Do the Sales Two-Step to get there
Anyone can build their sales territory into a great empire of profitability for themselves, their company, and their customers. In my early days of sales, I sometimes needed to repeat the mantra, “Build the empire one step at a time” or simply, Build it”.
Starting in sales can seem like an impossible journey. You see accomplished veteran salespeople in your company who seem to have it all: big sales numbers, customers who love them, and they look like they are not even working hard. You, on the other hand, have none of those… yet. That “yet” is a very important qualifier.
It can seem overwhelming to think of how much effort, luck, and rejection it will take to achieve that for your territory. And it will be all of those and more. It’s going to take far more effort, luck, and rejection than you can imagine. But I want you to be armed with one method of getting through it all and building your empire. The Sales Two-Step.
Step one is to start. Get started today. Start with the smallest step possible. Make it as easy to get started as you can. Don’t wait for a specific day or time of the year, like the first of the month or after the new year. Get started on a Tuesday at 11:20 am. Don’t announce it to the world. Just do it. Don’t wait for an announcement, a meeting, or a big kickoff. Just do it right now, right after reading or listening to this article.
Start with the highest likelihood of success. If it’s prospecting, call on the absolute most likely prospect in your territory. And start with the easiest product or service to sell. Get success as early and as easy as possible. Nothing fuels your motivation like having success. It
Maybe you need to gain 10% market share in your territory to accomplish your goal. Maybe you need to sign three new accounts a month to become a president’s club winner. Maybe you need to move twice the amount of product to have the commission you want for your personal financial goal. All can seem unreachable until you get started. Focus all your energy on taking that first step.
Start with one cold call, one prospect, one product with one customer. Start with one phone call, one appointment, or one connection online. Focus on just that one to get your body and mind to start. The inertia it takes can seem heavy. The good part is that stops most people. That’s what makes it a great accomplishment to build an empire. Most will not. But you will know the first secret – Start.
After starting, the next secret is to push that ultimate goal off to the side of your thoughts. Put the daily steps of starting in your daily thoughts. Focusing too much on the giant goal of winning the President’s Club or becoming the top seller in your area can actually have negative effects. It can make every daily step seem unimportant or fruitless. Don’t forget it, but your daily focus should be on the small steps to get there.
Now, step two is the tough one. Step two is to never stop and continuously improve. When you start, not only will small efforts seem unimpactful, but they will also be bad. You will fail, fumble, and blunder through your first attempts. Your cold calls will seem like an absolute disaster. Your first times applying sales training methods will seem like you didn’t learn anything in class. The first time you practice closing questions, they are going to seem extremely award and result in rejection.
Think, “Not a problem. I need to make a small improvement in the way I approached the closing. I just needed one more piece of information to make it more successful.” For an even greater affirmation, say this sentence out loud to yourself a couple of times. Then, repeat step two. Make another cold call. Ask another closing question. Improve it slightly again and again until it becomes natural for you.
A year from now, you will be amazed at how far you have come. So far, you will laugh at how bad you were versus how good and confident you are today.
It took me three weeks to sell my first prospect. It was ten bags of horse feed. It seemed big at the time and felt like it took forever. But it was a start. From there, it took daily reminders that I needed to start again, with a new prospect or product line. It took daily reminders that the empire is built one sales call at a time. It took me recognizing that results won’t show up daily in sales reports. Much of the daily activity will go unnoticed by anyone in the company. That is, until the sales start coming in and growing.
Three years later, I had the great honor of winning the President’s Club two years in a row. More importantly, we developed a great business for the feed mills I sold from. Operations, administrative, and salespeople had careers due to the sales that came from those awards. Even more importantly, customers developed their successful businesses through those sales. They thrived in their feeding operations and kept their pets alive and well due to those sales.
How about you in your sales efforts? What is the easiest step for you to take today to get started? Schedule it on your Outlook calendar or wherever you get your reminder notices. Schedule it for 5 minutes. Make that first step something you can accomplish in five minutes. You can always take more than five minutes if you want or schedule it for an hour next time. But it’s hard to argue that a five-minute task is too big to accomplish. Everyone has five minutes to start efforts towards building a great sales empire.
Good luck. Now, Start!
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