Have you ever over-prepared for a sales call? When you do you tend to over-think everything. You go into the call worrying about what you will say. You worry about what the prospects will say and how you will react. You start to choreograph the call by thinking “I’ll say this then he’ll say that. Then I will come back with …”. The problem is that you do your part but the prospect does not have a script. So, pretty soon you are “off script” and you are lost. Your plan for the call goes awry and you end up not making the impression you were hoping for.

This is a terrible mindset to take with you on a sales call. You are internally focused and not focused enough on what the prospect is saying. You will miss the cues the prospect gives you and you will fail to get to the prospect’s compelling reason to buy. So, the solution is to relax on the call and have a conversation with the prospect about what issues and problems they have which you can address. Don’t worry about anything else. Let me address a couple of the things salespeople tend to obsess about on sales calls that prevent them from relaxing.

SALES TECHNIQUES – I teach them but they are overrated by most salespeople. The fact is you should not worry or even think about techniques on the call.  If you have internalized the technique it will be there when you need it without you having to consciously think about it. If you don’t have it internalized yet, concentrating on it will not make it be there when you need it and you will most likely miss other important stuff while you are concentrating on looking for a place to use the technique.

PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE – Salespeople who worry about this are definitely focused on the wrong part of the problem. If you are worried about how much you know, then chances are you are looking for a place to tell the prospect what you know to either impress them or to convince them you have the best product or service. That is not why you are there, at least not on the first call. You are there to determine whether they have a problem that you can fix, and whether they have enough of a compelling reason to address the problem at this time and enough money to hire you to address it. You do not need a lot of product knowledge to do that. Anyone with at least a few weeks on the job should know what problems they are looking for. If they have a big enough problem with enough motivation and money to move forward, then you can bring an expert back to explain how you can do all of that. So, there is no need to worry about product knowledge.

The moral of this story is RELAX! Worrying and obsessing on sales calls is counterproductive. Simplify your life. Learn what problem you are looking for. Then go have conversations with some nice people who may have those problems. This approach will be much more fun, and, as a bonus, your sales will increase dramatically.

Motivation is internal. Sales managers can’t motivate salespeople. They can only help the salesperson to get and stay in touch with their own internal motivation. Some people are able to stay motivated without much effort. They have a high degree of intrinsic motivation. They were programmed or trained to constantly strive to do more, be more effective, reach higher levels, etc. This is not always a good thing as these “driven” people often have trouble relaxing or enjoying the journey to success. For salespeople motivation is more often external. Since salespeople are, in large measure, paid for performance in the form of commission, we set financial goals then work to achieve them. In a sense, we set our own compensation level.

The problem comes in the day-to-day grind of prospecting, rejection, proposal writing, staff meetings, and client meetings. When fighting the daily fight, ,it is easy to lose sight of why we are working and in some cases we lose sight of what we should be doing. Selling is not like other jobs where showing up is half the battle. Most doctors, lawyers, engineers, laborers, customer service people, food service workers and mostly everyone else show up and work comes at them. Salespeople have to be proactive and engage with the outside world. We have to overcome self-limiting beliefs that prevent us from being effective. So it is easy to see why we can get into a rut and just go through the motions to get through the days and weeks. After all, it is never a crisis to prospect for new business today … until it is probably too late to do anything about it that is! Sounds grim doesn’t it? But you can change all of that in a very short time.

When was the last time you revisited your personal goals? For most salespeople I ask, it has been a while. And I am not just talking about reminding yourself that your goal is to get a house at the beach. I am talking about reconnecting with the reasons why you want the house at the beach – the underlying emotional reason. It is important to remind yourself how you will feel when you get to the goal. In a very real sense your motivation to do the things you need to do will come from that emotional connection to the things or lifestyle that you want for yourself or your family. Is it a sense of accomplishment, fulfillment, duty? If it is just a “box you checked” on the goal setting form your manager gave you, it won’t move you to action. But if it is something you and your spouse have talked about, and dreamed about and you can’t wait to host some summer parties for your friends or you want your kids to grow with something you never had. That will get you excited and be a compelling enough reason to put the extra effort in to do the difficult tasks that top earners must do. Re-motivate yourself by reconnecting in an emotional way with your goals.