Five Tips to Make You a Better Salesperson.
Today I am going to share with you five simple tips to make you a better salesperson. Some of these will bring an immediate effect, some will be long lasting but I sincerely believe that proper application of these tips will take you from average Joe to superstar!
Expect to win in every interaction.
I talk a lot about attitude, and it’s for a reason. Winners have a winning attitude. It’s that simple. Have you ever been playing a game and suddenly thought “I’m doing too good right now. I’ll screw up any minute”? What happens almost immediately? You fulfill your own prophecy! You might make a mistake eventually, but the minute you change your focus from winning to “I’m doing too well” you lose concentration and make a mistake.
The same can be said of selling activities. If you are picking up the phone and saying to yourself “I hope this works out” or “all these leads suck there is no way I am going to schedule an appointment” guess what??? You WON’T schedule an appointment!
Professional athletes visualize winning. They mentally walk through every step of the game in their head visualizing how it will feel, what they will do and how they expect the competition to react.
As a sales rep I have spent a lot of time walking, driving, or zoning out on my couch thinking about sales calls… mentally role-playing with myself. It helps. If you have an objection you can not overcome role-play it in your own mind over and over until you are comfortable with it. This technique alone will pay HUGE dividends over time.
9-5 is not the way.
Take a survey of six figure sales reps and you will find very few of them work a simple 9-5. That doesn’t mean you need to spend all of that time in the office, but if you look around you will find that many of your best opportunities happen outside of the normal 9-5 work day. It could be as simple as taking an extra hour a day to read over some client documents at home where you can concentrate better, or attending an evening networking event. The trick is to leave your most productive hours available for the most productive activities.
Bursts of power.
I am a huge proponent of working in bursts of power. Very few people can focus on one task and do it for more than an hour or so with any level of efficiency. As an inside sales rep my goal was minimum 10 dial an hour EVERY hour I was in the building. Once I finished that I would work on proposals, do some follow-up work or whatever else was important for the day but at the top of every hour I would stop whatever I was doing and make at least 10 really good mentally fresh dials. That allowed me to make a minimum 80 prospecting calls per day while still staying on top of all my “busy” work. Not only that but the shift in activities meant I was as fresh on calls 70-80 as I was on calls 1-10. Remember it’s the concept that I am advocating not the activity, so you may need only 5 or as many as 20 to be successful in your industry. The real trick is to stay fresh and have a consistent high level of activity.
Find successful people and pick their brain.
One of the first things I try to do when I start out at a new company is find the top 10 sales reps, create a list of questions and ask every one of them those questions. People love to be viewed as an expert, and if you approach them sincerely and respectfully people will help you more often than not. I also recommend y-connecting, going for a ride-along and taking them to lunch as other ways to learn from these people.
Take charge of your own professional development.
Finally, I have to say it is extremely important that you take charge of your own professional development. Get a library card and start checking out books on sales, leadership, marketing, management, economics, and anything else relevant to your industry and commit to reading for a minimum of 10 minutes per day. This alone over time will give you insight your peers do not have and will make you an expert on business in general. You will not only be able to help your clients on issues directly related to your product but can become someone they call to bounce ideas off of.
That’s my quick list of five things… I would love to hear your thoughts and any additions subtractions or substitutions you would make.
-Brad
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c484e40e-2403-4340-a689-feeb32a5cc4b)
Expect to win in every interaction.
I talk a lot about attitude, and it’s for a reason. Winners have a winning attitude. It’s that simple. Have you ever been playing a game and suddenly thought “I’m doing too good right now. I’ll screw up any minute”? What happens almost immediately? You fulfill your own prophecy! You might make a mistake eventually, but the minute you change your focus from winning to “I’m doing too well” you lose concentration and make a mistake.
The same can be said of selling activities. If you are picking up the phone and saying to yourself “I hope this works out” or “all these leads suck there is no way I am going to schedule an appointment” guess what??? You WON’T schedule an appointment!
Professional athletes visualize winning. They mentally walk through every step of the game in their head visualizing how it will feel, what they will do and how they expect the competition to react.
As a sales rep I have spent a lot of time walking, driving, or zoning out on my couch thinking about sales calls… mentally role-playing with myself. It helps. If you have an objection you can not overcome role-play it in your own mind over and over until you are comfortable with it. This technique alone will pay HUGE dividends over time.
9-5 is not the way.
Take a survey of six figure sales reps and you will find very few of them work a simple 9-5. That doesn’t mean you need to spend all of that time in the office, but if you look around you will find that many of your best opportunities happen outside of the normal 9-5 work day. It could be as simple as taking an extra hour a day to read over some client documents at home where you can concentrate better, or attending an evening networking event. The trick is to leave your most productive hours available for the most productive activities.
Bursts of power.
I am a huge proponent of working in bursts of power. Very few people can focus on one task and do it for more than an hour or so with any level of efficiency. As an inside sales rep my goal was minimum 10 dial an hour EVERY hour I was in the building. Once I finished that I would work on proposals, do some follow-up work or whatever else was important for the day but at the top of every hour I would stop whatever I was doing and make at least 10 really good mentally fresh dials. That allowed me to make a minimum 80 prospecting calls per day while still staying on top of all my “busy” work. Not only that but the shift in activities meant I was as fresh on calls 70-80 as I was on calls 1-10. Remember it’s the concept that I am advocating not the activity, so you may need only 5 or as many as 20 to be successful in your industry. The real trick is to stay fresh and have a consistent high level of activity.
Find successful people and pick their brain.
