Cold Calling Campaign… Does This Look Like Your Office?
The cold calling campaign at Sales Inc. was not going to well! I’ve seen plenty of sales offices that look like this as I am sure you have too. Perhaps you’re looking at one now and pulling your hair out! It’s amazing the excuses that salespeople can come up with when trying to avoid contacting new and (even) existing customers.
If you don’t want your sales office to look like this then why not speak to me about organizing an inspirational and motivational sales talk for your next sales conference, AGM or away day.
When Your Prospect Or Customer Says, ‘No!’, What Do You Hear?
Here’s another question that came up recently. “When your prospect or customer says, “No!”, what do you hear? How do you react? Rejected or challenged? What advice would you give to somebody just starting out?”
As a sales motivational speaker I see the negative consequences of sales and business people dealing with this badly every day so here is my advice…
It’s not what is said, it is your interpretation that does the damage. How many people every year die of snake bites? The answer is none. People die of the poison, not the bites. Salespeople are not undone by “No” but by how they interpret that “No.”
If someone says to you, “We have an existing supplier”… what do you hear and what do you think?
Do you hear, like most salespeople, “We have an existing supplier so we’re not interested. Go away!”? And then think, “This job is rubbish, no-one ever has a need for our services.”
Or do you hear, like sales superstars, “We have an existing supplier which means that we’re in the market place and already see value in what you do”? And then think, “All I have to do now is find a way to demonstrate how we can provide a better service.”
One of the keys to being a top salesperson is getting, keeping and cultivating a positive, sales mindset. This can be done by reading good sales books, listening to sales audios, attending sales seminars, mixing with sales winners, employing a sales coach, learning from sales experts, focusing on what’s good about any event….
To someone starting out, avoid negative mood-hoovers,whingers and whiners, associate with sales winners, make sure you get plenty of the good stuff. Protect your positive mindset like it is a pot of gold…
Because it is!
Football, Fantasy & Sales Success
Over the last couple of weeks I have been enjoying watching sports on the TV – most notably the football and the start of Wimbledon. After watching England play half-heartedly against the highly motivated US team and then appallingly against Algeria, they showed some flashes of inspiration against the Slovenians but then sat back in the last 10-15 minutes and were lucky to hold onto their win. One of the commentators said that he would forgive them that and I commented to a friend at the time that the Germans wouldn’t have.
Today, against Germany, we saw an English team bereft of team-spirit, energy, commitment or passion. OK, so they got robbed of a goal at 2-1 down but they didn’t deserve to be in the match based on how they had played and now they’re not. On several occasions, when they lost the ball deep in the Germans half, the English defence were so slow to react and so slow to get back, my Mum would have got there faster. I am sure many people will put up many “excuses” for the result and many others will blame anything, everyone and Capello but at the end of the day the least you would expect is players representing their country to chase the ball down in defence as fast as they can even if they had no chance of getting there. It is was the World Cup after all.
On the BBC commentary they mentioned our “world-class” players and that they wouldn’t swop more than a couple for members of the German team. Well, I would, I’d swop the lot, that way we’d be in the running still. And as for “world-class”…
It doesn’t matter how much talent you have, if you cannot make it work on the night, if you cannot get the result, then it’s irrelevant.
By contrast, look at the tennis match between Mahut and Isner. Two tennis players battling on for 183 games over the course of 11 hours and five minutes. The final set alone accounted for eight hours and 11 minutes of that time – 98 minutes more than the previous longest match on record. Now that’s commitment. Two men who wanted to win. Two men determined to succeed. Two men not prepared to give in.
Or what about Federer’s first round match where the defending champion was forced to mount a courageous comeback against Colombia’s Alejandro Falla? Having faced numerous match points in the third set he eventually won 5-7, 4-6, 7-6 (1), 6-4, 6-0. Federer could have slinked off into the night. He could have packed his kit bag and lost three sets to love. He could have claimed “illness” or some imaginary injury after such a bad showing but he hung in there, kept fighting, got a break and eventually came out on top. Likewise, Isner and Mahut, for three days running, went out on court and slogged it out. Giving anything less than 100% was not an option.
I’m not going to try and second-guess the mindsets of the English football team. Nor am I going to try and imagine what was going on in the heads of Mahut, Isner or Federer. I am going to quite simply ask you a question…
What do you want and how much do you want it? What are you prepared to put in to get it? How passionate are you about ensuring that your dreams become reality?
Sales Psychology & Performance, LinkedIn Group
Check out my Sales Psychology & Performance, LinkedIn Group. As an author and sales speaker I get asked questions every day. Many of these are face to face, up close and personal but, increasingly, many of them are “virtual”. After an inspirational sales seminar many people email me to say that they enjoyed it and then ask questions…
I welcome and enjoy these questions. After all, helping people to improve their sales results and build the businesses and the lives that they desire is one of the primary reasons that I became a speaker in the first place. Interestingly, most of these questions come via email and are never posted on the blog. Despite my best efforts this has remained the case for several years now. After conversations with my clients about this I have concluded that clients are “used” to asking questions via email and are comfortable with this medium. Whilst I do my best to answer all of them, it can get quite time consuming and also a little repetitive with me constantly “reinventing” the wheel.
