Sales Success:


Tommy Shaw, guitarist and songwriter for the popular rock band, Styx, wrote a song several years ago entitled "Too Much Time on My Hands" where he included the lyrics "I have a nowhere to go and all day to get there" and "I’ve got nothing to do and all day to do it." That is indeed a sad commentary on a non-productive lifestyle. If that has also been your approach to planning and executing your sales day, it’s no wonder why you have not found the success that has been eluding you for so long. Too much time on your hands spells disaster if you make your living selling.

How does one get to be in this mess? While I suspect that there are many reasons for this phenomenon, two immediately come to mind: Lack of training and lack of desire. The first is epitomized in the rookie salesperson who has little training and only a vague idea of what her plans and goals might be. She has entered the world of selling equipped with nothing but her own preconceived notions and some level of enthusiasm. The second is the seasoned sales professional who is tired of the same routine and has become somewhat sedentary in his ways or has earned enough money to be comfortable and he now is stuck in the rut of his comfort zone. An ensuing lack of desire and sales soon becomes evident.


A lack of training is easily fixed. There are many fine sales training methods and programs, coaches, authors, speakers and the like that avail all of the resources imaginable to get the job done. With proper training and instruction, role playing, critique and practice, our rookie will be on her way to sales excellence in no time. It will be necessary, however, to have training both in sales as well as product and service training. All the product training in the world won’t help you if you do not know what to say when you have the opportunity to be in front of a prospective customer. That too will only happen if you first learn the skills to contact and establish appointments with the appropriate decision-makers.

There is no substitution for training and practice. Don’t ever make the mistake of believing that once your formal training is completed that your education is over. Nothing could be further from the truth. Adopt an attitude of continuous life-long learning to keep those skills sharp and your mind challenged. Abraham Lincoln once said that if he had an allotment of four hours to cut a small grove of trees, he would spend three of those hours sharpening his axe, and only one hour actually cutting. Yes, there is no substitute for proper preparation in the sales field.
A lack of desire is a much more complex problem to solve because its roots may be in several different places. We’ll look at a couple of them here. Boredom might be a factor. Perhaps the product mix, territory and customer base have remained unchanged for years, so our salesman decides to "lie back" a little. Although it may not become evident at first, time will reveal that a steady reduction in business has begun.

The salesperson will soon become distant, somewhat out-of-touch with his customer base. The products that he once knew so well will become more unfamiliar; their features, advantages and benefits will elude him. Unless the salesman schedules calls and develops new customers on a regular basis, his base will erode and his earnings will suffer as a result. A dangerous trend may commence that is often difficult to reign in.