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Fallacy: Years of experience, a good record, or professional “designation,” makes a salesperson a professional.
Reality: Hanging in there for a few years, taking a couple of courses, or applying for professional “designation,” does not make a one a professional.
Become genuinely interested in other people.
Most salespeople become professional visitors, product peddlers, or simply hard-working order-takers. Less than 25 percent of today’s sales population produces between 75 percent, and in some industries, as high as 90 percent of sales. This remains unchanged despite giant leaps in technology.
Most organizations accept this as the norm, a mistake that costs them millions in lost sales.
Product knowledge or industry expertise are no longer strong competitive advantages. Clients are impatient with salespeople who are little more than talking brochures.
Today’s customers want salespeople with high-level listening skills who can feed back to the prospect a clear summary of what they heard.
These salespeople will find the fit between their offer and their prospect’s needs and wants, and secure a commitment based on that fit rather than the old “ABC of selling: Always Be Closing.” Today’s savvy prospects are over these dated “professional selling” techniques.
Are salespeople made or born?
When I asked this question to 60 Realtors, their answers surprised me. Over 64 percent felt that salespeople are “born.” (It’s a fallacy!)
Today’s customers want salespeople with high-level listening skills who can feed back to the prospect a clear summary of what they heard.
Years ago, Football Hall of Famer Glen Weir told me, “Don’t let comments about ‘natural’ talent fool you. When a player weighs over 260 pounds and is coming after you, the natural reaction is not to block and tackle. It takes hours, months, and years of practice to instinctively react in a professional way.”
So what’s an ambitious salesperson to do? After 40 years of making sales calls and coaching others to high performance, here’s my perspective: Techniques of selling can be learned, but we cannot teach others to want to sell. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
But in the words of Charles “T” (Tremendous) Jones, “You can put salt in his oats and make him thirsty.”
Why some people get a “charge” out of creating sales from nothing is a mystery, but developing good habits is not. As they say in the gym—reps, reps, and more reps.
However, practice does not make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Repeatedly practicing doing something wrong simply gets you in the habit of doing it wrong.
Reaching out
Going back to our headline—we’re all born selfish and narcissistic. If we weren’t, we’d probably die. Babies seem oblivious to everything but being hungry, smelly, or wet.
However, once we reach two or three, it’s time to reach out and interact with others. After 19 or 20 years, it’s probably a good idea to get over ourselves and do what Dale Carnegie suggested, “Become genuinely interested in other people.”
That is easy to say, and most of us probably think we are that way. But over the years, I’ve been innocently more manipulative and shallow than I was willing to admit at 25. Life is more fun for me now, when I challenge myself to be more skilled than yesterday and to find opportunities to practice my craft.
Dave Mather is a Performance Improvement Specialist at Dale Carnegie Business Group in Toronto.
Find Dave on LinkedIn.
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