Building on from last week’s topic ‘The Optimistic Sales Professional’ I thought I would extend the theme further and explore the topic of ‘Peak Performance in Prospecting’.

A peak performing prospector is a salesperson who displays passion, self motivation and results focus. They are disciplined in their approach, evaluate and purse viable opportunities while remaining optimistic, resilient, committed and energized. They are ethical at all times and display empathy, respect and courtesy towards their prospects. To help us look at this in more depth let’s look at what is considered peak performance.

What is Peak Performance?
“Sustained, continuous performance at world’s best level in the long-term.”
(Peak Performance. Business lessons from the worlds Top Sporting Organisations, 2000). Peak Performance is a term that is frequently used in sport. In recent times, the term “Peak Performance” has made its way into business. There is a strong parallel between competitive sport and prospecting. The concept of peak performance is a very useful metaphor for understanding what it means to be a top performer.

Peak Performance involves reaching your optimum potential, and maintaining this level of performance consistently over the long run. This does not mean all the time as in 24/7, but the ability to be consistently effective every day in a measured and disciplined way. You may like to read an interesting book called ‘The Corporate Athlete: How to Achieve Maximal Performance in Business and Life by Jack L. Groppel (Author), Bob Andelman (Author). To build on your understanding of Peak Performance in prospecting, I encourage you to read the following vignette of a salesperson who is regarded as being one of the best in their field in developing and growing new business.

Vignette
“Karen won the award as the Business Development Manager of the year for a leading manufacturing of computer software. Throughout the past 3 years, she consistently surpassed her sales target. She described herself as “highly driven and very competitive”. Karen started off doing 40 cold calls each day. She now has 250 accounts. She says her greatest thrill comes from converting dormant accounts into and active ones. Karen believes that “it is vital to establish and build relationships.” She hates losing a sale. When it happens, she says “Its usually because I haven’t grasped the opportunity quickly enough”.

Karen completed a personality assessment. Her personality strengths were found to be persuasive, extremely confident, definitely willing to take risks when necessary, and very assertive, disciplined, and gregarious. She came across as a truly outgoing, engaging individual who genuinely enjoys opportunities to meet new people and to transfer her knowledge. She enjoys persuading others or “guiding” them to what she believes is the best solution for them. And, because of her confidence and assertiveness, she won’t hesitate to share her point of view – which because of her discipline and focus, is usually very well considered. Underlying all these qualities is a fundamental urgency, or a need to get things done “now”. This sense of urgency enables her to capatalise on opportunities and not allow commitments to go unfulfilled.

Karen’s approach impresses customers because she conveys a definite perspective, in a confident manner, and wants to make sure her solution is thorough and, ideally delivered before it is even expected.”

(Adapted from Greenberg, Weinstein & Sweeney, How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer. The five Qualities that Make Salespeople Great. McGrawHill, 2001).

Now having looked at person who is considered a Peak Performer in prospecting, consider the notion of Peak Performance as it relates to you or your sales team. Do you believe you and/or they have been performing at a peak level over the past 12 months? Review the options below:

• Not at all or very rarely
• Occasional Glimpses
• As often as not
• Almost Always

If you have ticked one of the 1st three options what do you and/or they need to do to get to a Peak Level of performance in your prospecting? If you believe you already are there, try to identify opportunities for further improvement.
Areas to consider may be:

• Skills
• Knowledge
• Motivation
• Attitudes
• Your well-being/energy
• Mindset around prospecting
• Prospecting Plan
• Clarity/direction/information/tools from management etc.

I wish you happy and prosperous selling.

With the Sub-prime market issue in the US and its effects on countries and the world’s stock markets featuring as a daily major news item at present who can blame people for getting a bit nervous and worried about the future. You can see it with the panic selling of shares and so forth. However if we let this and other issues get to us and allow ourselves to blow things out of all proportion we can, in turn, create our own demise. Whilst it is critical for business owners and sales people to keep abreast of market changes and challenges we can let real and, more often than not, perceived threats get the better of us.

Choosing your state of mind, your attitude, is critical in business and in life, especially in more challenging times.

Now I am not suggesting we ignore real threats, they need to be taken and dealt with seriously, however many people, especially some sales people can let negative comments, tougher market conditions, hearsay, etc. really affect them unnecessarily.

