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Increase Sales By No Longer Being the Toad in the Road
Written by: Leanne Hoagland-SmithArticle Overview: If you could be anything but a salesperson and still increase sales, would that be of interest to you? Read how you may need to change your focus from your weaknesses by truly leveraging your talents.
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Increase Sales By No Longer Being the Toad in the Road
If you could be anything but a salesperson and still increase sales, would that be of interest to you? Just imagine, you no longer have to fight the beliefs of your potential customers (a.k.a. prospects) about being the toad in the road who is there to interrupt your potential customer.
Years ago, I heard a story that went something like this: A salesman was traveling down a country road where he happened across a shepherd who was guiding his flock across the road. The salesman stopped and ran up to the man. He told the shepherd that he could provide the exact number of sheep in his flock, but to do so would cost him one sheep. The shepherd smiled and agreed. The anxious sales professional took out his GP, made several calculations and said that the flock contained 296 sheep. This count was correct and the salesman took a sheep. Before he could open the door to his car, the shepherd told the very smart young man that he could tell him what company he worked for. The shepherd said: You were for XYZ Consulting (use any big name consulting firm). The man was very puzzled given that his black vehicle, his shirt even his GPS and did not show any company signage. So, he asked the shepherd: How did you know that I worked for XYZ Consulting? “Oh, that was easy,” replied the shepherd, “You came uninvited, you told me something that I already knew and you took my darn dog.”
This story demonstrates how many sales professionals are quite literally the toad in the road. They interrupt their potential customers with their marketing messages. They attempt to tell them something that they already know. They truly do not understand their customers. And the end result is inconsistent to poor sales along with a lot of wasted resources of energy, time and money.
To stop being the toad in the road suggests that you may need to start focusing on your talents. During a recent teleconference, Jay Niblick of Innermetrix, provided some great insight as to how we confuse talents with strengths. He made the statement that people are born with talents and non-talents. From those talents and non-talents, he continued, we manufacturer strengths or weaknesses.
This is an incredible 180 for many people who have been conditioned to believe in the power of their strengths. For example, if I am not good at the 30,000 feet big picture solving and I need that ability for my role, I will then manufacturer a weakness specific to that non-talent. However, if I never need to use that talent, then it is only a potential dormant weakness. Simply speaking what happens is that we create a self-fulfilling prophecy because we are confused about talents, non-talents, strengths and weaknesses.
Many professionals in business adopt the role of sales professional so that they can demonstrate what they do well be it advising, helping, facilitating, sharing, training or coaching. Unfortunately, in most instances, this role of selling is a conflict between their own belief system and their talents.
To avoid this confusion and still realize the goal to increase sales begins by changing from a sales based marketing approach where the goal is to make the sale to an education based marketing approach where the focus is to educate your customer. What this means is that you no longer send or hand out marketing messages such as flyers, but demonstrate what you do with that potential customer.
Yes, you can switch from being the toad in the road to being the trusted advisor. All you must do is to provide incredible value because you left your selling ego at the door and demonstrated your authenticity by your ability to educate.
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About the Author: Leanne Hoagland-Smith RSS for Leanne's articles - Visit Leanne's website  Her book, Be the Red Jacket is a no-nonsense and quick read to help discover potential gaps that may be keeping you from your goal to increase sales. The forward is by Evan Carmichael of EvanCarmichael.com Remember if you think you cannot or you think you can either way you are right. (Henry Ford). Sales Coaching Tip: Change your thoughts; improve your results. Click here to visit Leanne's website   Leadership Audit For Business Business Building Check List Leadership Assessment |
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- Hi Evan,
I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional
- [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan,
I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz]
I second the request...
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