I can honestly say I did not enjoy the early years of my sales career. I initially found it hard, relentless and sometimes really distressing. I was asked to do things I didn’t always understand that significance of. I often felt overly scrutinised by the constant monitoring of activity and performance by my managers. I worked in tough markets in tough times and sometimes wondered if it was worth it. I felt under pressure and sometimes wished I didn’t have to sell at all, however I came to realise that this tough introduction to selling was what I really needed to prepare me for the future. In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson “Everyone lives by selling something’.

Over the years as my sales career evolved, I began to learn a lot more about myself and came to really appreciate the lessons I had learned in how to lead an honourable, successful career in sales.

Would I trade my experiences and tough lessons for something easier, more enjoyable? No not at all. I am glad I stuck with it because now I have a range of life skills that are serving me very well under many situations especially right now.

Make no bones about it Selling as a profession is a tough job because it requires self discipline, quick thinking, creativity, persistence, resilience and regular self reflection. As I have often said ‘Selling is not for the faint hearted’.

In pursuing a professional sales career, there is a lot to consider and integrate over time. You cannot learn how to do it well in 5 minutes. That is why I resonated with the article “Properties of the ideal global citizen” by Bernard Salt, which featured in The Australian 20 November 2008. In particular the final paragraphs of the article focused on what I would describe as a test of character.

As Bernard states in his article, an HR Director of a Paris-based financial institution was lamenting the flightiness of Generation Y wishing they would sometimes trust the organisation. This HR director went on to say that “sometimes professional and personal development is best advanced not by doing what individuals want but by doing what the organization wants them to do.”

He continued, “Personal growth isn’t always about doing what you want, or doing what is easy. It’s sometimes about doing what is hard, by enduring, by overcoming, and by persisting. This is how true expertise is gained.”

Like Bernard, I agree completely.

Over the next few years we need ourselves and our people to sell consistently and competently. This may not go down well with everyone in your business, but it is the reality – they all need to help with the sales initiative. Selling is one of the fundamental business functions we need to ensure is not left to chance

Making ‘selling’ a part of your business skill set is critical regardless of your job title in today’s busy and competitive world. I truly believe ethical, trust based selling skills are life skills you can use and apply anywhere in any role – personally or professionally.

While you cannot acquire someone else’s sales experience and use it as your own, you can learn a sales process to accumulate your own experiences. To learn it well requires you to stick at it and persist. The current market conditions present a real opportunity to hone your selling skills and acquire this experience and you can only acquire the experience for yourself and it may be a test of character.

Enjoy it. Happy selling.

As mentioned before, Sales and Service roles are not for the faint hearted and can often take their toll on your good nature, your energy and your ability to deal effectively with frustrating issues, especially when you put in the effort to do the ‘right thing’ by your customers and it is not appreciated, acknowledged or actioned.

At the end of a long day or week dealing with lots of people, pulling together various deals, solving problems and keeping your energy levels up and being on your best behaviour, you could be forgiven for being a bit ‘short’ if things don’t go according to plan and something falls short of your expectations.

To manage our frustrations, sales and service people can resort to all sorts of remedies:

• Some go and have a quiet drink after work (hopefully not too many)
• Others talk to their colleagues or friends about it (watch out though for electronic conversations i.e. Virgin Atlantic staff who were sacked recently for this very thing)
• Some get some physical exercise to burn off the stress
• Others further develop their communication skills and behaviours to help them deal with challenging customer situations
• While others simply let is run off them like water off a duck’s back (reciting OM).

However taking out your frustrations directly on a prospective customer is a big NO NO. No matter how irritating they may be.

I understand that not all customers are ‘good’ customers, in that the ‘not so good customers’ can cost your business too much to service, or abuse the privilege of your offering, or just don’t fit what you do. Letting these customers down gently but firmly and ensuring they can be referred to something more appropriate for their needs would be the ideal outcome.

However ‘letting fly’ at someone regardless of their viability to your business is not in anyone’s best interests, especially in a networked world where news can travel fast and you never know who your customers or prospects know.

Recently I wrote about my inconsistent service experience in “Be consistent and keep your customers happy” talking about this very issue. And more recently I received an email from a young, smart, sassy, educated friend of mine (read gen Y) who sent me a string of emails about her customer experience at the hands of frustrated service provider. NB: I have kept it anonymous. Needless to say the emails speak for themselves.

