Each week I am confronted by at least 3 salespeople looking for the easy button, they want me to give them that one move, the hidden technique, that shortcut, that can turn them into a master of prospecting, closing, or negotiating. These people are delusional, and I find myself repeatedly telling them three Truths About Sales Success over and over.
The first truth is really simple, there are NO Shortcuts. If you want to be successful at selling you need to treat it like a game. Every game worth playing requires that you learn the rules, build a strategy, and practice the skills required to execute.
The second truth is also fairly simple, sales is hard work. If you want to be successful at sales you need to work, before you execute. Too often when I talk to salespeople, they brag about the hours they spend on the phone or the presentation decks they create or they might even tell me about their killer demo. But what they never talk about is the time they have spent identifying their Acceptable, Typical, and Ideal client profiles. They don’t seem to talk about the design of their sales cadences and the A/B testing they go through to make sure they are doing the right things to grow revenue. Too often, salespeople are persistent after the conversation rather than doing the work to prepare for their sales call, so it becomes easy to run the process when speaking to prospects.
The final truth is that sales is a failure management process. Done right your sales process will result in more failed sales calls than successful ones. In fact, in a recent study it was reported among the top 25% of all B2B salespeople, less than 40% of B2B sales proposals resulted in a yes. And that less than 40% of their sales calls led to a proposal. In other words, successful B2B salespeople failed 84% of the time. What you learn from the sales failures you experience will shape your success far more than the intermittent successes you will experience.
As you head out to engage prospects this week by phone or face-to-face, you should be focused on these three rules and constantly asking yourself three questions.:
- Have you crafted a plan?
- Are you testing your plan to confirm your plan is good?
- What are you learning from the failures you are (hopefully) experiencing?
Not sure how to apply this to your business, we should talk. Call me Matt Nettleton, Sandler Training DTB 317-678-8800.
