him.
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4. Ignorance
A salesperson usually demonstrates his or her ignorance with a lack of
product knowledge. The salesperson has obviously not take the time to study
the sales literature to thoroughly understand the product or service that he or
she is trying to sell.
When the customer has questions about the product or service, the
salesperson stumbles or bluffs or tries to make up an answer. This not only
undermines the credibility of the salesperson and the company, but it shakes
the confidence of the salesperson as well.
Know What You Are Selling
Some years ago, my wife and I went out looking for an expensive home in
San Diego. We contacted several realtors to view homes for sale.
Having been a real estate agent and broker at one time, I know a lot about
buying and selling real estate. As we would drive up to a house that was for
sale for several hundred thousand dollars, I would ask the agent a series of
questions about the house. I was always amazed to find out that very few of
the realtors had even taken the time to read the MLS sheets to get the details
on the house. Many of them had never been to the open houses on the homes
they were showing for sale. They were attempting to sell a product where
they would be earning several thousand dollars in commissions, and they
often had no idea of the size of the house, or any of its amenities. They had
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not earned the right to offer the product for sale because they had not taken
the time to fully understand the product in the first place.
5. Unconfirmed Appointments
Unconfirmed appointments lead to the situation where the salesperson
arrives for an appointment that was made by phone and finds that the
prospect is gone.
The salesperson has now wasted the time he spent in prospecting, the time of
preparation and the time of travel. Why does this happen so often? The main
reason is because of the fear of rejection. The salesperson is reluctant to
phone and confirm the appointment for fear that the prospect will cancel it.
Here is a very simple method that has been effective for me and many other
sales people over the years. You call the office of the prospect before you
leave. You ask the receptionist if the prospect is in. If the receptionist says
“Yes,” then you say, “Thank you very much. Please tell him that this is
Brian Tracy calling, and that I will be there for my appointment on
schedule.” You then hang up the phone.
In this way you remind the prospect that you are coming and you put the
prospect under a sense of obligation to see you when you arrive. You stop
wasting your time by going out to unconfirmed appointments.
6. Poor Planning of Calls Geographically
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One of the biggest time wasters in selling is traveling all over your sales
territory, spending most of your time in traffic, rather than face to face with
people who can and will buy within a reasonable period of time.
One simple way to cluster your calls geographically is to divide your
territory into four parts. Discipline yourself to work in one quadrant of your
territory each day or half day. If you call to make an appointment, tell the
prospect that you will be visiting customers in his area at a specific time of
the week. Would he be available to see you at that time?
It is interesting to note that, the more structured and scheduled your time
usage is as a salesperson, the more you are respected by your prospects and
customers. The more that they feel that you have a tight schedule, the more
they will adjust their schedule to accommodate meeting with you.
7. Needless Perfectionism
Perfectionism occurs when you insist that everything be perfectly in order
before you go out and sell. It is another form of indecisiveness, and it is
closely tied up with call reluctance. It is caused by fear of rejection and fear
of failure.
Whenever you find yourself studying and over-studying your materials,
insisting that everything be exactly right before you pick up the phone, or
before you make a call, you must have the honesty to realize that is fear that
you are dealing with.
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As Emerson wrote, “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”
If you confront your fear, your fear will go away. The only real anecdote to
fear and worry is purposeful action. If you get going and start moving
forward, you will forget to be afraid.
8. Distraction or Mind Wandering
These are subtle time wasters, but they are far too common. They result in
not paying attention in a sales presentation. You do not hear the prospect
fully, or you do not read between the lines to understand what the prospect is
really saying. Many sales people are guilty of this. They simply do not pay
sufficient attention because they are pre-occupied with their own thoughts.
Unfortunately, the prospect picks this up very quickly and soon loses all
interest in doing business with you.
The way that you overcome the tendency to mind wander is to discipline
yourself to face the prospect directly, lean forward, and watch him intently
while he speaks. Imagine that your eyes are sun lamps, and you want to give
his face a tan. This approach will keep you focused more intensely on the
prospect, and snap you out of the tendency towards distraction.
9. Fatigue and Overwork
These are real killers in every area of work, and especially in selling. It is
estimated that more than 50% of sales people today are working in a state of
“fog.” They are going to bed too late and not getting enough sleep. As a
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result, they go through the day tired, lacking the ability to fully concentrate
on their work.
My rule is this: if you are going to sell five days of the week, you must go to
bed early five days per week. Selling is a very draining and demanding
profession. It requires a tremendous amount of physical and emotional
energy to be effective at sales. You cannot afford to stay up late at night
watching television or socializing if you’re going to be sharp and alert the
next day.
You can break the tendency to sleep too little and work too hard by
disciplining yourself to go to bed by ten o’clock each night. Turn off the
television and resolve to get lots of rest. This will translate into more and
better sales, higher income, and generate the money you need to take all the
vacations you want.
10. Lack of Ambition or Desire
There are many people who are just going through the motions at work. This
is usually the result of having too few goals, or having no goals at all.
Sometimes, people lack ambition or desire because they are selling the
wrong product. They are trying to sell something that they don’t like or
believe in.
Sometimes lack of ambition or desire to succeed in sales is caused by not
believing in your boss, or not believing in the company, or not getting along
well with your co-workers.