Once they begin to believe the hype and only focus on the negative they can find themselves in a self-doubt spiral which leads to further problems such as:

• Financial: Loss of revenue; No new sales revenue coming in; Existing customer business drying up; Losing customers to competitors
• Emotional: Excessive worrying & anxiety about poor sales revenue results; Doubt about doing this type of work; Lack of sleep & exhaustion; Loss of confidence; Self doubt about one’s ability to do anything.

This doesn’t; help anyone. Selling in the good times is easy however being able to pick yourself up and keep moving forward in the tough times is the real test – a test of character.

Take the Mortgage industry or instance. Up until recently you only had to bump into someone in the street and you could almost be assured of selling them a mortgage. Now the market is much tougher and lenders are tightening up on credit. Many mortgage brokers and managers are feeling the pinch. The talk amongst many is negative. Who will make it? Who will survive? It will be interesting to see. Yet people create their own reality. All I know is that complaining and feeling sorry for yourself will not help the situation and is likely to lead to even less sales. Yet if they only looked in the market rather than at their navel they would find there is still business to be had it is just a little tougher to find.

I learnt early on in my sales career to keep on going and put in the effort by doing the activities that count especially in the hard times. Prospecting is key. Without it nothing else happens. I can recall in my recruitment consulting days in the late 80’s and early 90’s when jobs were really hard to find and many recruitment consultants were going out of business that some of my colleagues and I looked at the market and said “just because jobs are harder to find doesn’t mean there aren’t any jobs. Companies still exist. Someone will be in business and someone will want to hire good people so let’s get prospecting and find those companies who still want to hire staff and be in business.” And you know what? By taking that approach and having a positive, determined attitude, my colleagues and I had some of our best results ever. We looked for opportunity and it was there. Whilst everyone else was in despair and whinging about how hard it was, we were getting the work.

So where did I get the determination from to keep on going? Was I smarter than any one else? Certainly not! Upon reflection I think it boiled down to two things for me:

1. I looked at the market in a more rational manner and saw the evidence for what it was – there was still work out there to be had.
2. I was also fortunate enough to have to participate in a demanding sport – swimming. I trained 50km+ per week over a 10-year period as a teenager and competed at state and national level in my sport where you were tested mentally and physically everyday. I learnt to be tougher, to get through the pain barrier and to watch out who I listened too. Many a time at race meetings some swimmer would try and get into our heads and scare us to put us off our game. Me, I just tried to shut them out and focus on my own race, my own goals and listen to what my coach said.

Little did I know that I was using some tried and true techniques that still serve me very well today. Years later I would read about and come to realise that I was practicing, amongst other things, the following technique:

Thought Realignment

Thought Realignment is a special adaptation of the self-talk techniques introduced by ancient philosophers. In modern times this concept has been popularised by psychologists Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, and sensationalised as a modern breakthrough, which it is not. It asserts that most, if not all, of our distressful feelings are caused by the view we take of things and situations in life not the things and situations themselves. How we speak to ourselves can really affect positively or negatively the outcomes of our actions.

We all speak to ourselves every day and what we say has an amazing impact on what we feel and do. Thinking negatively about your market place and seeing only bad things will affect your prospecting and sales efforts. Letting other peoples negative thoughts pollute yours can bring you down as well.

In essence what you say to yourself influences what you feel about yourself or a situation which alters what you do. If you want to change what you do then modify what you feel by altering what you say to yourself. You will be amazed how it can transform your day and your results. If your self-talk is going to be self enhancing it needs to be:

• Objective
• Logically consistent
• Goal supportive
• Enlightening
• Releasing
• Uplifting

A good way to check if your self talk is helping you or harming you is to say to yourself the following: Now say “I want to..” and “I have to..” silently to yourself and feel the difference in energy flow in your body. Which one is easier? Which one feels effortless? You will know what I mean when you do it. I know which one I am choosing.

There are basically two types of self-talk

1. Goal Supporting Self-Talk

“I want to …”
“I’d like to …”
“It would be better if …”
“I’ll try to …”

“…and it’s OK

2. Goal Obstructing Self-Talk

“I have to …”
“You have to …”
“I’d better …”
“I can’t …”

“…or else!”

