July 2008
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The keys to sales success.
When Vince Lombardi took over the Green Bay Packers some years ago, he was asked what he was going to change. The players? The plays? The training process? How was he going to turn this team around after a string of failures?
Lombardi is reported to have replied, "I am not going to change anything. We will use the same players, the same plays, and the same training system. But we will concentrate on becoming brilliant on the basics. Before I am finished, we will be the best team in the National Football League in kicking, passing, blocking, running and catching. We will run our plays with such precision that the other side will know what we are going to do, but will be unable to stop us. We will be brilliant on the basics."
This principle applies to you as well. Your job is to become brilliant on the basics of selling. This begins by identifying the seven essential parts of the professional selling process and then developing a plan to upgrade your skills in each area.
Fortunately, all sales skills are learnable. It does not matter how well you have performed in different areas in the past. You can learn any sales skill that you need to learn to achieve any sales goal that you can set for yourself.
Everyone in the top 10% of your field started in the bottom 10%. Everyone who is doing well today was once doing poorly. The top people in your industry were at one time not even in your industry and did not know that it existed. But once they began, they committed themselves to becoming excellent in each of the key result areas that make up the successful sale.
Improve a Single "Weak" Skill
Here is an important discovery. Your weakest key skill sets the height of your income. Just as a chain breaks at the weakest link, the skill at which you perform the worst determines how many sales and how much money you will make. By improving a single skill, the one skill that can help you the most, you can increase your sales and your income faster than in any other way.
Here is the key question: What one skill, if you were absolutely excellent at it, would help you the most in doubling your sales and your income?
This is one of the most important questions you will ever ask and answer. The answer usually jumps into your mind. If you are not sure of the answer, it is essential that you find out, and find out quickly. Ask your manager. Ask your best customers. Ask your colleagues. You must know your weakest skill if you are going to improve in that area and unlock your full potential for higher income.
Measure Your Abilities for Success
In this article, I will give you the first three of the seven key result areas of selling and show you how to measure your ability in each area. Next month, I will explain the next four critical skills, and how you can master each one of them.
Give yourself a grade of 1 to 10 in each of the key result areas of selling: 1 means that you are low in that area and 10 means you are highly skilled in that area. Be honest with yourself. If you are not sure about the accuracy of your answers, review your personal scores with your sales manager, or someone else who knows the truth about your sales ability.
The starting point of personal improvement is when you become absolutely honest with yourself and others about the areas in which improvement can have the greatest impact on your sales.
1. The first key result area of selling is prospecting. This is defined as your ability to get face to face or ear to ear with qualified prospects who can and will buy your product or service within a reasonable amount of time.
Please note that this does not mean that you talk to lots of interesting people who may or may not buy your product sometime in the future. Prospecting requires that you spend more and more time with people who can buy and pay for what you are selling in the short term.
A score of 10 means that you are fully occupied, every hour of every day, and you have so many prospects that you cannot take on any more. You probably have an appointments secretary who keeps a backlog of people who are eager to talk to you and to buy from you. If this is your situation today, you would give yourself a 10.
A score of 1 means that you are a lonely person. You sit around the office like the Maytag repairman. You don't phone anyone and no one calls you. You probably drink a lot of coffee, read the newspaper, play on the Internet, and chat with your friends much of the time.
It is easy to give yourself a grade on the subject of prospecting. Just calculate what percentage of your time is spent each day with prearranged prospects. If it is 50%, give yourself a 5. If it is 70%, give yourself a 7.
2. The second key result area of selling is establishing rapport, trust, and credibility. People will not buy from you until they like you, trust you, and are convinced that you are their friend and acting in their best interest.
A score of 10 in this area means that you are a positive, cheerful, high-energy individual with a warm, empathetic personality. You also get along wonderfully with almost everyone you meet. A score of 1 means that after you talk with someone for the first time they never want to talk to you or see you again.
3. The third key result area of selling is identifying needs accurately. The biggest mistake that you can make when you meet or talk to a new prospect is to assume that you already know what this prospect needs, wants, and is willing to pay for. Each prospect is unique. In the initial stage of your conversation with the prospect, your single focus is to ask questions and listen carefully to ascertain whether or not a genuine need for what you sell exists in the mind and heart of the person you are talking to.
A score of 10 in identifying needs would mean that you have a careful series of questions, from the general to the particular, which you go through, one by one with the prospect to clearly ascertain if the prospect needs the product or service you are selling. At the end of your questioning process, it is abundantly clear to both the prospect and yourself that the prospect can use, benefit from, and pay for what you are selling.
Scoring 1 means that your approach to each prospect is random. You ask whatever questions pop into your mind and say whatever falls out of your mouth. For you, every sales call is a new adventure. You have no idea what is going to happen or how it is going to turn out. The mark of the professional is preparation. He has thought through and prepared every part of the sale conversation. He leaves nothing to chance.
Give yourself a grade on the three key result areas of selling explained above, and think about how you could become better in each one. Next month, I will explain the final four skills that you require to move to the top of your field.
Be brilliant with the basics.
About Brian Tracy:
Brian Tracy is one of the top sales experts and trainers in the world. He has taught more than 2,000,000 sales people in 46 countries. He is the president of Brian Tracy University of Sales and Entrepreneurship online, committed to teaching ambitious individuals how to rapidly increase their sales, income and profits. For a free one-hour CD, "How to Become a Sales Superstar," click on briantracyu.com/success.
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