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Whatever the reason, if you are not positive and enthusiastic about your
product or service, this could be an indication that you should be doing
something else. If you don’t like the people you are selling to, you are
probably in the wrong business.
You cannot for very long force yourself to sell something that is wrong for
you. It will simply make you tired and depressed, and you will never be
successful at it.
Use Your Time Well
Here are some valuable ideas you can use to help increase your sales
effectiveness by using your time to its best advantage.
1. Get to Bed Early
Early to bed early to rise is the key to sales success. Get up and get going by
6:00 am. Get lots of sleep. Sometimes the very best use of your time is to go
to bed early and get a solid nine or ten, or even twelve hours of sleep so that
you can bright eyed and cheerful the next morning. It is very hard to be full
of energy, excitement and enthusiasm about your product or service when
you’re tired from not getting enough sleep.
2. Start Your Day Right
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Read thirty to sixty minutes in sales or motivation to start your day. This is
one of the most important habits you will ever develop. Many sales people
have told me that this technique of getting up each morning and reading
thirty to sixty minutes has changed the whole direction of their career.
If you spent thirty to sixty minutes reading a book on sales each morning,
over the course of a week you will probably read one whole book. If you
read one book per week for the next year, and you don’t even read on the
weekends or holidays, you will read fifty books on sales over the next
twelve months. If you keep this up over the next ten years, you will read five
hundred books. In a world where the average salesperson never reads a book
on sales in his or her life, do you think that if you read five hundred books
over the next ten years that it would affect your income?
The fact is that you would probably become one of the best informed, best
skilled and highest paid sales people in America simply by reading thirty to
sixty minutes on sales each morning. Each day, you can go out and apply
something that you learned that morning. You never stop learning and
growing.
3. Start Work Early
Schedule your first appointment early. Get up, get out and get going. Try to
set your first appointment for 8:00 am or even 7:30 am. Often prospects who
do not have time to see you in the daytime can meet with you at odd hours.
Sometimes they work early or work late or work both. If you offer to meet
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them for breakfast or meet them in their office at 7:30 am, they can often fit
you in.
4. Focus on Prospecting
A tremendous way to increase your time and effectiveness is to spend 80%
of your time prospecting until you become so busy closing sales and
servicing customers that you do not have time to prospect anymore.
Remember, sales success in direct proportion to your ability to initiate new
contacts. Sales success comes from being eager to call to call on customers.
When I was a sales representative leasing new office space, I would take the
elevator to the top floor of an office building, and then call on every office in
the building as I worked my way down. Over the course of a month, I could
make several hundred calls.
If you find yourself with time on your hands, sit down and make twenty or
thirty phone calls. You will be amazed at the results you get, and how much
better you will feel as a result.
5. Work All the Time You Work
Spend your entire day working. Make every minute count. Work all the time
you work. Remember, the average salesperson is only working 20% of could
catapult you into the upper ranks of sales success.
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Don’t waste time. Don’t sit around drinking coffee or reading the
newspaper. If you must take coffee breaks, do it with prospects or while you
are on the move.
The average salesperson who takes two twenty minute coffee breaks per day
spends forty minutes per day unproductively. Forty minutes per day
multiplied by five days per week equals two hundred minutes per week. 200
minutes per week multiplied times 50 weeks per year is equal to 10 thousand
minutes, or the equivalent to 166 hours of productive time that the average
persons spend sitting around drinking coffee and wasting time.
166 hours is equal to four forty-hour weeks, the equivalent of one month’s
income. If you want to give yourself a raise, the fastest way to do it is to
work through your coffee breaks.
Use Your Lunch Breaks Wisely
Don’t waste lunchtime either. Use your lunch hour to prepare for the
afternoon appointments, or to exercise or to do something that improves
your productivity and performance.
If you use your lunch-time wisely, and you take one hour per day for lunch,
this will give you an additional five hours per week, or 250 hours per year.
250 hours per year is more than six forty-hour weeks, or more than one and
one half months of additional income. Just by using your coffee breaks and
lunch breaks for productive activities you will increase your sales and your
income by 20% almost immediately.
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6. Listen and Learn
Listen to educational audio programs in your car. Turn your driving time
into learning time. Turn your car into a university on wheels.
From the time you get into the car until the time you get out your audio
player should be working. Remember, the average salesperson spends 500 to
1,000 hours per year behind the wheel of his car, and sometimes much more.
If you use that time to educate yourself, you can become one of the most
knowledgeable and highest paid sales people in America, just by listening to
audio programs.
7. Use a Time Planner
Use a time planner of some kind and write down every appointment and
activity. Let your time planner be your control center for your sale activities.
Use it as a tickler file to remind you when to get back to your prospects.
Purchase a time planner that enables you to store contacts, lets you plan a
month in advance, and a year in advance, and enables you to run your sales
business from one place.
Once you have a time planner, use it religiously. Write down everything.
Plan every single activity in advance. Keep accurate notes of every
telephone conversation and presentation. The power is always on the side of
the person with the best notes.
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Start and end each day by reviewing the information that you record in your
time planner. Make your time planner into your mobile office.
The Only Thing You Have to Sell
Remember, all that the salesperson has to sell is his time. And the only time
you are working is when you are face-to-face with a prospect. Learn and
practice these time management techniques over and over until they become
second nature. Good time management skills are the perfect vehicle to get
you from where you are to where you want to be. They, more than anything