Initial Email (Friday 24 Oct 2008); Subject: Bali Quote for your blog
Hi Sue,
From the top down is how the emails went regarding Monica’s and my experience with a travel agent who was helping us plan our 2009 holiday- it is all very self explanatory. Lastly, I have included my email that was sent back to her. FYI I never met the Travel Agent , but Monica told me that she was laughing at how unorganised we were, rolling her eyes, and making comments such as “about time” when we agreed to something over the phone.

Hope it’s useful reading!!
Steph

Email 1 (Thursday 23 Oct 2008); Subject: Bali Quote
Hi Steph,

Here is the quote from XXX (Travel agent). Have made an appointment with her Saturday 25 Oct at 12 so see you about 11:45. Go through it, try to get a chance to look at hotels so you know what standard we are staying in.

See you Saturday

Love Monica.

Email 2 (Thursday 23 Oct 2008); Subject: Cancel Saturday appointment

Hi XXX (travel agent)
My name is Stephanie. Monica and I had an appointment with you on Saturday 25th October at 12pm regarding our trip to Bali in May 2009.

Thank you for your quote and assistance so far but as we are a bit unorganised, we have decided to change a few things around and would like to be sure of what we want before bothering you so please cancel our appointment for Saturday and take the hold off the discussed flights.

Apologies about the inconvenience and thanks again for your assistance.

Kind regards,
Stephanie.

Email 3 (Friday 24 Oct 2008); Subject: Bali Quote
Hi Monica,
I received an email from Stephanie saying that the both of you will be canceling your appointment on Saturday. As I have put in a lot of work into quoting you numerous placing in Bali and held off the $100 deposit until Saturday as a gesture of good faith, I am very disappointed that you would cancel this. I understand that you both have to sort out what you both want to do and where you want to stay however delaying the booking may cost you a price increase.
I hope when you both make up your minds I will be able to help you with your bookings.
Sincerely,
XXX (Travel Agent)

Email 4 (Friday 24 Oct 2008); Subject: Bali Quote
Dear XXX (travel agent),
Of course we were appreciative of your time and did realize that wanting to book a $5400 holiday would be hard work. Unfortunately your email proves it is obviously too hard.

However, may we firstly point out that you wrote ‘FIJI’ in the quote rather than Bali, which suggests you did not care about what you were preparing anyway.

Secondly, we came to you as a travel agent to pay you to research and recommend places for people to go and to prepare quotes, so apologies about the ‘disappointment’ but we never committed to anything with you at the time. You also knew that we were still making decisions and negotiating things with each other and we were planning to come back to you with final decisions within a few weeks. We were appreciative and courteous the whole time in dealing with you and did nothing to deserve your email.

Thirdly, in regards to your good nature of putting off the $100 deposit until Saturday we have it under good instruction that we have 7 days post holding to place the deposit and confirmation on this flight.

Finally, when we both make up our minds we can guarantee that we will not (nor will anyone we speak to who is planning a holiday) be bothering you or XXX Travel Agent Business again with our bookings and perhaps you should reconsider sending out an email such as this to potential customers in the future.

Regards,
Stephanie and Monica.

In dealing with frustrations, especially trying to keep sales coming in, it is often more courageous to remain calm and collected and try again. Here is a little saying I find most helpful in these and other frustrating situations.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.
—Mary Anne Radmacher

Take deep breaths and I wish you happy and prosperous selling

Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior.

As part of my own development and in an attempt to keep my mind as open and fresh as possible, I take to reading all sorts of things. On my current reading list is a very interesting book called “Punished by Rewards” by Alfie Kohn, author, speaker and educator. He writes about the trouble with “gold stars, incentive plans, As, praise and other bribes”.

In light of current discussions and debates about the issues surrounding CEO performance bonuses and incentives, and incentives paid to sales people and other employees, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the possible impact of incentive and rewards systems on the quality of our decision making, the effect on workplace performance and sustainable business practices. I warn you this may not sit well with some of you.

The following is excerpt is taken from the Gurteen Knowledge Website, which reviews the book I speak of.

Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you’ll get that.

We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train the family pet.

In this book, Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behaviour are similarly ineffective over the long run.

Promising goodies to children for good behaviour can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.

Step by step, Kohn marshals research and logic to prove that pay-for-performance plans cannot work; the more an organisation relies on incentives, the worse things get. Parents and teachers who care about helping students to learn, meanwhile, should be doing everything possible to help them forget that grades exist. Even praise can become a verbal bribe that gets kids hooked on our approval.

