Why Tenacity And Persistence Are Essential For Sales Success
Imagine for a second that you have set up a new business selling a new form of consulting service. There’s nothing like it in the marketplace and you are going to have to educate your clients on its worth. After a bit or research you settle on a price and go to visit half a dozen selected clients to get their opinion. Unfortunately, every one of them says that it’s too expensive.
What do you do?
A) Reduce the price to match what they think?
B) Re-evaluate the product and add more benefits?
C) Start negotiating furiously?
D) Visit some more clients?
Let me tell you that when I ask this question of delegates 90%+ of answers fall into the A, B or C categories. Now I admit that there is a lot of information missing here but I believe that the answer is D with maybe a small pinch of C.
Apparently, Colonel Sanders (aka Mr. Kentucky Chicken) was rejected 1012 times before someone bit on his idea! Read the biography of most successful people and you will see as many failures as successes.
Success in sales and business means playing the long game and that means tenacity and persistence. If you keep going after everyone else gives up and goes home then you are going to be successful.
Copyright Gavin Ingham 2008, extract from Real World Sales Attitude!
Achieve Your Goals From ‘Motivate People’ By Motivational Speaker Gavin Ingham
One subject seems to have dominated my week this week and that’s goal setting and motivating using goals. As a sales expert and motivational speaker this is something that comes up quite often so I thought I would share with you one of the techniques from my book Motivate People which was published by Dorling Kindersley last year…
Using imagery is an important and often forgotten part of successful goal setting. By clearly visualizing, your brain will be able to “experience” the achievement of your goals prior to your having achieved them. Repeat this exercise often.
- Pick a goal from one area of your life. Picture it in detail.
- Imagine stepping into the “you” in the picture and actually experiencing your achievement of that goal. Notice how it feels, what you see, hear, and think. Notice how others are treating you.
- Look into the future beyond your achievement of the goal. How does achieving this goal benefit all areas of your life?
- Look back at the past and your route to achieving your goal. Note your successes and the obstacles you overcame. Notice how different they are now that you have overcome them. Appreciate how you feel about your achievements.
- Imagine yourself walking backwards from your future achievement to the present. Notice what resources you needed and what you learnt from specific steps you took to help you along the way.
- From the present look forwards to your goal and appreciate the journey. Map out key stages of the journey and the resources you require right now.
Copyright Gavin Ingham / Dorling Kindersley 2007.
Motivate People will help you to develop skills, realise your full potential and make your life work.
- Discover the core attitudes and skills to motivate yourself and others, and ensure your team delivers results.
- Practical techniques, effective tips, five-minute fixes and case studies equip you to success in the real world.
- Set your goals and check your progress with self-assessment exercises.
If you want to get hold of copy of this useful little book you do so in the UK here Motivate Peoople UK book or in the US here Motivate People US book.
Is This Time Management? A Review Of The 4-Hour Workweek By Timothy Ferris
Review of The 4-Hour Workweek; Escape 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich. Thus Timothy Ferris titled his new book. And what a book…
There has been a lot of hype about this book. Some of it good, some of it bad. Take two conflicting and contrasting review comments on Amazon…
* 5-Star highly recommended, "A must read"
* 1-Star Shameless Self-promotion, "Please – please – don’t waste your time with this book. Catchy title – but that’s about it."
One thing is for sure, this book has generated a lot of chatter and a lot of reviews and they’re pretty diverse. Some of it is very negative saying that Timothy is exploiting people in the 3rd world, being underhand and devious, lacking integrity… and far more besides. It made me want to know what all of the noise is about. I could go on but if you want to read the rest go and read them yourself here.
In my opinion the reason for this avalanche of conflicting feedback is the whole concept behind the book. Think about it… To even consider a 4-hour working week or anything near it you are going to have to throw away many assumptions and practises that you currently have. You are going to have to break the mould and act radically differently to those around you. You are going to have to forge a different path. Let’s tweak a well-known NLP tenet for our own purposes here…
If you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll get what everyone else is getting.
99.99% of people do what everyone else is doing. They go to work for around about 9. They leave around about 5. They take lunch breaks. They work for someone else. They start work after school or university and then they retire as early as they can. Sometimes they get adventurous and take a gap year or a career break. Some even retrain and do something else…
Timothy proposes something else. Something radically different. And it is different. This, as Tim says himself in his opening chapters, is going to push a lot of people outside of their comfort zones. People don’t like it when someone challenges their "comfy" existence. They lash out. Surely, their world must be real. So they go on the attack to prove and pretend that "their" world is the only possible reality.
