5 Things Winners Quit

What? We’ve all been told for years, “winners never quit and quitters never win”

Learn to ignore that adage and start quitting to win!

A couple of months ago, I wrote the article, “Quit these 7 Behaviors to Sell More” for Feed & Grain Magazine. After thinking about it for a while, I found 5 more areas that quitting can help catapult your sales success.

Leading Salespeople quit spending time on unproductive customers, prospects, and activities.

Warren Buffet says “Really successful people say no to almost everything”. In selling, I interpret this to mean successful people have a lot of opportunities, distractions, product lines, customer segments they can spend time on. However, they get really good at saying no. The trick is to know which to say yes to and which to say no to.

The power of focus is critical when you have too many customers, too many opportunities and too many prospects for one person. Productive people aren’t given 25 hours in a day. They simply learn to weed out the less productive areas of their work. To do that, it may appear rude or uncaring, but this ability leads to their success. I find these people are continually challenging the limits on the least amount of time they can spend to get something done effectively. Thus, freeing them to go where it counts.

Leading Salespeople quit treating everyone the same.

Ever see one of that social media post that says, “I was raised to treat the janitor the same as the CEO”? I understand the message, but it in sales, this is 100% wrong. The sign is referring to respect for others, not for how you treat your customers. However, I frequently run into Ag salespeople who want to treat everyone the same. As if on a noble quest to prove they aren’t a jerk, they treat everyone the same. From the two-horse account up to the 2,000-cow dairy. From the 20-acre hobby farmer to the 2,000-acre crop farmer, these noble salespeople give equally of their time. BIG MISTAKE.

Yes, you respect everyone. No, you don’t treat anyone poorly because they are a smaller volume customer. But that doesn’t mean they get the same time, intensity of support nor level of resources your company offers. And YOU are one of those resources, which means you go more and do more for the larger contributors to your business.

Leading Salespeople quit making the same mistakes

Ever have that aunt or uncle that keeps marrying the wrong type of person? It seems they never learn and keep finding Mr. or Ms. Wrong. I see salespeople do the same thing. They keep selling the wrong accounts.

Who is Mr. or Ms. Wrong?

The kind of accounts that don’t pay
That don’t buy enough to make it worth your time
That drains your technical expertise but only buy a little bit. They spread their purchases so they can drain every company of support and expertise
The big account that drains your margins/profitability
The overly obsessed customer that dominates your daily life. Big or small, it doesn’t matter. You can’t get away from this customer physically or emotionally and they drain the happiness out of your day.

Leading Salespeople quit commiserating

It’s the weather! It’s the politicians! It’s the economy! You name it. We’ve all had those customers that groan and bemoan constantly about things that no one can change. Leading Salespeople figure out a way to either quit commiserating or shift the focus onto something they can affect. I’ve written many times on this and speak on it frequently in my keynote presentations. It’s so tempting to jump in, commiserate with our customer and feel connected with them.

Leading Salespeople figure out how to move past it and get onto those subjects or customers they can help.

Leading Salespeople quit doing things manually

Whatever you do that requires a lot of manual activity (typing, writing, filing, organizing, coordinating) can most likely be done faster by a computer, a temp or not at all. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge believer in organizational skills. See my past blog “The #1 Salesperson Killer”. However, besides just being messy, the biggest reason that people don’t get organized is that it takes time. The urgent activities of our day rob us from organizing our sales activities to become more effective. To stop selling and take precious time to set it up electronic or heaven forbid use a CRM program, just doesn’t happen.

Leading Salespeople figure out a way to do it electronically. One of the best ways to do that is to borrow from your peers. During the sales workshops I put on, when I get to this subject, there are always two or three people on the team that already have an Excel program or an electronic system for organizing. Ask them for a copy. And If you are that person that created the electronic system, then share it.

Hiring a temp may sound like something only upper management does. However, in today’s Gig Economy, there are several online resources that are extremely inexpensive to use and they do great work. Fiverr is one that I have used. The name is in reference to most jobs costing $5. You need to clear it with your manager, but I find them very quick and easy to use. For example, assume you just got back from GEAPS, Commodity Classic or the Midwest Horse Fair. You have 100’s of contact information on little slips of paper because your company didn’t have a way to collect them electronically at your booth. What do you do? Sit at your desk and type them in? Dump them on someone’s desk in the office and make them do it amid all their other responsibilities? Or for $10 have someone enter them into an Excel spreadsheet and send you the file when done?

As you drive down County A or Route 4 today, take some time to think about your focus, your activities and your customer list. Are there customers, places and activities you need to quit in order to move to a higher performance level? Which of these five areas is a place where you can quit, so you can sell more? Pick one and start there. Good Luck!