Most of my clients however do use and are members of LinkedIn. LinkedIn, on the off chance that it has somehow passed you by, or on the off chance that you are still trying to ignore it and pretend that it could not add value for you is, in my opinion, the business social network of the moment. The reason for this is that anyone can join LinkedIn and you can get as involved as you like or you can be as passive as you like but you will not get spammed by idiots or have goats or pies thrown at you like you might on Facebook (*more on my plans for Facebook another day!).
So to let everyone have their say, communicate amongst themselves, get access to my blogs and videos and ask questions I have started a LinkedIn group, Sales Psychology & Performance. If you are wondering if the group is for you, then here is my description of the group…
For sales professionals, sales leaders & professionals who want to maximize sales. This group is dedicated to people who want to share sales superstar strategies & approaches that win more sales. Join the discussions, read the blogs or share your favourite strategies.
So in short, YES, if you are reading this blog or are a member of my GavinIngham.com newsletter this group is for you.
To join, you need a LinkedIn account and you may as well link up with me whilst you are there. I see this group as a good way of keeping your sales edge sharp, sharing best practice and keeping up with the Sales Joneses! The group has grown to 450+ members in under two weeks and that is just from mentioning it on LinkedIn. This is the first time I have mentioned it to my readership. If you are wavering here is an idea of the kind of conversations going on currently…
Question from me…
What’s your most effective strategy for getting motivated?
Every sales professional has faced challenges and, at some point, every sales person has found themselves in a less than perfect state of mind. What separates sales superstars from more mediocre performers is their ability to bounce back and get straight back into the game.
What is your most effective strategy for getting yourself motivated, in the right state of mind and at the top of your game?
This currently has 24 fabulous answers. Here is one of them from Angela…
Something that resonated with me was a session by Hunphrey Walters (amazing man – look him up). He talks about a winning team mentality, but it works for the individual too. Here are a few points…
i) Set and celebrate mini victories. This took me back to taking exams and having a sweet whenever I finished a section. I still do it now, it’s just that the ’sweets’ have gotten a little bigger! So don’t wait for the end goal, make sure there are many along the way.
ii) Never leave the game early. There are a few premiership football teams that could have learnt from this one this year! It’s the same as motivating yourself to pick up the phone again when selling. Apparently it’ll take 6 contacts with a new client to gain business, on average. Most people give up on the 3rd or 4th. This knowledge helps in the sense that you can tell yourself that each call it a step closer to the 6th one.
iii) Pride in the badge. Paul Burton was right in that it really helps if you love what you do, but also if you love the company you’re doing it for. Wanting to do a good job for others is a motivator in itself.
There are 5 others, so look him up. His book is a great read too. ‘Global Challenge’ by Humphrey Walters.
Enjoy, Angela
Angela Cripps, Lander Associates
And another from Sean…
Great question!
I am not sure my method will work for everyone, but it seems to work for me.
I use the same method in the gym in the morning and the same method during the day. Quite simply I break down my day into easily achievable targets, whether it be run for the next 5 minutes at x speed, or call 10 prospective clients. Whilst carrying out this challenge, I am already thinking about what my next target will be and so my work or work out moves smoothly from one challenge to the next.
I will often summarise milestones or tasks that I need to reach or carry out during the day. This gives me a rough idea of the path my day will take.
Hopefully, not always the case, by the end of the day I have reached all of my targets and had a solid productive day.
Sean Burling, V-HR
Pretty good answers I am sure you will agree… so check out Sales Psychology & Performance and link with me on LinkedIn whilst you’re at it. Take the opportunity to sharpen your sales skills, boost your sales attitudes and get the sales edge…
Finding Your Personal Motivation, Part III
The final part of my quick video on Finding Your Personal Motivation. Thanks for your kind comments and thoughts on this one. We’ll be launching the all new GavinIngham.com sales training, personal and business success website in the next few weeks and we will be releasing a lot more videos. This will be one of the last in this more formal format as we’ll be over to a new, exciting format that will allow us to get you sales training and personal success tips more frequently and more often.
Finding Your Personal Motivation, Part II
When people find out that I am a “motivational speaker” they often ask me to motivate them as if it is something that I can do for them or to them. We’re often at a party or in a pub and it is posed as something of a challenge however, many times, it is deadly serious too.
Motivation is internal and the ability to motivate yourself is something that you can learn to do if you set your mind to it. There are many different ways to build self-motivation and hundreds of techniques that you could use. Here is part ii of my video short Finding Your Personal Motivation and these are some of my favourite strategies that you can use to help to develop your own personal motivation.
What Would You Achieve If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?
I was meeting with a good friend of mine, Andy Smith (NLP and EI trainer), the other day and, over a tasty Chinese buffet lunch, we were talking about “things that truly make a difference”. Interestingly, and despite all of the training courses that we had both been on, we were in total agreement that you could track back the things that had truly made a difference for us to a handful of techniques and strategies. Perhaps more interesting still was the fact that, even with our very different backgrounds, it was very similar topics that had made the difference for both of us…
And, most interesting of all, the really powerful techniques that really changed our lives were the simplest ones.