A couple of the reviews even claim that Timothy’s material is stolen from Jack Canfield, Michael Gerber and others but this is not true. For sure, many of his principles have been tried and tested elsewhere but Tim takes them on to another level, he puts a personal and more radical twist on them. Certainly Jack and Michael obviously did not think he had plagiarised their material when they said,
"It’s about time this book was written. It is a long-overdue manifesto for the mobile lifestyle, and Tim Ferriss is the ideal ambassador. This will be huge."
Jack Canfield"The 4-Hour Workweek is a new way of solving a very old problem: just how can we work to live and prevent our lives from being all about work? A world of infinite options awaits those who would read this book and be inspired by it!"
Michael E. Gerber
My thoughts…
This is a good book and well worth the cover price. One reviewer said that it was "overpriced"… they must have approached it with the wrong head on.
This book does exactly what it sets out to do. It outlines a radically different and mind-stretchingly challenging approach to time management, work ethics, career and life. There are tactics and tips in here for everyone. I have worked incredibly long hours, been involved with SME set up businesses, played the corporate game, worked for myself and consulted with businesses from one man bands to major corporates. If you choose to look for it there is something in here for everyone.
IF.
What’s more, it is an enjoyable read. I read this book in one sitting without putting it down and I knew from the first few pages that this would be the case.
I do not want to work a 4-hour week. I do not want to spend huge amounts of time in Berlin, Thailand or Argentina. I do not want to do many of the things that Tim has done.
But I can apply many of these things to get me more of what I want. The art and skill of personal development is in taking someone else’s material and making it work for you.
That is what you need to do with this book. So what will you get out of this book?
- An enjoyable read and an interesting story
- Your ideas and perceptions about what you "have to do" and how you "have to act" seriously challenged
- Some sound concepts for you to adapt and play with particularly around time management and personal effectiveness
- Several resources to help you apply the techniques
My favourite concepts and ones I will be picking up, expanding upon, testing out and trying and discussing with you are on outsourcing, email and prioritising. So look out for those in the weeks and months to come.
I recommend that you read The 4-Hour Workweek. I think it is unlikely that you will follow all of the ideas inside of it nor do I think you should. Its unlikely you will choose to copy Timothy Ferriss’ life but this is not the aim of this book. Read it. Challenge yourself. Find better ways to work and be more effective.
See look, it’s 9am, I’ve finished this and I have not checked my email yet. That does feel better already!
Sales Training DVD: Power Canvassing For Confident Cold Calling
Eliminate the fear of cold calling and secure more face to face time with senior decision makers.
You can probably count the number of salespeople on your teams who enjoy making cold calls on one hand. Maybe even on one finger! Yet proactive client calls and gaining new business meetings are a crucial part of winning more sales and growing your business.
Even experienced sales staff must be able to ring new clients and get meetings with key decision makers, fast!
After writing a recent article on the importance of controlling your attitude before, during and after a call cold call one sales manager kindly offered his thoughts with me. He mailed me directly and said, "I keep my staff motivated during calls by threatening them with the sack if they don’t stay motivated!” Errr, yes thanks for that! With my Power Canvassing cold calling sales training DVD you don’t have to resort to such radical tactics so fast!!
Get your sales teams motivated, buzzing and on the phone!
We all know the importance of telephone canvassing for hitting targets and budgets yet telephone canvassing is one of the most misunderstood and loathed areas of sales.Trying to get consistent, proactive, successful cold calling results either individually or from a team is one of the most difficult challenges facing sales organisations in business today.
In this Power Canvassing sales training DVD I cover the core aspects of cold calling including the 6 stages of a proactive new business call, the importance of planning and preparation for success, how to deal with gatekeepers confidently and professionally, how to create a strong 1st impression with an opening Power Statement, how to personalise your calls for differentiation, how to get clients involved, how to close for that all important meeting, how to deal with client objections and rejections and much, much more!
You only have one chance to make a 1st impression…
One area I cover in detail is the importance of using a proven structure such as the one from the “Ingham Sales System” to maximise your success on the phone. When I ask sales professionals how long they think that a client actually listens to them before making an initial decision about the call they all know that it is only a matter of a few seconds. Follow that up with a question about the importance of those first few seconds and someone always says something about it being crucial.
Why then do few sales people take the time or effort to really maximise this opportunity?
I have done some research here and I think this is quite useful. When we advertise for sales people we use words like "opportunity", "flair", "dynamic", "entrepreneurial" and so on. Whilst this may be the right thing to do, it attracts candidates who are attracted by possibility and opportunity.
But! Sales consultants also need to be able to follow structures. Problem is that a “possibility” sales person will say stuff like "If you stifle my individuality I won’t be able to sell" and “I don’t like structure”. Get real – I don’t like oily fish but it’s still good for my heart! Every success has structure behind it. If you want to get truly flexible then you need to get structure. If you employed an administrator to file and they filed wrongly you wouldn’t accept it just because they said that they had “didn’t work well that way” so why sabotage your business by opening calls poorly because of a similar excuse?.
