JC the Sales Guy: Ethical selling

The phrase “Your Attitude determines your Altitude” is a catchy double-entendre. It means two things to me:

1) What you think about yourself and your prospects in life (”attitude”) dictate your level of success (”altitude”).

2) Your angle of attack (angle of aircraft rotation about the lateral axis relative to the direction of the opposing air movement… “attitude”) determines whether you experience positive or negative climb rate, and therefore vertical separation from the ground (”altitude”).

I can practically see the smirk on the faces of the pilots that read this, and the perplexed looks on non-aviators.  Since this blog is supposed to be about Sales, let’s set aside the aviation reference and focus on how you control your sales destiny.

Your attitude:

I have invested countless hours over the past few months reading books on selling and listening to audio books from a few of the recognized leaders in the field. A common thread that I have found is around the need for sales professionals to be incredibly positive in order to be successful. Brian Tracy (see the Bryan Tracy link to the right) often mentions the 80/20 rule, and applies it to various statistics in sales. For example, 80% of your sales will generally come from 20% of your customers. 80% of your commissions will come from 20% of your sales, etc. As with any generalization, the exact breakdown is bound to vary from person to person. However, the idea that 20% in any area is driving the positive result dictates that the other 80% is NOT.

In Sales, 80% of your time could be seen as failure.

How do you handle this failure? How do you remain positive in the face of overwhelming odds (4 to 1) that any given sales call will not be successful?

A few ideas for you:

1)      Celebrate EVERY win. I’m not just talking about big wins. Celebrate the small wins as well. Like the prospect that has ignored you for 2 weeks finally returning your call. Anything that moves a prospect closer to becoming a happy customer is worthy celebrating.

2) Maintain positive momentum. When something goes right, immediately move on to the next challenge before you lose the positive feelings that the success has given you. The fear of rejection can be a strong de-motivator. Many sales people will call on difficult prospects right after closing a sale, since their fear of rejection is at its lowest right after a close.

3) Move on. Don’t spend too much time on prospects that aren’t interested. If you really think that your offering will benefit them, present your case to them a couple of ways. If they don’t see it, move on. You can always follow up at a later date to see if they are more receptive then.

4) Understand that it is business. Sometimes people don’t buy because they don’t like you. Learn from those cases. However, most of the time they just don’t see enough value in what you are offering . Assume that any rejection is based on business unless explicitly stated otherwise. It is far easier to stay positive if you don’t sweat the losses.

5) Sell for the right reasons. If you are selling something that truly benefits the customer, then selling to the customer is something to feel good about.

Your Altitude:

If you use these 5 ideas you will have an advantage over your competitors and will leverage each success that you have to breed more success. Your sales will climb to flight level 30 or higher, I mean to new heights.