Read almost any book about sales and you’ll
see some reference to, “you need to have a good attitude.” So
what does that mean? Sometimes my most effective selling is
when I have a “bad attitude” -- when I’m
more discerning and skeptical about whether a prospect has
money or is willing to make the change. I get tougher then
and force the prospect to fit into my procedure. So for the
purpose of this article, I’d like to redefine attitude
and not talk about it in terms of good or bad, but instead “what
attitudes to have.”
1. My value can be found nowhere else.
Most high-income sellers are in the business-to-business environment.
And in that atmosphere, you must bring value with your knowledge,
experience, and observations in a market. So even though you
may sell the same type of solution that another company sells,
your solution is enriched by you being in the process. High
achievers understand that their products or services are better
because of their expertise and wisdom. The elite high-income
seller has the attitude of “my total solution brings
value because the prospect won’t be able to find my value
from anyone else.”
2. If I want more, I contribute more.
The highest achievers realize something that the average performers
don’t. If you want to earn more money, you have to contribute
more value and solve more problems for your customer. We say
in our training, “if you want to make more money, solve
bigger problems.” So when you work on your quarterly
goals, stop working on what you can get out of the market and
start working on what you can contribute to the market in terms
of value and solutions to problems. Then, when you make a sales
call or attend a sales prospect meeting, you won’t be
a needy, begging sales person. You’ll be a contributor
at a higher value.
3. There is a never-ending supply of client pain.
The elite sellers--the top one percent--know that even when
a market is soft (no budgets) it doesn’t mean there’s
no pain in the customer base. So the high achiever is always
focused on the problems that he or she can solve and not focused
on the budgets that aren’t there. Budgets follow beliefs.
If the prospect believes he has a problem and believes it’s
worth solving, budgets have a way of making an appearance.
4. My baggage doesn’t matter.
Let’s face the fact that we all have unwanted baggage.
That little tinge of fear when we get ready to ask a question
that we know we should ask, but some how it just doesn’t
roll off our tongue. The average performer decides he will
wait to ask the question later. The high sales performer doesn’t
let his baggage get in the way of the right question to ask
(or the right comment to make). In a sick sort of way, your
baggage gets in the way of your customer getting his problem
solved. You don’t want to have that on your mind when
you go to bed tonight, do you?
5. I am hyper-discerning about my time.
It’s easy to say, “be discerning,” but with
all the distractions and demands on our time, it’s hard
to execute that attitude. So what do high sales achievers do
with their time? In the sales environment they create standards
of conduct that they demand from the prospect. If on the first
phone call, the prospect doesn’t want to share any of
the problems they’re trying to fix then they have broken
the first code of conduct and the high achieving sales executive
should move on. If, on the first face-to-face meeting, the
prospect refuses to tell how much money this problem costs
them to have, then again, they’ve broken a rule of conduct.
The sales executive must move on. Set your code of conduct
on what you expect from prospects and don’t deviate.
That makes it easier for you to ‘let go’ at the
appropriate time.
Article
Source: http://www.articlecube.com
During his 19+ years of experience as a coach for hundreds
of B2B sales teams, Bill Caskey learned that most sales organizations
perform poorly in expressing their value to prospects resulting
in severe underachievement by the sales force, long selling
cycles, constant battles and margin pressures.
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