The House
of Sales Ideas


Welcome to where the magic happens. Every project, class, system and process I have ever implemented started with a blog post RIGHT HERE. So dig in, there is gold in these electrons.

Choking HAPPENS

Why do athletic teams practice?

Why do even the most advanced athletes practice the basics over and over?

Why do they review game flims/videos before, during and after an athletic contest?

The answer to the above questions is simple. They do so because they want responses to situations to be essentially automatic. If you can remove the ‘what should I do?’ thought and instead allow the best and brightest to simply react using their God given abilities you have the chance to see real success in athletics. It’s not complicated, you don’t practice and the probability you will ‘choke’ in an unfamiliar situation is VERY HIGH.

It is the same in sales. You have to practice your craft to become the best and also so you can recognize situations and know immediately what the solution to them is. If you can eliminate the ‘I wasn’t expecting that’ commentary, which is another way of saying ‘I choked,’ I promise you will see sales increase.

Now I know some sales people will say ‘I get enough practice in front of my customers’. But think about it for a moment, is that where you really want to practice? What happens if what you try doesn’t work? Whoops, you just lost the sale; and that is the minimum that could go wrong.

The repetition of successful performance results in the “Video Game Effect.” We all know the basic concept of video games. Each level of the game has a ‘boss’ you have to defeat. After learning the needed skills and defeating him you move on to the next level, and so on and so on. Through practice and repetition you improve and have more success in the game. The better you get the more you enjoy the game. The world of sales is no different except that the better we get not only do we enjoy our work more but we make MORE MONEY!

There is science to this as well. When confronted with a scenario you have prepared for, the body will produce a neuro-transmitter called Serotonin. Its main job is to induce a calming effect allowing higher level critical thinking to happen at a much quicker pace. The result is better decisions and actions that dictate performance. Once you start to succeed at the task, the body produces Endorphins which creates the euphoric feeling coming after you have performed at a high level or won a contest. Thus, you become conditioned to want the same feeling over and over which propagates continued performance improvement. You might call it “Addiction to Success.”

Sales managers I strongly urge you to start a regimen of sales simulations with your team. You should have each member of the team submit a situation where they either lost the sale or didn’t move the process forward on a monthly basis. Also, build up your “Catalog” through your experience in the field riding with your team. Turn those actual events into simulations and before you know you will have a docket of potential selling scenarios that you can use to help develop your team and reduce the “Choking Happens Syndrome.”

Last thing; always do a post mortem, an evaluation on both live events and the simulations. Make sure your team knows what they did right, what they could do better and what they better not do EVER again. Eliminate the ‘what if’ from you and your team’s vocabulary and watch the sales numbers soar.

 

 

3 Warning Signs That Your Sales Candidate Is A DUD!

You can never be 100% sure what is going to cross your desk or walk in the door once you start interviewing. Screening effectively through initial phone calls and resume’ review help but today’s sales people have learned their way around many of the hiring “trap doors”  that used to trip them up. So I present to you 3 sure fire RED FLAGS to look out for during the hiring process.

If your candidate:

  • Doesn’t know today’s date: If they don’t know this how can you be sure they plan their day. Or worse yet when was the last time they closed a deal? Every daily planner I have ever seen has day and date, so has every CRM/SFA software and the last time I checked every sales contract EVER written has day and date on it as well.
  • Can’t recite their top 5 prospects and pertinent details: If they can’t do this who ARE their prospects, or do they even have any? Would you be concerned if your current sales people couldn’t tell you from memory who their top 5 prospects were and their pertinent details?
  • They are “yes” people: Good salespeople are not robots. They are strong individual personalities and are rarely ‘joiners’. They ask a ton of questions and don’t readily accept things at face value. These folks tend to be leaders not sheep.

Remember these 3 determiners are to be used in conjunction with a complete Sales Hiring System not as a replacement. Please call email,call or hook up with me via social media if you have any questions. Also, I have written extensively on the subject of Hiring and Assessment for Sales, you can check out my articles right here.

And remember you can either make sales or make excuses but you can’t do both…..

 

 

 

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