Do you remember how the last sales training motivated you to read more about sales and spend more time planning and preparing your calls and visits?
Remember how that seemed exactly what you wanted for about two weeks and how your focus trailed off again two weeks later?
Remember how your colleague hit a 200K deal and that woke you up again and made you read more articles and prepare your calls again, for about two weeks?
This is what we call FOCUS.
In one of my previous articles, I discussed the Reticular Activating System and how you can 'teach' your brain to focus on the things that are necessary to reach your goals.
Needless to say that if your goals aren't clear to begin with, you'll have a hard time focusing.
So...you find yourself in between focus-peaks.
How do you re-focus and switch ON again?
You can't be switched on everyday and all day, you may argue.
Well, I would agree that you have to balance your efforts in order to continuously be at your best. And emptying your energy and brain reservoirs certainly isn't the way to go.
However, if you have clear goals, and you have established that those goals will make you happy - you DO have endless energy to pursue those goals.
Quantify your goals and recreate what that means in the number of deals you will need to close in order for you to reach your goal. Quantify how many quotes/business offers you typically need to have in your pipeline for you to expect that amount of business in signed deals. Quantify how many calls you need to make to get to that number of quotes. And break it down per quarter, per month, per week and per business day.
If you calculate that you need 40 calls per day to get 10 deals that will meet your monthly target - not your boss's - YOUR target, then wasting time chatting at the coffee machine may seem a lot less attractive all of a sudden.
With that said, if you DID make your 40 calls, there IS time to reward yourself and take a bit of steam off by chatting with coworkers, playing ping-pong or other leisure.
So, what about the In Between?
How can I regain my focus and energy if I am in between those peaks of attention?
PLAN your daily, weekly, monthly infuse of motivational support, interesting sales tricks, and mentoring conversation.
If you want to make progress, why just rely on your own discipline and insights, why not ask for someone else's help.
If it's a direct sales colleague - all the better. You probably both have the same issue. If you think someone else at your firm, or your ex-boss may be of great value and offer good insight and self-reflection, why don't you plan for a breakfast meeting to start the day energized?
The conclusion is:
You can wait for your sales manager or CEO to motivate you, but ultimately you are chasing your own dreams, and there's no-one more capable and interested in achieving those goals than you. You just need to make it happen.
Make it happen!
Happy selling,
www.salesguru.nl
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Repost: Mount Everest
Last night, I woke up early because of my jetlag.
Around 3.15 am it occurred to me (the weirdest thoughts come up at night) that getting started in sales has some similarities with climbing the Mount Everest.
A couple of months ago, my good friend Marco Hoogerland (an amazing mental coach for top athletes, including top-notch football players, world and european champions and olympic athletes) hosted an evening event with Robert de Vries.
Robert de Vries is a Dutch climber, and one of few men that has endured the severities of reaching the top of Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth.
Robert presented his movie to the in-crowd, accompanied by stories and many questions of the dazzled audience. What an unbelievable performance - I was stunned by his humbling and riveting story.
It also occurred to me that you have to be somewhat crazy/selfish to reach the absolute top.
Many things have to be left behind (sometimes even relationships with loved ones) to achieve the goals at hand. I am not saying anyone should.
I am just saying that my observation of the journey and end-line to these unbelievable achievements seem to have some commonly shared factors:
Dedication, focus, taking risk, preparation, training, endurance, persistance, triomph, glory, and hardship. It doesn't come for free...
It seemed to me that getting started in full-commissioned sales is somewhat like climbing (albeit more comfortable perhaps).
Sales isn't easy...
You can see the top, but have no idea (yet) how to get there.
Considering the following:
- No gear when starting (job knowlegde, product knowledge, industry knowlegde)
- Some are already trained when they start, some aren't.
Trained (experienced) people may have an advantage to reach the top sooner, but it may also hinder them in a way, because they might think they know it all and get reckless/careless while climbing is dangerous.
- You earn your climbing gear (product/job/industry knowledge) along the way, as you proceed through the basecamps.
- Some will fall or go back
- Some get stuck in snow storms and have to wait a while and watch weather conditions before they can proceed to the next camp.
- It is hard work, no matter how experienced you are - you will still have to walk the walk.
- You need your co-climbers, so be a good colleague
- It's great at the top, but anything below doesn't satisfy your dreams, so you may have to endure dissatisfaction, or disappointment when things aren't going as smooth as you had hoped for.
- Getting to the top may not be fun, but there's no easy way there. You have to pass through all basecamps
- Sherpa's (mgmt? finance? administrative colleagues?) can do a lot of the work, but you will still have to climb yourself.
- If your goal is to reach the top, you can't stop when others are not making it.
