New Years resolutions are a waste of time. That is, they are a waste if you only do it once per year then forget about them two weeks later. Goal setting and commitment are NOT a waste of time. In Fact, they are a necessary and invaluable part of your growth as a salesperson. BUT, (and it s a big BUT) you have to do it consistently throughout the year. Set goals, review progress, stay committed or renew your commitment. It is not a once a year thing.

A simple direct way to determine if the prospect has a compelling reason to buy is to define two groups and ask them to put themselves into one or the other. This binary choice leaves no doubt whether they have pain or not IF (and only if) you set up the groups correctly. It is a simple technique just define one group that has pain and one group that doesn’t and ask you prospect to put themselves into one or the other. This video illustrates how it might sound when you say it to a prospect.

Salespeople who only focus on the problem the organization is having can miss the factor that is most likely to motivate the prospect to take action or to authorize purchase of your product or service.  Prospects are motivated by personal pain more than merely a problem that needs to be solved. Personal pain can be defined as how the prospect feels about the problem at hand. The first step is to understand the problem of course. the second step is to uncover how the problem affects the person you are talking to. but the most important step is to get the prospect to share with you how he or she feels about how the consequences of the problem affect their life. A company may be less efficient because of an outdated CRM. However consider two separate situations one in which the VP of Operations is focused on upgrading the manufacturing equipment and another in which the President has just informed him that the slow CRM is costing thousands of dollars in lost sales and told him his job is on the line if he doesn’t get it fixed. In which case does the CRM salesperson have a better chance of making sale? Yet most salespeople fail to uncover the real motivation and focus on show how good the CRM system will perform. The winner will be the one who gets to the real issue – the VP’s job security.

It is never a crisis to make a sales call. No one ever gets a call saying “I was on your list to cold call today. You didn’t call and I am ticked off about it.” Sales calls get pushed down in priority because proposals, internal meetings, management reports, and even lunch present themselves as higher priorities during the day. If adding new prospects to your pipeline is important to you, then put prospecting time on your calendar and don’t move it, don’t cancel it and don’t forget it. Treat it like an appointment with your biggest prospect – It just may turn out to be just that. 

Eliminate wasted time and increase sales by recognizing that letting prospects “think it over” is not an option.  There are only four acceptable outcomes for any sales call. You either get a “yes” which is a great outcome. Or you get a “no” which is not as great but not as bad as it sounds. You can get the prospect to agree to a clearly delineated action to happen at a specific time in the future. This is also OK they explicitly agree to a specific action at a specific time. Tacit (unspoken) approval of vague actions at a nebulous future date are not acceptable.  If you don’t get one of the first 3 acceptable outcomes then you must get a lesson in what you did wrong. If you don’t learn from your mistakes you are bound to repeat them and you will stunt your growth as a sales professional. If you get  enough lessons and apply them on subsequent calls you will eventually master the profession of selling and become the optimal salesperson and achieve effortless high performance.

Call higher in the organization. The higher the person in a business, the more pain within the organization they are aware of. If you call on someone in a particular department, they may only be aware of the pain in their department. Your product or service may not connect with their pain. However, the president of the company may know of four or five other departments in the organization who could benefit from your solution. The higher up you go in the organization, the less objections you may encounter. Why? The executives are aware of more problems your solutions can solve that are prevalent throughout the organization. There is another reason for why you should call higher in an organization? Your own courage and strength. It’s easier to call on a clerk or an assistant. However, calling the chief executive officer requires more confidence and self-assurance. Call on people at the top of an organization – you’ll be more successful.