Sales Training 101 - How to Rise Above Setbacks and Break Out of a Sales Slump
Saturday, November 29th, 2008Imagine you’re having this kind of a day:
It’s Tuesday morning, you’ve got the day completely planned out, and you’ve booked yourself solid with appointments.
It’s 8:30 a.m. - you’re meeting with the public relations firm that handles advertising for a hospital account you’ve been trying for 6 months to get in the door with. Finally, you were able to set the appointment.
You’ve done your preparation. You’ve acquainted yourself with the challenges facing the healthcare industry, and particularly with the hospital you’ll be discussing at the meeting.
Also, you’ve developed a series of fact finding and probing questions to demonstrate your competency and awareness of their needs.
Finally, you believe your questions will be able to create a desire for your solutions. Off you go to meet with the PR firm.
Arriving at your appointment you find you’ve gotten the date wrong. Your appointment wasn’t for THIS Tuesday, it was for LAST Tuesday. Your opportunity has been missed. You are unable to reset your appointment, because they have no desire to reschedule.
Question:
If this had really happened, what would you be thinking? What would the conversation you were having with yourself sound like? More importantly, what if, as it turned out, that was the BEST part of your day?
You ever have times like that? Times when it seems like nothing goes right?
You give your best effort and still don’t make the sale. Or you discover you didn’t have something you needed … something necessary for the sale to go forward. Or you didn’t listen well enough … you completely instant car insurance what your prospect was trying to tell you.
Or maybe it’s not even your fault! Sometimes you can car insurance Philadelphia everything right only to find you’d been lied to.
Has that ever happened?
You get to the end, you think you’ve made the sale and they tell you something brand new - contrary to what they’ve led you to believe all along. NOW they say they’ll have to “run it by their manager”, or purchasing, or accounting, or their husband, wife, sister, brother, cousin, etc.?
What a let down.
When everything’s going wrong, what do you do?
Do you know how the bottom 80% of salespeople are most likely to react? Just look around, you’ll see how they respond real quick!
The truth is, things can only go bad for so long until the average salesperson develops a bad attitude. Suddenly, their brain is “out to get them” and it starts telling them all these ‘little white lies’. They start believing things will ALWAYS be this way. That EVERYTHING is working against them, that it always does, and always will.
That kind of thinking, when it goes on long enough, leads to sales slumps, job changes, or back and forth cycles of low productivity.
So, what’s a salesperson to do? What can you do, to make yourself “bulletproof” when the bad stuff starts happening?
CREATE AN “ARSENAL”!
Compile a record of your best sales. Make a big file or stack of them. Keep copies of the contracts. Thumb through ‘em. Relive them. Replay your past successes over and over, and MAKE A HABIT OF IT!
You’ll be AMAZED at how effective this is if you’ll just take the time to really do it. (Someone told me they’d heard this idea before … my answer was - so? - are you DOING it? It WORKS!)
Anyone whose been in sales for any period of time HAS past successes they can draw on.
USE THEM.
Replay them. Relive them. Make it a habit until it becomes AUTOMATIC to focus on your victories every time you’re faced with difficulties and letdowns.
This isn’t fake “rah, rah” stuff.
It’s based on REAL past victories, and helps condition your mind to trust your ability to deal with what you’re being faced with. The key is don’t just remember your past sales, but RE-EXPERIENCE them. Play back and relive the way you felt when you made that big sale or landed that big account.
Several years ago I used to do this replaying a $64,000 dollar sale I’d made selling customized imprinted Old Farmers Almanac calenders. My commission was $7,600 and I used to carry around a copy of the check.
Maybe you’re selling 6 or 7 figure contracts - that’s not the point.
The point is whatever you’ve done that got you excited can be used to empower you when the going gets tough. It’ll give you the courage and confidence to take on anything!
So create your arsenal. Visit it REGULARLY. See what happens.
Oh, by the way …
It just occurred to me that someone out there may be thinking “All this arsenal stuff sounds great, but I just started this job, so I don’t have an arsenal yet. What can I do?”
No worries.
Think of every past success, of any kind, that you can recall. Successful sales from a previous job. Successes you had at school, in athletics, church, relationships - whatever.
The point is that EVERYONE has things they’ve accomplished at SOME point in their lives that they can use to build a record of achievement.
Ask yourself - what have I done in the past, that I felt so good about when it happened that just reliving the memory makes me feel empowered?
EVERYONE has SOMETHING.
Think through different events in your life, chronologically, and make a list of accomplishments.
Some people have come out of abusive backgrounds … even using the fact that they SURVIVED … that they are SURVIVORS can be a tremendous source of inner strength.
Find yours.
If you insist you don’t have anything - YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN’T BE IN SALES!
To your ongoing success!
Virgil Stanphill is an author, a publisher, and freelance copywriter with a background in direct sales, having sold on strictly commission for more than 25 years. Get information on his book: The Beginner’s “Easiest Book in the World” for Learning How to Write Powerful Sales Letters and get a FREE Sales Letter Template at: http://www.LetsIncreaseSales.com
Just added - you’ll also get a FREE copy of my new report: The “Easy As A-B-C” Marketing System!