By best selling author and speaker, Tim Connor, CSP
Selling can be a difficult and challenging career if you don’t master many of the skills and attitudes necessary for success. The price of failure is always higher than the price of success. Fail to learn the necessary skills and you could be looking for a new job or career, master them and you can write your own ticket to the stars. Even if you have been in sales for many years and are reasonably successful, maybe even a sales super star, you might want to review the following to see where you might benefit from some minor improvements or adjustments.
The following list is in no particular order of importance. Not doing or having any one of them could contribute to your demise. You will also notice that many in the list are either directly or indirectly related to or impacted by others in the list.
1.The inability to cope with, handle or overcome rejection and failure.
2. The inability or unwillingness to control your attitudes no matter what is going on around you in your organization, the economy or the world.
3. Talking too much. Going into a verbal diatribe or feature dump delivering more information than the prospect or customer wants, needs or can handle.
4. Giving product or company focused rather than customer focused presentations.
5. Not effectively managing time, resources or your territory.
6. Focusing on what is wrong, missing, broken or what you can’t do rather than on what is working, right or you can do.
7. Not building your self-esteem. A poor self-esteem can have a negative impact on your prospecting and probing skills, your closing ability and your negotiating confidence.
8. Poor listening skills.
9. Prospecting too low in the organization.
10. Giving information before you get information.
11. Lacking passion for what you sell, what you do or your organization’s mission or purpose.
12. Are transaction rather than relationship focused.
13. Don’t ask for the business.
14. Losing control of the sales process. Letting the customer or prospect take over.
15. Keep inadequate or poor sales records. Or the failure of carefully evaluating the records you are keeping.
16. Project your buying prejudices into the sales process.
A lot to think about, yes but if you want to become a sales super star these would be a good place to start. Want answers to these and other sales issues and challenges? Read my best selling books: Soft Sell and Your First Year in Sales.