Now there are some realities we need to face such as I know we have to breath, eat, sleep etc. to survive. And I know we have to prospect to sell however taking an ‘I want to’ approach to these tasks makes life and getting sales a whole lot easier and much more enjoyable. So watch whom you let near your mind (especially yourself) and go get the opportunities that are out there waiting for you.

Happy Selling.

• Need you daily fix of self-help tapes/CDs or guru books to get you pepped up to sell.
• Have a fragile positivism about sales, which bursts at the slightest criticism.
• Can’t wait to get out of sales to get a “real” job.
• Secretly ashamed of being in a sales career – this isn’t what I should be doing, my mother wants me to be a dentist.
• Fear the loss of approval of your friends, family or peers because you think they will think less of you if you are in sales.
• Don’t like being called a sales person – prefer titles like marketing consultant or pre-need counsellor (yes, this one is for real).
• Other departments, friends or family deride your career choice in sales.

Sound familiar?

Over the years I have met many sales people who are really good at selling, have all the ingredients, write great sales results and are highly valued by their companies, yet they never feel satisfied in their sales career. The afflicted sales person just feels a sense of unease and guilt about being in sales, a disquiet that never seems to get resolved.

Imagine waking up everyday feeling ashamed about what you do and carrying that unresolved guilt with you wherever you go. It’s exhausting. Often times it sits beneath the level of conscious awareness, silently gnawing away at your confidence, your feeling of worthiness, until one day you can’t take it anymore.

Always looking for greener pastures as a way to resolve this feeling, sales people afflicted with this issue often quit highly successful sales careers to go into management roles or something else that doesn’t require selling. And no one even questions why.

Many settle for something beneath their abilities and some go into management or worse still – sales management or sales training. What hasn’t changed is that they still carry this unresolved issue with them.

Then they often unwittingly pass it on to their unsuspecting peers with comments and negative attitudes towards sales. If in sales management or sales training, their sales team cop comments like “Oh we don’t call ourselves sales people here”, or “We don’t have to sell – we consult”, as well as “The product sells itself”, “All sales people are pushy and rude and we aren’t like that here, are we?”, etc.

This then perpetuates the whole cycle again by instilling mistaken beliefs about selling and creating doubt and shame about sales in a whole new group of people. And still no-one questions why? Just go into some professional services firms or non-sales departments of business and listen to how they deride sales and sales people.

What are their criticisms based on? Why do many people still hold a negative view of selling? Do they know what good selling actually is? Are they basing their view of selling on bad business practices? How did people develop poor and misinformed views of selling?

Maybe one reason is that in the 1970s, 1980s and early to mid 1990s, many sales teams were trained to be either:

• Aggressive and adversarial in their negotiations with clients leaving people feeling battered and worn-out in the process to get product or service.
• Very product focused – “show up and throw up” sales approach.
• Soft and insipid, basing their sales efforts on mateship or special deals (often bribery) which usually resulted in a loss for the business they represented.

Or another reason may be the persistent myths about the tricks and secrets to sales success touted by so called “sales gurus” who teach people how to get sales at your client’s expense.

No wonder many people shy away from selling as a career. Whether they are conscious of it or not, they don’t like how selling has been “sold” to them. I don’t blame them.

I have spent much of my professional career helping people rearrange their thinking and understanding about what good selling actually is. Techniques of manipulation and intimidation, stimulus response selling and rapport alone do not work and never have for long-term sustainable client relationships.

Relationships do not work or last if they are forced or coerced.

I think “selling” needs a PR makeover. Old selling mythology needs to be superseded by a more accurate view of what good selling actually is. Check the view of selling as defined below and see how it sits with your belief system and values. How does it resonate with you?

View of selling

You have a view of selling that is positive because selling helps sales people and companies understand and identify what their customers’ needs are, then helps them fill their needs in an ethical and professional manner and allows for profitable ongoing business relationships.

Whether you have the skills or not to sell, you shouldn’t be afraid or ashamed of what good selling actually is. Remember: Everyone lives by selling something.

Done well, sales is an honourable career we can’t do without.

We all know people want to buy from people they trust! They always have and they always will, if they can. In fact, top performing sales people have always sold based on trust, transparency and doing what they said they would do. And their view of selling was always positive and honourable, despite the prevailing paradigms mentioned above.

If you’re still not sure, check the following implication – to make more money, you have to like sales people, and that sales people are morally and ethically inclined!