lived circumstances as the cause, and that it should not last as an impediment to future sales, we quickly start to develop a negative expectation based on them.

The external circumstances tend to become internal circumstances because our reaction to it internalizes it in our mind where it becomes an expectation going forward.  So what happened to start the slump remains in our mind after the circumstance itself has gone away, and continues to cause the slump even though the circumstance in no longer present.  We are having a sales slump because of the expectation created by a limited circumstance or run of bad luck remains in our mind long after the circumstance itself.

This is encouraging in that there is most often nothing external creating the sales slump, and if we can restore a positive expectation we can get out of the sales slump.  It’s not that this is easy, but since it is internal and entirely controllable it is something that we can get out of quickly.

Here are 3 steps to get out of a sales slump.

Keep swinging

Going into July of 1942 Joe DiMaggio, one of baseball’s greatest hitters, was in the midst of a massive hitting slump.  His season average was  .268 meaning he was failing to get a hit almost 3 out of 4 trips to the plate.  In his career he had never batted under .330.

This is what Joe said about getting out of his slump:

“I’m also convinced the only way to get out of a slump is to stay in there and keep swinging.  Nobody can help you.  I’ll bet at least 100 players gave me advice during the season and no two had the same idea”

I think that this is good advice in two ways.

First, you have to keep swinging, or in sales keep getting in front of prospects, keep presenting, keep up all the activities that lead to sales.  Often, the tendency for slumping sales people is to stop doing the things that make sales.  Out of a sense of futility they stop engaging in sales activities.  “What’s the use,” they think, “I can’t seem to make a sale no matter what I do.”  This extends the slump because by taking yourself out of sales activities you are decreasing the odds that you will find the success that will get you out of the slump.  The more you are in front of customers the greater the odds of a ‘normal’ mix of customers- some that will buy and some that won’t.  By limiting the number of prospects you see, the chances are much greater that you could get a few bad ones and none of the goods ones.

I also like how DiMaggio rejected the advice of the 100′s of players that gave him advice.  This is important advice for salespeople trying to break out of a sales slump.  If you have been successful then you know what to do to be successful again.  You just need to keep doing it.  If you change what you are doing based on the various advice of everyone who wants to help, you will end up with a way of selling that may not work for you, and one that would probably be so disjointed as to not have the cohesion required to bring success.

Image if DiMaggio had taken the advice of those 100′s of well intentioned players and made the changes that each of them suggested.  The result would not be the swing that made him great up until that point, and the swing that saw him finish the season batting back over .300.  If your “sales swing” has made you successful it will again if you, like Joe, keep swinging the way you know works.

Give yourself a reset

When you are in a sales slump, the pressure really starts to mount.  When you are faced with a situation where you have not sold in awhile it becomes very difficult to see how you will get out of the hole you are in.  Let’s say you normally close 5 out of 10 prospects.  You start a month 0 for 10 over the first week and know that to get back to the 50% conversion that you are accustomed to you will have to sell your next ten prospects in a row, or 15 out of your next 20.  The can seem impossible and cause you to give up hope in turning things around in time to reach your goals for the month.

Rather than let the pressure of getting out of the sales slump diminish your motivation, give yourself a reset.  By this I mean reset your sales statistics to zero for zero and start the month over.  Reset your goals from today forward as if the first week never happened and go forward with a fresh start.  Now you have eliminated the overwhelming challenge of digging out of the hole you are in and put yourself in a position to move forward without all the pressure at your normal rate of success.  Sometimes you just need to take the pressure of, allow yourself to forget the slump by putting it behind you, and start with a clean slate.

If you are a sales manager you can occasionally do this for members of your team who are slumping.  Take the pressure off by giving them a reset, and let them know that you are forgetting their sales slump and evaluating their performance going forward.  I’ve seen many salespeople respond very positively when the manager takes the pressure off by letting them start over, often times reaching new heights in performance.

Break your patterns

Sometimes a sales slump is as much about about mental fatigue as it is about anything else.  Break this fatigue and refresh yourself by changing your patterns.  This piece of advice may sound contrary to my first suggestion that you keep on swinging without making changes to what has made you successful in the past, but it really isn’t.

I’m not telling you to change the way you sell, but to change some one thing that will indicate to your mind that things are changing:  Wear your watch on the other wrist, get a new haircut, have oatmeal for breakfast instead of a banana, take a new route to work, or listen to loud music instead of talk radio.  Often times the breaking of one pattern contributes to the breaking of other patterns, including that of poor sales performance.

In the profession of sales we will all occasionally find ourselves in a sales slump.  When that happens a true professional will recognize it early and then take the steps needed to minimize the slump, and turn it around fast.  I hope these suggestions help.

Fantastic Selling

If this article added value to your sales career, please pass it on with the links below.

I was recently asked the question:

Is selling, especially one-call close selling, an art or a science?

The following was my answer, which you may find instructive as you seek to find balance in your sales approach between a rigid adherence to a selling system and a more fluid interaction with your prospects.

In its essence, selling is an engagement between the salesperson and the prospect, much like music is an engagement between musician and audience and a painting is an engagement between artist and viewer. While one can scientifically analyze music or visual art and break it down to its constituent parts; the notes, the rhythm, the color, the contrast, it cannot be recreated from those parts except through the skillful manipulation of the artist.

In much the same way, selling can be broken down into its parts, and much can be learned from doing so, but to put those parts together in a convincing sales conversation requires the artful skill of a true sales professional. Without that art, the science of selling is just a collection of parts that will fail to engage the prospect and compel them to buy.

Therefore, sales will always primarily be an art because the almost infinite variability of the sales interaction will not allow for a process of rigidly fixed steps that one could classify as a science.  It will, however, allow for the application of appropriate steps to the interaction, as they are needed to move the prospect through the process of buying.  In this is the art; knowing when to apply the science that is the elements of selling- the particular skills, statements, responses, and questions- to the situation, and how exactly to do so.

This artful application of the components, or the lack thereof, is the cause of the vastly different level of engagement created by an artist and a novice both using the same components.  A novice musician playing the same notes on the same instrument as a true artist will create music of vastly lesser quality, just as a novice salesperson will create a vastly less compelling sales interaction than a true sales professional using the same statements, responses, and questions.  The true sales artist will know how to assemble them in the proper order, use them at the right time, convey them with the right tone, and deliver them with the proper emphasis, and in doing so create the level of engagement that motivates people to buy.

But while selling is an art, there is much that can be learned from the science of selling- the close examination of the parts that great salespeople assemble to make great sales conversations. Much like a painter studies color and contrast, and a musician the notes and the rhythm of the masters, so too can sales people examine the parts of the profession and learn from them.  This is where the learning must begin, but not where it is finished.  The art will always be in in the way that those parts are put together, and the difference between the master and the novice will be the skill in doing so to the desired effect on the audience.

As a sales trainer, the most significant challenge is not teaching salespeople what to say, but how and when to say it.  I can assume that the same is true for someone teaching painting or music- that it is not hard to teach someone what notes to play or colors to use, but that it is difficult to teach the organization of the components into a engaging work of art.  This is not a process that can be accomplished quickly.  It takes time, repetition, analysis, rehearsal, and a good deal of experience.

As you approach your personal sales development, my advice is that you don’t consider yourself finished when you know what to say, but continue on until you have learned how to create art from the words.

I hope this examination of the question of selling as an art or a science will help you on your journey toward become a true artist in the profession of selling.

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