So:
- Prepare (create prospect lists, organize your approach, create a plan, work the plan)
- Train (read, learn, ask, look around, copy, whatever makes you improve)
- Focus on your goal (top of the ranks)
- Be lead by the leader (pick your example)
- Persist (be relentless)
Dream about the impossible becoming possible by putting the first step in the right direction
Don't let yourself down
Be tough when it gets tough
Take the hardships like a man: it comes with the journey
Celebrate the basecamps, so you can enjoy the journey too
Learn from the winners, not the whiners.
If this doesn't make sense to you: it was late ;-)
Enjoy
[ This is a reposted message from 2008 on www.salesguru.nl]
Monday, August 29, 2011
Are Top Salespeople Born or Made?
Article from Harvard Business Review by Steve W. Martin
My last post on the "Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople" was based on personality tests administered to 1,000 top business-to-business salespeople. The test results indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling styles, and, in turn, their success. However, the study also raises the perennial question, "Are top salespeople born or made?" In other words, must top salespeople be born with the prerequisite sales instincts, or can someone learn to become successful in sales without them?
Based upon my research, experience, and observations, I estimate over 70 percent of top salespeople are born with "natural" instincts that play a critical role in determining their sales success. Conversely, less than 30 percent of top salespeople are self-made — meaning, they have had to learn how to become top salespeople without the benefit of these natural abilities. In addition, for every 100 people who enter sales without natural sales traits, 40 percent will fail or quit, 40 percent will perform at near average, and only 20 percent will be above average (These figures vary by industry and the complexity of products sold).
Based on the figures above, the real question that should be asked is, "What determines whether or not a self-made salesperson will become successful?" While it's easy to recite a laundry list of general reasons for success (hard work, persistence, intelligence, integrity, empathy, etc.), my experience in the field and the research I've conducted indicates four key factors that determine the self-made salesperson's destiny. They are language specialization, "modeling" of experiences, political acumen, and greed.
Language Specialization
The first differentiating factor between the success or failure of the self-made salesperson is language specialization. While all competent salespeople can recite their product's features and business benefits, very few are mavens who can conduct intelligent conversations about the details of daily business operations. Every industry also has developed its own technical language to facilitate mutual understanding of terminology and an exact meaning of the words used throughout a business. The technical language consists of abbreviations, acronyms, business nomenclature, and specialized terms (for example RAM, CPU, and flash drive in the consumer electronics industry).
Successful self-made salespeople possess domain-area expertise and speak the corresponding business operations language, or have deep knowledge of the industry's technical language. These languages are the yardstick by which customers measure a salesperson's true value and greatly influence their purchase decisions. Lesser-performing self-made salespeople are not as fluent in these languages, so they tend to focus on likability and friendliness with prospective customers.
Modeling of Experiences
Modeling is the mind's ability to link like experiences and similar data into predictable patterns. Salespeople continually learn through the ongoing accumulation and consolidation of information from their sales calls and interactions with customers. From this knowledge base, salespeople can predict what will happen and what they should do in light of what they have done in the past.
Modeling can be thought of as the engine that drives sales intuition. For example, let's say a salesperson is asked by a skeptical, analytical, financial-oriented prospective customer how his product is different from his major competitor's. His answer would be based on previous experiences with similar circumstances. Modeling can be thought of as trying to find the what, when, where response — what you should do when you are in a particular circumstance where you have to act.
Successful self-made salespeople have an effective methodology to store and retrieve all the verbal, nonverbal, factual, and intuitive information that occurs during sales calls and sales cycles. This results in a greater proficiency to win business than less-successful self-made salespeople who do not learn from their past mistakes and instead repeat them.
Political Acumen
Unfortunately, many under-performing self-made salespeople take a textbook-type approach to sales and concentrate solely on the procedural aspects of the sales cycle. They don't take into account the human nature of sales and how people and politics determine the outcome.
Politics are based upon self-interests. Therefore, customers do not readily reveal the internal machinations of their decision-making. Political acumen is the ability to correctly map out each decision maker's influence and motivations. Successful self-made salespeople consider this their top priority. Political acumen drives winning account strategy whereas strategic planning without political acumen is a losing proposition.
Greed
We normally associate greed with a corrupt character or miserly scrooge. While this may be society's definition, in sales, "greed" takes on an entirely different meaning. In sales, greed and self-respect are closely intertwined. Greed can be thought of as the desire to be fairly paid for one's time. Time is a salesperson's enemy because time is finite. Time is the governor that determines how many deals can be worked and where effort should be focused. Salespeople are on a mission to learn the ultimate truth, "Will I win the deal?" Greed compels the successful self-made salespeople to push themselves beyond their comfort zone and ask difficult qualifying questions while continually pushing for the close. Conversely, the lesser successful self-made salespeople do not possess this inward drive.