Rewards and punishments are just two sides of the same coin – and the coin doesn’t buy very much. What is needed, Kohn explains, is an alternative to both ways of controlling people.

The final chapters offer a practical set of strategies for parents, teachers, and managers that move beyond the use of carrots or sticks. Seasoned with humour and familiar examples, “Punished by Rewards” presents an argument that is unsettling to hear but impossible to dismiss. See here for an interview with Alfie Kohn.

When I read this book I cannot help but look at the current financial markets debacle and the consequences excessive greed and unethical rewards systems.

The impact being that it is left up to the rest of us to mop up the mess. Further food for thought…

Just one idea can positively transform your life, career, income and wealth.
As I have written before, in uncertain times, we can let the negativity of current events and others consume us or we can continue to look for opportunity. Excessive worry, however, can often cause us to lose sight of our goals and can limit our creativity and problems solving capabilities just when we really need them.

These tough times call for us to be even more innovative, inventive, creative and persistent. Some of the most successful sales people are the most adaptive and creative people you can meet, especially when it comes to finding new markets and new ways to solve customers’ problems with their products and services.

As the saying goes “Necessity is the mother of invention’. And in these tougher times it is not only necessary to keep our sales activities going and ensure that have enough people to speak who can work with us but to think creatively about how we going to do that.

Does your thinking or sales approach need a refresher?

If you are feeling in a bit of sales slump here are some questions to consider that may help you keep your ideas fresh, check for any blind spots and help you create opportunities so you can keep your prospecting and sales efforts on track:

• What are the current boundaries or rules in your business, team or area of expertise?
• What are the rules that can increase the likelihood of success in your business, your team’s field of expertise? Rules can be formal (written down) or informal (spoken or implied). How do these rules help you solve problems?
• List 3 times when you didn’t listen to an opportunity and it hurt you, your team / business. What can you learn from this?
• What were the rules you followed that kept you from seeing or taking advantage of those opportunities?
• What changes can you make to your thinking to increase your imagination and flexibility and create more sales opportunities?
• What is impossible to do right now, but if it could be done, would fundamentally change you, your team and your business for the better?

Often times our customers can have the answers to these question also. So if nothing get out there and ask them for feedback about how you can all work together more effectively and creatively get through these challenging times in good shape.

Did you know:

• Over 50% of sales people give up at 1st contact if they get a ‘NO’ from the prospect never to go back to that prospect again .
• At the 5th contact 7% of sales people are left to speak with the prospect to see if they can do business together.
• At the 8th contact there is only one sales person left to work with the prospect. Hopefully it is you.

Many sales people, especially those new to sales, often take it personally when a prospect says ‘NO’. Many fail to persist and often fail to favourably position themselves to ‘leave the door open’ for future contact thus limiting their sales opportunities even further.

Now I understand there can be a fine line drawn between persistence and harassment, however in order to have a steady stream of sales coming in the door we need to ensure that we have a regular mix of prospecting activities happening on a daily basis.

Sometimes we will strike viable and interested prospects and other times we come across viable but not interested prospects. Don’t burn those viable and not interested prospects as they may become viable and interested in the future. But you will never know if you don’t go back.

Here are some handy hints to make sure you can go back to these prospects in the future and give yourself a chance of working with them.

Don’t take it personally
If a prospect doesn’t commit to seeing you it could be due to one of the following reasons:

• They do not have a need right now
• They do not fit your target market
• They do not perceive having a need right now
• They have other associations or relationships
• They are not convinced they need to see you

Honourable retreat
Don’t give up. Whenever you make contact with someone make sure you always leave a favourable impression. Make sure they felt it was worthwhile to speak to you even if they don’t fit your target market – you never know who they might know.

Allow for the honourable retreat if they cannot meet with you now:

• Seek permission to send some information for their review
• Seek permission to follow up in the future
• Seek permission to keep in touch in case their current suppliers cannot support them in the future
• Ask for a referral

Follow up with persistent daily effort
Choosing your state of mind, your attitude, is critical in when prospecting and selling too. Successful salespeople know that prospecting doesn’t happen by chance it is requires a consistent and persistent effort.

Successful sales people:

• Diarise follow up calls
• Use a CRM to track activity
• Keep a number of activities on the go
• Prioritise
• Persist

Happy and prosperous selling