In Power Canvassing sales training DVD I teach an incredibly simple yet powerful 5-part Power Statement which gets results…
- Initial introduction.
What you should and should not say. This allows you to test your approach, for example… does using your company name at this stage invite an initial objection that has nothing to do with this part of the call at all?
- Gaining client permission.
By asking at the right time and in the right way, “How convenient is it to speak?” we get our client assenting to and listening to what we have to say. - The reason for the call.
This answers the client’s main objections, “Who are you? Where are you calling from? What do you want? Why are you calling me?”
- WIIFC (What’s in it for the client).
Critical to the success and credibility of your call. Being able to position your call so that it is personal and targeted at the client needs is critical to your sales success.
- The Sales Bridge.
A clever little technique that we use to link to parts of a call and to pre-frame out many client objections before they even utter them. The Sales Bridge keeps the call moving and helps to keep you (politely) in control.
You need to keep your calls about the client not you so that they want to listen to you. Avoid words like "tell", "show", "sell", "demonstrate" and avoid making assumptions such as "we can show you how to improve…” .
These are just a few tips from Power Canvassing sales training cold calling DVD programme. If you want to explode your sales results and be a champion cold caller then you need to unlock all of the strategies on the DVD programme. At £97 it’s a snip so pop on over to my site and grab one for you and your teams right now. Alternatively, have a look at some of the other books, audios and DVDs reviewed on this site.
Sales Training Book: Objections! Objections! Objections!
I know that many of you will have read my first sales training book "Objections! Objections! Objections!" but for those who haven’t, here is an excerpt from the end of the book where we start to pull all of our sales skills together. If you haven’t read my book then you really need to try and borrow a copy from someone! It’s super easy to use and incredibly powerful… or so my clients tell me… 
"Conversation 3: The Existing Supplier
Client: “I think that I had better stop you there. I am totally happy with my current suppliers.”
Sales: “That’s fine. The reason for the call was merely to set up a meeting to explore areas of mutual interest. How’s your diary looking towards the back end of January, say the 24th or the 25th? Which would be better for you?” (Bearing in mind that the objection was not even a question all the salesperson has to do is acknowledge it and move)
Client: “Well, I’m always busy but I just don’t see any point in getting together as I’m not looking to change suppliers?”
Sales: “That’s fine. I’m not asking you to change now merely have a look at what we’re involved with. We’ve worked with several of the major players in the market place to help them to increase revenues and maximise profitability. Like you, I’m very busy. I’m sure that there would be some mutual benefit in getting together. When you look at those days, which would be the more suitable, the 24th or the 25th?” (Acknowledges again but this time gives a bit more. Note the embedded commands and the controlled close “when you look at those days”)
Client: “The 24th but I don’t see any point. I’m happy with my suppliers. I really don’t want to change.”
Sales: “John, I’m not asking you to change, merely to agree to a meeting. Building the correct supplier relationships is essential to any business and I’m sure that you had great reasons for working with your current suppliers. Do you mind me asking what they were?” (Agrees again, uses a link statement and then moves to understanding the situation better. Note this is the start of using a Stepping Stone)
Client: “No, of course not. We used to use a lot of suppliers but we found that we were not getting the levels of service that we needed. We need to be able to control our suppliers and get maximum benefits from them.”
Sales: “Service is certainly an important aspect of any relationship – what are the critical elements that you look for?” (Questioning to understand)
Client: “Our operation down here is massive. We have 5 sites and 1000 employees. We’re shipping kit out at least twice a day. Some of our clients need to be able to phone up, order and receive delivery within 48 hours. We can’t hold enough stock to do this so we need a fast and reliable service from our suppliers.” (Stating needs now)
Sales: “Sounds like you’re pretty busy down there. How much stock are you ordering in a typical week then?” (Pacing and leading)
Client: “It all depends, several thousand pieces. It’s a handful for any supplier.” (A ha!)
Sales: “I suppose that it must be. What kind of challenges do you get?” (Not leaping in too fast!)
Client: “Not a lot but when they do occur it’s mostly just around the fact that it’s difficult for any one supplier to cover the changes in our stock usage.”
Sales: “John, that’s exactly why I’d like to come and see you because we’ve worked with several of your competitors in helping them to secure a fast and reliable service with total flexibility. I’m sure what we do could really complement your existing suppliers as regards to your changing stock usage. What time on the 24th would be the best for you?” (Uses the Stepping Stone and links the “because” to the client’s own needs and in his own words. Clever use of “complements” too and then a simple close)
Client: “Oh, I guess sometime in the morning.”
Closes out for the meeting."
Copyright Gavin Ingham 2004. Of course, if you want to invest in your own copy then you can at Amazon, buy Objections! Objections! Objections! sales training book.
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