No Excuses! - The Power of Self-Discipline Part 14

At that time, I realized that I had taken my eye off the ball of sales. I then sat down over Christmas and designed a complete sales process. On January 2nd, I picked up the telephone and began making appointments. Over the next two months of aggressive and focused sales activity, I did more business than I had done over the entire previous year. I saved my business-and my home-and I never lost sight of that focus again.

One of the most important questions you can ask as a salesperson, entrepreneur, or business owner is whether what you're doing right now is leading to a sale. Ask this question of yourself repeatedly throughout the day. Every time the answer comes up "no," you must immediately stop whatever you are doing of lower value and turn your attention to sales generation. In addition, make sure that all the people who are responsible for sales in your company ask and answer this question in the affirmative all day long.

Overcome Your Fear of Rejection.

a.s.suming that you have an attractive product or service, one that is reasonably priced and suited to the current market, the biggest problem that telephone salespeople and outside salespeople face is rejection. The fear of rejection does more to sabotage a sales career and undermine sales activities than any other single factor. It is the major obstacle to sales success.

It takes tremendous discipline for salespeople to get up every morning and go out and face the inevitable rejection that they know they are going to receive all day long. Most people cannot handle this continuous rejection. Therefore, to avoid the emotional pain that comes with rejection, many salespeople engage in a series of "displacement" activities to avoid being rejected.

First of all, they make fewer calls. According to Columbia University, the average salesperson works about ninety minutes per day-in other words, only about one and a half hours out of an eight-hour day. He spends the rest of the time warming up and getting ready, shuffling paperwork, checking the Internet, reading the newspaper, chatting with coworkers, coming in late, leaving early, and taking extended lunches and coffee breaks. As a result, by the end of the day, on average, the salesperson has worked only ninety minutes.

Increase Face Time with Customers and Prospects.

When is a salesperson working? The salesperson is working only when he or she is ear to ear (on the phone) or face to face with someone who can and will buy within a reasonable period of time.

The rule for sales success can be contained in six words: "Spend more time with better prospects." There is no other way to generate a high, consistent, and predictable level of sales results.

Because of the fear of rejection, however, salespeople procrastinate and delay throughout the sales day, doing everything possible to avoid getting face to face with people who can say "no!"

The key to sales success, as I learned as a young salesman, is to realize that rejection is not personal. Prospective customers always say things like, "No, I'm not interested" or variations of, "I don't want it," "I don't need it," "I can't use it," "I can't afford it," "I'm not in the market right now," or "I'm happy with my existing supplier."

The professional salesperson realizes that these are simply normal and natural responses to any commercial offer in a compet.i.tive marketplace. Again, they are not personal-so don't take them personally.

Remain Positive and Optimistic.

The key to sales success is to eliminate the fear of rejection, to become so confident and optimistic that you can call continually all day long and still remain positive and cheerful. As Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."

There is a direct relations.h.i.+p between the number of new customer contacts you make and your level of sales. If you want to increase the number of sales, simply discipline yourself to call on more prospects.

When you increase your levels of sales activity, you also activate the Law of Probabilities to work on your behalf. You tap into the law of averages. You "work the numbers" to ensure success.

How to Double Your Sales Income.

Practice the "Minutes Principle" in your sales work. This principle says that, if you are earning all the money that you are earning today with only the number of minutes you are spending face to face with customers today, by increasing that number of minutes, you can also increase your sales.

With outside salespeople, we encourage them to double the number of minutes they spend face to face with customers. We teach them to use every bit of intelligence and creativity they have to increase the amount of time they spend talking in person with prospects rather than following the path of least resistance and allowing themselves to procrastinate getting out into the marketplace.

In almost every case, when a salesperson doubles the number of minutes that he or she spends face to face or ear to ear with customers, that salesperson's sales double as well. This is not an accident. It is based on law: the Law of Probabilities.

Control Your Sales Activities.

You can seldom tell where your next sale is going to come from. Therefore, you have to "cast a wide net" and speak to as many prospective customers as possible.

The actual sale itself is not under your direct control. It is controlled by a variety of factors about which you can do very little. But the activities that lead to sales are completely under your control. The rule is "Do what you can with what you have right where you are."

To achieve high levels of sales success, you must discipline yourself to plan your days and weeks in advance. You must discipline yourself to plan your sales activities-especially your prospecting activities-every single day, and then you have to discipline yourself to follow through on your plans and resolutions.

Improve Your Ratios.

There are certain ratios in selling that largely determine how many sales you make. These ratios vary depending on your level of experience and ability, the compet.i.tion, the prices of your products or services, and the general market. Nonetheless, these ratios always exist:* There is a direct ratio between the number of cold calls you make and the number of prospective customers that you will be able to talk to or visit.

* There is a direct ratio between the number of prospective customers that you see or talk to and the number of prospects that you can follow up on.

* There is a direct ratio between the number of people you follow up on with proposals and presentations and the number of sales that you close.

