"I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” – Muhammad Ali
To live your life as a champion salesperson, you must go through the same training process as other top professionals whether they are athletes or astronauts, fire fighters or fighter pilots.
Training is not about just exposing you to and making you aware of successful sales techniques and strategies. Training should condition you through repetition to act and react in certain ways. This conditioning becomes a way of life based on rules, principles, and systems developed to ensure your success.
Many years ago I read another quote that was a “lightbulb moment” for me. Made me think of training and conditioning in a completely different manner. It made me begin to understand that excellence, or becoming elite, doesn’t come from talent alone. There’s a price to be paid for excellence by anyone who is or strives to be elite in whatever their chosen field. That quote comes from the US Navy Seals, “Under pressure, you do not rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training. That’s why we train so hard.”
In our Sales Mastery program, we train and coach many proven successful strategies and techniques. However, one of the most important conditioning principles is to maintain a healthy self-esteem. You can’t be a champion – work effectively and enjoy long-term success – if you don’t feel good about yourself. Ironically, you fill your day with activities that have the potential to chip away at your self-esteem.
You make prospecting calls to people who either don’t want to talk to you, or if they do, don’t have the time when you call.
You make presentations to people who should buy, but won’t…can buy, but don’t.
You hear “no” more often than you hear “yes.” It’s one rejection after another.
What can you do? You must be conditioned to not take personally the interactions you have with prospects and customers. If they reject your product, your service, your company, your structure, it’s not a rejection of YOU. And, in the rare instance when you don’t click with a prospect, and they do reject you…so what? Maybe they don’t get along with anyone. Maybe they were having a bad day before you showed up on the scene and rejecting you is the only way for them to feel good about themselves. By rejecting you…ruining your day, their day is now better by comparison.
Your training must condition you to become mentally and emotionally tough. You must be able to accept a no, even from those who should have said yes, and then move on. If there’s a lesson to be learned from the failure, learn it, apply it, and subsequently benefit from it. You never really fail until you stop trying. It’s part of the training. If you don’t quit, you will live your life as a champion.
Dan and Lisa Nausley
Lisa & Dan Nausley of Sandler Chattanooga have developed extensive Sales Mastery and Management Programs after more than a decade of training and coaching exceptional teams across the country in sales, leadership, and executive coaching.
