Business and Finance

Are you learning based?

Does the economic climate have you feeling threatened? With all of the changes brought on by the arrival of the information age, do you feel left behind? Most of us do feel uneasy and a little behind the eight ball. Sometimes it seems we have to run as hard as we can just to stay in one place! Everything is changing so fast that what we learned yesterday could very well be outdated tomorrow.

So how do we keep our competitive edge in our business?

The fundamental strategy of a high achiever is their focus on being learning-based. Being a learning-based person means that you take education, training, and self-development as the foundational piece of your plan to achieve your goals.

Maybe learning is key?

No matter what we do, no matter where we go, owner or employee, now more than ever before, we must stay sharp…continue to study, learn and remain curious. Everyone in our business, everyone, every day will stay engaged when we emphasize and encourage learning. Learning is the key to innovative, creative, out of the box solutions. It is not enough for us as leaders to stay abreast of our industry, attend training programs or read books. We need all of our employees playing at their very best to stay in the game of business.

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SOS, also known as Morse code, is a universal distress signal. For salespeople, a “Save Our Ship,” becomes a “Save Our Sales” distress call. While everyone selling likely has their own SOS, here are five common sales calls for help.

1. Cancelled appointments

Are you confirming any appointments you set with prospects? Either the day before or the morning of, telephone or email prospects. I usually telephone. If something has come up for the prospect, I reschedule with them right then; they’re already on the telephone. If they just don’t show, that’s an entirely different problem and solution. NOTE: never assume that a no show means not interested.

2. Prospects buying from competition

Are you going through all that you know how to do and losing sales to the competition? What about losing to the competition of procrastination? Examine your qualifying process. You have a qualifying process, right? At a minimum, early on you want to be certain of four things: you are working with someone with a budget for your product or service; you are talking with all decision makers; the prospect has indicated a need by conveying a problem they want to eliminate or a solution they need, and their timeline fits with your sales process timeline.

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Filled with music
mostly from the 1950’s and 1960’s some Jukebox songs weave a tale of the life of someone who sells. Let’s put a quarter in for some Jukebox music to make you smarter, take the pain of rejection away, improve your creativity and reduce your stress. As a salesperson or small business owner with sales responsibility, your thoughts, attitudes and actions are vital to your sales success. Here are the top picks:

1. We Belong Together, Ritchie Valens. “You’re mine and we belong together.” Is that what you are thinking about your prospects? And just how are you showing them? Do you take your time to build rapport? Are you getting to know them? Then are you letting them get to know you, your product and your service?

2. What’s Your Name, Don and Juan. “What’s your name? May I walk you to your door? It’s so hard to find a personality, With charms like yours for me.” Learn about primary personality styles with a model like the Personal Profile SystemÒ or some other. An easy and exacting model of a prospects buying style will help you help them easier. If you open the next sales step sooner or later, depending on the buying style, you will find a perfect match of selling for your customer.

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Unlike real barbed wire being cheaper, easier and quicker to use to get results to better control livestock and land, sales reluctance is costly, stubborn and slows down a salesperson’s success. If a salesperson’s product or service is that valuable, a salesperson will want to have various ways to cut through and strengthen their self-promotion.

Go under. Barbed wire is a wall without being a wall, just like reluctance is a sales barrier which may not be recognized. Reluctance commonly shows up as fear of rejection, failure or being perceived as an impostor and pervades all parts of the selling process. Research by Behavioral Sciences Research Press has found that for sales call reluctance, there is usually a specific limited reason. Find out what causes your particular reluctance, then find a way to get it under control.

Cover it with a blanket and climb over it. Rather than become entangled in the barbed wire of sales reluctance, identify your issues and set an action plan to get over it. Do you have an underlying belief that salespeople are scammers? When I lead sales training workshops I often ask, “What words would you use to describe salespeople?” A long list of negative words like, dishonest, pushy, doesn’t listen, start to be spoken. When you are reluctant about follow-up, do you procrastinate to avoid seeming pushy? Consider changing that the belief to how what you have to offer brings great value to people and you owe it to them to help them.

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