Now, I’ve talked before about how sales people and business owners ask for the “advanced” sales training strategies, rushing headlong into studying “advanced sales skills” when they’re not even covering the sales training basics so I’m not going to say again how important nailing important sales principles and reviewing and practising them regularly is…
I am however going to share with you one of my favourite ever questions…
What would you achieve if you knew you couldn’t fail?
A simple question, and one which is easily overlooked. Don’t make this mistaake. Really thinking about this question and your answers to it could well change your sales results, your career prospects and your life.
I was reminded of the power of this important question this week when one of my readers sent me the following passage…
“Let’s imagine that for one day only, you will be guaranteed success on every single new business call that you make, and you absolutely cannot fail……..
What time would you set your alarm in the morning?
What time would you start prospecting?
What time would you finish prospecting?
How many new business calls would you make?
How long would you take for lunch?
How long would you spend socialising?
How long would you spend in the supermarket?
How long would you spend chatting to colleagues?
How long would you spend on ‘admin’?Now, compare your answers to the questions above to what you actually did do today.”
You’ve probably seen a question like this before. You may have even thought, “Good question”. Perhaps you were even slightly motivated by it. But you probably moved on and read something else without really benefitting from the inherent wisdom behind this question.
If you want a great day, stop now and take a break. Get a coffee and consider…
How would you spend your time today if you knew you couldn’t fail? What would you do? Who would you prospect? What would you ask of them? What would you achieve? What would you ask for that you’re currently not asking for? Who would you ring who you are currently avoiding? What price would you aim for? What targets would you set for yourself? What would you stop doing? How would you deal with distractions? How would you protect your valuable time?
You get my point.
What are you going to achieve today?
Sales Survey 2009, The State Of Sales In The UK
I recently partnered Aaron Wallis sales recruitment in producing The State of Sales in the UK, a sales survey, the largest of it’s kind in the UK. Over a period of 6 weeks nearly 800 sales professionals competed the survey and the answers made interesting reading. I am going to be talking about some of the finding and what they mean for you in future blog posts but for now here are the headline findings…
- An impressive 31% of sales professionals are currently over target (28% of respondents were non-targeted) and despite what the media states only 4 in 10 sales professionals are either ‘on target’ or ‘below target’.
- Getting clients to make decisions, cold calling and sales admin/paperwork were cited as the 3 most difficult aspects of selling in 2009. (This would explain why my most popular training programmes this year are my cold calling, face to face selling and sales mindset programmes.)
- The two biggest motivators to keep sales staff (or what they’d look for in a new job) were i) opportunities for progression/career development, and ii) Their employer’s products, reputation and competitive edge.
- ‘Aggressive and Dictatorial’ were the most popular words to describe their line manager’s style though this was thankfully followed by ‘Supportive and Empowering’.
- 58% felt they did not receive enough training in their role and 36% had not received a single day of training in the last 12 months.
- The majority, 64%, would prefer the opportunity to earn £10,000 in commission than receive a straightforward £5,000 basic salary increase.
- Half would not accept a 50% pay rise if it would severely impact on their ‘work-life’ balance.
- ‘Better management and direction’ was cited as the biggest way to make a salesperson more successful (2nd was ‘Increased Marketing’, 3rd ‘Better Work/Life Balance’ and 4th ‘Training’).
- 96% of the respondents enjoy working in sales. Of the remaining 4% only 1 in 10 had planned to embark on a career in sales.
- A whopping 72% judged their career to date to be ‘7 out of 10’ or more.
- The way that the respondents personally measured success was i) ‘being respected by friends, boss and peers’ followed by ii) ‘loving relationships’ and iii) ‘peace of mind’. Status and material wealth was deemed as the major success measure by just 13% of the sales professionals surveyed.
- 70% of those that were unemployed had been recently made redundant.
- Only 11% of those in employment felt that their employer was dealing well with the financial crisis.
- Over 4 in 10 of the female respondents were Sales Managers, Sales Directors and Managing Directors, almost a two fold increase on 2007’s results. However all respondents that earned over £100K in the last 12 months were male.
- 53% had been 100% honest in every interview they have attended throughout their career.
- 44% were educated to HND or higher.
- Despite the economic situation 52% were given an increase on their 2009 targets.
- 56% of respondents felt that sales was the most influential department/division of their business.
- 65% felt that they could perform their line manager’s role more effectively than them (84% of these were male!) even though more than 8 out of 10 described their relationship with their boss as average or better!
- Surprisingly three quarters of respondents did not feel that an increase in green initiatives by their employer would have any positive increase on sales.
- More than 8 out of 10 of respondents considered themselves to regularly work under stress levels of medium or higher.
- 79% of respondents typically worked in excess of 40 hours per week with a third of the total working in excess of 50 hours.
Want to read more? Check out the full Sales Survey 2009.
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