Moving Forward: Overcoming the Valleys in Selling

Skip Anderson

We've all had sales situations where we've spent a lot of time and effort to close a particular deal (maybe a big one), but ended up losing it. Or, we've gone through periods (sometimes extended) where our sales were far below our expectations.

How do you handle these situations? Do you get over it easily, or does it continue to infect your thinking for a long period of time? What techniques do you use to get past these inevitable valleys that exist between the peaks in our profession? Do you know what other colleagues do to handle these situations that seem to work particularly well?

Please share your thoughts...

Skip

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Skip Anderson
Selling To Consumers | Sales Training to Sell More™
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Houston

I try to learn from these situations and put them behind me as soon as possible. I want to go into each sales call with a clean slate.

MitchM

The only one thing I do is talk with my next prospect - there's no time to lament the past or waste it in futile activity.

MitchM

Lance_Best

My $.02; spend some time to find what happened, what could have been done differently.

Did cost come up too early, was the initial offer to high, to low? Don't dwell but do learn. Also, when you have a big one in the fire, be sure to keep searching out multiple new deals. So you don't get stuck with all your eggs in one basket.

If the one sale is taking all your time, reserve an hour each day to contacting potential new prospects or researching a new advertising venue.

Also, realize each no you get brings you closer to a yes, so keep trudging and don't forget to take some time to celebrate the victories!

Regards,

Lance

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Lance Best (Data Consultant)
Professional Lists Inc.
www.professional-lists.com

Skip Anderson

Lance, how do you do at those things? Are you good at it? Can you let go of failures easily and quickly?

MitchM

People who are successful have nothing to let go of - understanding what that means is critial.

MitchM

SpeedRacer

What does that mean?

MitchM

I call/prospect one hundred people in the next four days. None of them want what I offer. I move my file forward to contact each in four - six more weeks with another offer - some I scrub from my list because they tell me to or I disqualify them.

So the week goes by and I make no sales. Did I fail? NO! I successfully completed my week's work.

This isn't playing with the meaning of words - it's looking at the practical reality of what I do, what I want to accomplish, and how I go about doing it.

When Skip asks: can you let go of failures easily? I wonder what he means as "failure" and "easily."

MitchM

Lance_Best

Skip:

I'd say I am fair to medium at it! LOL

I am a competitive type, and don't like to fail. However, because I don't like to fail, I try to take the time to learn from my failures, so that I don't continue to trip up over the same things!

Also, I am a logical person, I know statistically it takes no's to get to yeses. I want to get my nos out of the way quickly! I try to remember that failures are part of sales, not getting a sale is not necessarily a failure, it's a part of the job.

Regards,

Lance

Skip Anderson

This paragraph, from the original post on this thread, may answer your first question:

"We've all had sales situations where we've spent a lot of time and effort to close a particular deal (maybe a big one), but ended up losing it. Or, we've gone through periods (sometimes extended) where our sales were far below our expectations."

I don't have a definite definition for "easily", I just mean "relatively easily".

Skip