One of the first things I try to do when I start out at a new company is find the top 10 sales reps, create a list of questions and ask every one of them those questions. People love to be viewed as an expert, and if you approach them sincerely and respectfully people will help you more often than not. I also recommend y-connecting, going for a ride-along and taking them to lunch as other ways to learn from these people.
Take charge of your own professional development.
Finally, I have to say it is extremely important that you take charge of your own professional development. Get a library card and start checking out books on sales, leadership, marketing, management, economics, and anything else relevant to your industry and commit to reading for a minimum of 10 minutes per day. This alone over time will give you insight your peers do not have and will make you an expert on business in general. You will not only be able to help your clients on issues directly related to your product but can become someone they call to bounce ideas off of.
That’s my quick list of five things… I would love to hear your thoughts and any additions subtractions or substitutions you would make.
-Brad
Tags: business, coaching, development, leadership, management, professional, sales, tips
Comment
-
Comment by Wil Stephany on September 11, 2009 at 8:16am - Love the Burst of Power idea, thanks!
-
Comment by Rajshekar Krishnan on April 7, 2009 at 4:09am -
Hey Brad,
Excellent set of list, Really thankfull for providing such a valuable info.
Raj
-
Comment by alisha sinha on November 29, 2008 at 9:24pm
-
hey brad great tips,u r right thought of being good ,stops us from becoming great.thanks a lot for
writing all this
-
Comment by Skip Anderson on November 9, 2008 at 9:38am - A wonderful list, Brad.
-
Comment by Brad Trnavsky on November 9, 2008 at 9:32am -
Cindy, that's a great point... When I am setting goals with my staff I try to get them to focus on advancing the sales process base on where their clients are in the funnel. Focusing on the details really helps with this.
Thanks for including me in your carnival and stumbling!
-
Comment by Cindy King on November 9, 2008 at 5:24am -
In the section on the burst of power, I would like you to include a note that people set goals that they can reach. Not easy goal, but realistic. Saying "I will make 50 cold calls today" is something that people can accomplish. Saying "I will make 5 sales today" is not. What happens at the end of the day if you only have 3 sales? Your attitude to the buyer changes, you sound either hurried, or desperate. Neither of which help you.
Stumbled your post and linked to it from http://getinternationalclients.com/get-international-clients-sunday-blog-carnival-27/
-
Comment by Perry on October 9, 2008 at 10:43pm - Great list! But if I may say this, there's really no secret formula when it comes to effective sales management. However, you can couple these values--determination, persistence, and confidence, among others--with the right tools such as a lead generation software or database, then you're on the right track. You need something to really keep tabs of your activities and can generate reports so you can better gauge the success or failure of your sales management.
-
Comment by Ali on September 15, 2008 at 8:07pm -
Hey Brad,
Hope you are doing fine.
Excellent tools for Sales & Marketing people, I would like to thank you so much for taking efforts to write all these lines, I'm sure people here will learn alot.
Take care
God Bless
Ali.
-
Comment by Denise Oyston on September 9, 2008 at 2:37am -
Great list Brad. Something else to add is always have your goal list.Write down what you actually want to acheive.Your brain can't help but then kick into action to start making it happen. I have found Earl Nightingales 20 method really useful as well.
Re write a goal or quest you have in the form of a question.
e.g. " how can I increase the number of appointments with customers or prospects in my diary to 100 by the end of November?"
Then write down 20 ideas you have. Don't stop until you have completed the list of twenty. Don't judge either. Make your answers postive, and in the present tense.They work better if they are personal as well.
So for this example. It could be. "I will spend one hour today, ringing at least 10 clients on my list." plus another 19 others. Then chose just one and implement it that day.
It's a great idea and really stimulates the grey matter. If you are constantly asking yourself questions. Your conscious mind is reprogramming your subconscious mind to come up with the answers. A bit like Brads prospecting idea if you did this just three days a week for a month. You would have over 240 ideas in a month. If just 10% of them where useful...?? Just do the Maths.
It is amazing how easy being successful can actually be if you just follow some simple processes and work with your potential rather than against it.
Take Care
Denise
-
Comment by Tibor Shanto on September 8, 2008 at 6:28pm -
Brad,
I like this list, simple, but effective when practiced.
Tibor
Welcome to
Sales Management 2.0
About
Latest Activity
Let me see if I understand. You are cold-calling door-to-door. On your first call you give a short pitch and try to set an appointment to visit a second time. On the second visit you make a 2-3 hour presentation. Is that right?
The phrase "something old and something new," which is often heard while brides are getting married, can be applied to using social media tools successfully. Many companies jump on the new idea band wagon, often discarding old ideas and methodologie…
Love your comments on the 30-second commercial and value proposition. Too many people still focusing on communicating a jingoistic benefit as a value proposition. Not enough people understanding what the real impact of their offering to their client…
The phrase "something old and something new," which is often heard while brides are getting married, can be applied to using social media tools successfully. Many companies jump on the new idea band wagon, often discarding old ideas and methodologie…
A little over a week ago, I wrote Sales Management, It’s About Inspecting The Process, Not Transactions. In talking to many people who contacted me about the article, we ended up talking about the confict sales managers face in doing their jobs. Yes…
In today’s hyperlinked digital world , data is a commodity. But time is not. Every hour spent searching for information could be spent doing something else – closing a sale, growing existing business. The key is to make the search experience product…
© 2010 Created by Brad Trnavsky on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
You need to be a member of Sales Management 2.0 to add comments!
Join this Ning Network