No one will ever reach perfection and the history of the world has clearly proven that point. If you are one of those salespeople who believes they are doing their best and there is no room for improvement, your are just kidding yourself. In reality, you have probably become complacent, lazy, delusional, bored, lost your focus, or become infinitely wealthy. There is nothing you do that cannot be improved upon, even if the degree of improvement is insignificantly small. Watching the Olympics is a lesson in the psychology of the human spirit. There are no limits to one’s ability and every record is just waiting to broken, even if by only one thousandth of a second.
You can become better in every aspect of your sales process. Have you ever made a consistent effort to improve your performance? I see salespeople every day reaching new sales targets they never imagined possible. Why, because they understand their sales process and then looked for areas of improvement. Selling is simple in theory and yet complex in application because no two sales opportunities are exactly the same. However, in its simplest form, selling is comprised of four main categories: Prospecting, Presenting, Romancing and Closing. Within each of these broad catagories, every salesperson can find areas for improvement. Here are just a few ideas to cause your mind to ponder ways you can sharpen your sales skills.
Prospecting: Are you taking advantage of your bucket of happy satisfied customers? They can provide three different types of opportunities. First, you can find additional opportunities with them. Second, you can ask for and receive referrals to other prospects. Finally, you can ask for and receive a letter of recommendation that endorses you as a qualified supplier.
Presenting: Are you assessing the true needs of the prospect before you begin to tell them about your product of service? To begin to sell before you assess the needs of the prospect is like putting the cart before the horse. Do you spend the majority of the time talking, or do you ask the questions that will cause the prospect to reveal their pain. Salespeople should spend the majority of the time listening to the prospect.
Romancing: This is a subtle way of following up with a specific purpose without offending and asking the two most worthless questions pertaining to sales, i.e. “Do you have any questions?” and “Have you made a decision yet?” Romancing provides an opportunity to provide additional information necessary to make the sale. It is also an excellent tool for building and strengthening the relationship. Romancing affords you the opportunity to be with the prospect when they make their decision.
Closing: Do you evaluate each sales opportunity whether it is won or lost? Identifying those things done well in addition to recognizing those things that could have been done better will raise you to the next level of performance. Closing the sale is a process and to be successful, you need to perfect your process and then follow it regularly. If your sales closing ratio is not where it should be, discover areas of improvement and implement them.
Every salesperson can improve their performance and until you have become perfect, continue to evaluate, modify and refine your process. Set achievement goals each month and challenge yourself to reach and exceed them. You will never know how good you can possibly become until you make an effort to do just a little bit more each day.
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