Over Half of Sales people don’t hit Sales Targets. You will have been in this group at one time or another. You might even be in the bottom half today. It is a fact of your sales life and career.
You entered sales to have the chance to earn higher than normal salaries and pay. Traditionally Sales jobs pay commissions over the base salary and remuneration.
You have put yourself into the mix to have the chance to provide for yourself and family, over and above what the normal provides. But there is a catch. Sales can be tough.
Getting yourself noticed by your sales manager is not a good thing because you are missing your sales target. With 55% of salespeople not always reaching their monthly quota you will, at times, find yourself in this group.
It is a natural part of your sales role. You will drop in and out of the target line. You know the highs and lows. Great Months. You earned great commissions. Bad months… Well, you know that feeling.
There are many threads that need to be pulled together to consistently hit your sales target. With the average sales win rate at 21% you have it tough. You have your research to make sure you are selling to the right person. You need to follow up after sales pitches. You deal with time wasters. You seem to have higher than the normal 60% of prospects telling you ‘not now’ more than 4 times.
It goes on.
Putting yourself in the top 2 out of 5 sales people is within your grasp. Earning your higher commissions, topping your sales leaderboards, winning the incentives are there for you.
There is a simple shift you can take that will keep you on the right side of the line.
In my 40 years of Business and sales, and teaching salespeople to be successful I found that there is one key thing that will set you up to succeed.
You will have been given sales training by your company. You have your product and service knowledge tucked away. You will have ‘dry’ rehearsed your pitches and maybe even roleplayed with other colleagues and sales trainers.
All this is great. I have for you other sales tips and training articles you can use. But, despite all that, there is one thing you can do that will get you on the right footing with your prospect.
Shift your thinking.
Yes, shift the way you think when you are going into a sales pitch. It does not matter if you sell face to face or over the telephone.
This Works.
I found that by teaching this to my sales teams, they improved their individual success rates.
And you can too.
What you do, is you shift your thinking. You need to stop thinking that you are going to ‘Sell’ to your prospect.
Instead, you now approach each chance, each prospect, each opportunity as a chance to –
‘Help the individual achieve what it is they are looking for’
That’s it. Sorry to disappoint you, but if you were looking for fancy techniques or slick actions, there aren’t any.
You want to be a good salesperson? Then help as many of your prospects solve their key problem. That is it.
There is a famous statement that you should write down…
‘Help enough people to get what they want and you will get what you want’
Your success.
Helping your prospect comes from asking the right questions. The better your quality of questions, the better you get to understand how you can help your prospect to solve their challenge.
You then can tailor your pitch to that individual. You are personalising your engagement. Clients and prospects remember that. They draw on the sales meeting as where you helped them to find a solution.
So, to sum up. Change the way you think about your role. Instead of being a sales professional you are a ‘Helping’ professional. Corny, yes. But whatever you tell your mind, your actions and output follow accordingly. Help your prospects and you will close more sales and ultimately earn more commission.
For FREE information on sales challenges and what you can do to sell more and increase your income, head over to my page, You are Missing Sales by Missing the Basics