By Brad McDonald
Have you ever attended a one-day sales seminar – packed with great closing tactics, nifty ideas for overcoming objections, and slick methods for delivering rock-em, sock-em presentations … only to find yourself a few days later doing the same things you did before the seminar? What happened? Where did all the great ideas go? Why hadn’t you implemented what you learned?
Short-term sales training typically addresses sales skills. Attendees learn great tactics from masterful sales trainers. But this same training never covers the conceptual problems (a.k.a. headtrash) that plague most sales or business development professionals. All the skill training in the world won’t help much if the headtrash is not eliminated first.
Here are five conceptual problems that affect most of us in sales at one time or another and to one degree or another.
BUY CYCLE
How do you treat salespeople? Do you bust their chops for a lower price, pump them for free information, and then say you need to “think it over?”
People sell the way they buy and buy the way they sell. However you treat salespeople is how you will expect and allow prospects to treat you. If you can’t make a decision, don’t expect your prospects to make one.
NEED FOR APPROVAL
Most of us human beings want to be liked, for it’s more fun than not being liked. But a problem begins when we want to be liked more than we want to make a sale. We all have psychological trash we’re carrying around. And a lot of it has to do with not being liked or loved by the right people: parents, spouses, and friends. If you want to leave a sales call with your prospect liking you more than you want to leave with his check, you might have an approval problem. Remember: sales is no place to get your emotional needs met. Sales is a place to go to the bank.
NEGATIVE SCRIPTS
When I was in third grade, our neighbors bought a new car. As my parents and I marveled at it, I asked, “How much did it cost?” Mom reminded me that it’s not nice to ask about money. In ninth grade, she discovered I was bumming dimes and quarters from my classmates in the lunchroom. This time she reminded me it’s not nice to ask for money. Years later I came into sales and had to ask prospects about and for money on a daily basis. But Mom was standing on my shoulder telling me: That’s not nice. We all have scripts from early in life floating around our heads: Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t bother people. You’ll never amount to much. It’s never OK to fail … and others. Examine your scripts and make sure they are not standing in the way of your sales success.
BECOMING EMOTIONALLY INVOLVED
When your mortgage payment depends on making a sale or when you think you’re about to finally close The Big One, it’s tough to stay objective. Think like a brain surgeon. You don’t want him getting excited when he’s cutting on you. Whether it’s reality or not, your attitude in front of a prospect should always be: I’d love to work with you but I’m financially independent and I don’t need your business. Once you are emotionally involved in a sales process, you’ll find it difficult to be objective and you won’t be able to negotiate from a position of strength.
MONEY CONCEPT
How much do you really believe you are worth? How much do you really believe your services are worth? If you grew up without a whole lot of money, it’s likely that deep down you have a belief that you’re not really worth very much.
In sales, you can work for days or weeks without making anything and then one day in about an hour you can make a $9,000 commission, that is if you can bear the intense negotiating skills of your prospect who’s threatening to cancel the sale if you don’t lower the price. But if you have a weak money concept you might start to waver, feel guilty, and lower the price, and your commission, in the process. Remember, you are making exactly what you believe you are worth, not a penny more or less.
Conceptual problems are not easily or quickly corrected. Doing so takes a concerted, long-term effort.
If you want to hit a hole-in-one in sales, take the headtrash out first, then you’ll have the emotional ability to put your great skills to work.
