True Sales Professionals are Born
WRONG – Sales is like any other profession. If you are an accountant you went through years of training to receive that designation of CPA.
If you are lawyer, you went through years of training to earn the title Attorney.
If you are a computer professional, you earned your professional designations through hard work and training.
Why would learning to sell be any different?
Anyone Can Be a Great at Sales.
It is true that each of us has a certain propensity to a specific career.
But as I mentioned in my last email the sooner you realize that everyone is in sales the sooner you will be inclined to take the necessary training to improve your business, the quality of your life, and take the stress out of selling while creating more sales.
Let me tell you a true story. I recently sent out a letter to announce a new product. I received a call from a company president and this almost exactly how the conversion went.
Caller: Is this for real? (There was not introduction. He actually started the call off this way.)
Me: Is what for real?
Caller: I received this letter about Small Business Mastery….
Me: Yes, it is for real and it took me three years to develop this product.
Caller: You have five minutes to tell me about it.
I told him about the product and he agreed to buy from me. After our call, he said “sign me up.” That was the fastest $3,000 I ever made.
I used to be intimidated by people like that and I would get flustered. I now understand how this individual wanted to be treated and during that call I treated him exactly that way. It took five minutes and I got the order.
I don’t consider myself a professional sales representative. I do consider myself well schooled on understanding people and the art of questioning.
I could not do that ten years ago. I took everything personally. I treated everyone the same way and when they did not respond as I wanted them to I felt rejected.
Let me contrast this with another sales call.
This individual called for coaching. I immediately recognized his behavior style and knew this would not be a quick close. I spent time understanding his needs and what he wanted to accomplish. I took some time to write a proposal and emailed it to him. I called him every two weeks to see how he was doing and I focused on building the relationship.
Four months later, I was asked to meet with a member of the board of directors over breakfast to discuss my proposal (naturally it was quite large for the Board of Directors to get involved). In this meeting, in addition to the board member, we had the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) involved as well.
Understanding their different behavior styles I would answer their questions in a way they made it easy for them to understand. The CFO wanted to know the impact on the bottom line. The board member wanted to explore the impact on the corporate strategy and my client wanted to know how it would help him grow into the new position.
After that meeting I waited two weeks to call back. When I called I heard “when can we start?”
I know if I pushed for a close during that meeting I would have lost the opportunity.
How much was the deal worth? I put into my pocket $20K for four hours of coaching a month for 12 months. Not bad. I don’t tell you this to brag but I tell you this because I took the time to learn the skills I needed to be successful.
And you can be successful to. Sales and selling skills are learned skills and they can be acquired. They can be mastered just as a CPA masters accounting or a lawyer masters law.
Know that masters of any subject matter requires on-going learning and education. When you were in grade school, you learned to read and write by doing it. Now it is second nature to you and you don’t even think about it.
Selling can be the same way.
To Your Success,
Ron Finklestein
330-990-0788
info@yourbusinesscoach.net
True Sales Professionals are Born - To learn more about this author, visit Ron Finklestein's Website.
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