You can also think of this as a "sales funnel":* Into the funnel-i.e., the broad end-go your prospects.

* The second part of your funnel is your presentations.

* The third part is where you follow up and close the sale.

Keys to Sales Success.

You have two responsibilities when it comes to achieving success in sales:1. First of all, keep your funnel full. Always have more prospects to call on than you have time during the day. Never let your funnel become empty. Never run out of prospects.

2. Second, get better at each stage of selling. Study, read, listen to audio programs, and upgrade your skills in prospecting, presenting, and closing sales. The better you get, the fewer prospects you require in the top of the funnel to generate sales out of the bottom of the funnel.

Start Early.

Discipline yourself to make your first call early in the morning, by 7:00 or 8:00 A.M. When you start your day with a face-to-face sales call, you will be more energized and motivated to continue selling all day long.

Discipline yourself to cl.u.s.ter your calls in a small geo - graphical area so that you can get face to face with more people in a shorter amount of time. Many salespeople, because of their fear of rejection, spread their calls out over a large geographical area and then convince themselves that they are actually working when they are really simply driving from call to call.

Remember: You are working only when you are ear to ear or face to face with someone who can and will buy within a reasonable period of time. At all other times, you are "unemployed."

Set Higher Standards for Yourself.

Discipline yourself to act every minute of the day as if everyone were watching you. Outside salespeople require a higher level of discipline than people who work in the office where everyone can see them. Because salespeople are on their own, like guerilla fighters in the sales jungle, the temptation is never ending to slack off, to take it easy, or to go for coffee or lunch rather than to make sales calls.

To perform at your best, you must discipline yourself to work throughout the day-as though your sales manager was doing a "ride-along." Imagine that your sales manager is sitting next to you all day long. How would you work differently if someone were accompanying you and observing everything you did throughout the day? Whatever your answer, that is how you should work-even when no one else is around.

All Sales Skills Are Learnable.

To become one of the highest paid salespeople in your industry, you must discipline yourself to practice continuous personal and professional development. Read in your field every day. Listen to educational audio programs in your car as you drive along. Attend every sales seminar you can, whether sponsored by your company or not. Dedicate yourself to continuous learning as if your future depends on it-because it does.

The turning point in my life when I was a young salesman-frustrated and unhappy, going in circles, and barely making a living-was when I learned the Law of Cause and Effect. I learned that "if you do what the most successful salespeople do, over and over, there is nothing that can stop you from eventually achieving the same results and rewards that they do."

I learned that every salesperson in the top 10 percent started in the bottom 10 percent. Everyone who is doing well today was at one time doing poorly. Every person at the top of your field was at one time not in your field at all and did not know that it existed.

I learned that all sales skills are learnable. You can learn any sales skill you need to learn to achieve any sales goal you can set for yourself. There are no limits except the limits you place on yourself with your own thinking.

When you discipline yourself to become one of the top salespeople in your field, you will find that you will have turned an important corner in your career. Most salespeople do only what they have to do to keep their jobs. But those people who resolve to become the best in their fields accomplish far more than anyone else. Your job is to be one of them.

In the next chapter, we will talk about money and how the practice of self-discipline in this area can dramatically increase your likelihood of achieving all your financial goals.

Action Exercises:.

1. See yourself as the president of your own personal sales corporation, completely responsible for sales results. This is the att.i.tude of the highest paid salespeople.

2. Set clear, written income goals for yourself for the next twelve months as well as goals for each month of the year.

3. Determine exactly how much of your product or service you will have to sell in order to earn that desired income.

4. Determine how many individual sales you will have to make, based on your average size of sale and amount of commission earned.

5. Determine how many prospects you will have to call on, based on your current experience, to make this number of sales.

6. Dedicate yourself to continuous improvement in sales by reading each day, listening to audios in your car, and attending sales seminars.

7. Spend every minute of every sales day getting face to face with people who can and will buy from you in the near future.

Chapter 12.

Self-Discipline and Money.

"In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves; self discipline with all of them came first."

-HARRY S. TRUMAN.

According to insurance industry statistics, of one hundred people who start work at age twenty-one, by age sixty-five, one will be rich, four will be financially independent, fifteen will have some money put aside, and the other eighty will be still working, broke, dependent on pensions, or dead.

Most baby boomers today are planning to work into their seventies. Why is this? It is because they don't have enough money put aside so they can stop working.

The primary reason for financial problems in life is lack of self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control. It is the inability to delay gratification in the short term. It is the tendency for people to spend everything they earn and a little more besides, usually supplemented by loans and credit card debt.

Today, the savings rate in America is too low to achieve financial independence. After a lifetime of work, the average American family has a net worth of only about $8,000. People continue to spend and borrow as if there is no tomorrow.

The good news is that we are living in the most affluent time in all of human history. There are more opportunities to achieve wealth and prosperity today for more people and in more different ways than have ever existed in the history of man. It has never been more possible for you to achieve financial independence than right now. But you must make a resolution to do it, and then you must follow through on your resolution.