...
Are top salespeople born or made? The true answer is that the overwhelming majority of top salespeople are gifted with innate talents. However, many others are self-made successes who have learned how to apply their language specialization and build their intuition. They know what accounts they should spend their time on and always navigate to powerful decision-makers in order to create the opportunity to persuade them to buy.
My last post on the "Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople" was based on personality tests administered to 1,000 top business-to-business salespeople. The test results indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling styles, and, in turn, their success. However, the study also raises the perennial question, "Are top salespeople born or made?" In other words, must top salespeople be born with the prerequisite sales instincts, or can someone learn to become successful in sales without them?
Based upon my research, experience, and observations, I estimate over 70 percent of top salespeople are born with "natural" instincts that play a critical role in determining their sales success. Conversely, less than 30 percent of top salespeople are self-made — meaning, they have had to learn how to become top salespeople without the benefit of these natural abilities. In addition, for every 100 people who enter sales without natural sales traits, 40 percent will fail or quit, 40 percent will perform at near average, and only 20 percent will be above average (These figures vary by industry and the complexity of products sold).
Based on the figures above, the real question that should be asked is, "What determines whether or not a self-made salesperson will become successful?" While it's easy to recite a laundry list of general reasons for success (hard work, persistence, intelligence, integrity, empathy, etc.), my experience in the field and the research I've conducted indicates four key factors that determine the self-made salesperson's destiny. They are language specialization, "modeling" of experiences, political acumen, and greed.
Language Specialization
The first differentiating factor between the success or failure of the self-made salesperson is language specialization. While all competent salespeople can recite their product's features and business benefits, very few are mavens who can conduct intelligent conversations about the details of daily business operations. Every industry also has developed its own technical language to facilitate mutual understanding of terminology and an exact meaning of the words used throughout a business. The technical language consists of abbreviations, acronyms, business nomenclature, and specialized terms (for example RAM, CPU, and flash drive in the consumer electronics industry).
Successful self-made salespeople possess domain-area expertise and speak the corresponding business operations language, or have deep knowledge of the industry's technical language. These languages are the yardstick by which customers measure a salesperson's true value and greatly influence their purchase decisions. Lesser-performing self-made salespeople are not as fluent in these languages, so they tend to focus on likability and friendliness with prospective customers.
Modeling of Experiences
Modeling is the mind's ability to link like experiences and similar data into predictable patterns. Salespeople continually learn through the ongoing accumulation and consolidation of information from their sales calls and interactions with customers. From this knowledge base, salespeople can predict what will happen and what they should do in light of what they have done in the past.
Modeling can be thought of as the engine that drives sales intuition. For example, let's say a salesperson is asked by a skeptical, analytical, financial-oriented prospective customer how his product is different from his major competitor's. His answer would be based on previous experiences with similar circumstances. Modeling can be thought of as trying to find the what, when, where response — what you should do when you are in a particular circumstance where you have to act.
Successful self-made salespeople have an effective methodology to store and retrieve all the verbal, nonverbal, factual, and intuitive information that occurs during sales calls and sales cycles. This results in a greater proficiency to win business than less-successful self-made salespeople who do not learn from their past mistakes and instead repeat them.
Political Acumen
Unfortunately, many under-performing self-made salespeople take a textbook-type approach to sales and concentrate solely on the procedural aspects of the sales cycle. They don't take into account the human nature of sales and how people and politics determine the outcome.
Politics are based upon self-interests. Therefore, customers do not readily reveal the internal machinations of their decision-making. Political acumen is the ability to correctly map out each decision maker's influence and motivations. Successful self-made salespeople consider this their top priority. Political acumen drives winning account strategy whereas strategic planning without political acumen is a losing proposition.
Greed
We normally associate greed with a corrupt character or miserly scrooge. While this may be society's definition, in sales, "greed" takes on an entirely different meaning. In sales, greed and self-respect are closely intertwined. Greed can be thought of as the desire to be fairly paid for one's time. Time is a salesperson's enemy because time is finite. Time is the governor that determines how many deals can be worked and where effort should be focused. Salespeople are on a mission to learn the ultimate truth, "Will I win the deal?" Greed compels the successful self-made salespeople to push themselves beyond their comfort zone and ask difficult qualifying questions while continually pushing for the close. Conversely, the lesser successful self-made salespeople do not possess this inward drive.
...
Are top salespeople born or made? The true answer is that the overwhelming majority of top salespeople are gifted with innate talents. However, many others are self-made successes who have learned how to apply their language specialization and build their intuition. They know what accounts they should spend their time on and always navigate to powerful decision-makers in order to create the opportunity to persuade them to buy.
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