I chuckle when I see Sales Consultants and their cheat sheets and playbooks saying how easy sales is if you follow these tidbits of advice on prospecting, outreach, building pipeline, and how you are going to knock it out of the park. That is only one small aspect of sales.
After close 30 years of frontline experience “carrying a bag” I thought about writing how sales can be easy, then decided to put myself out there. Ask a Sales Person’s partner or spouse if sales is easy? There are no cheat sheets or playbooks there.
Guess what? There are no shortcuts. Recognize that it is a challenging and very rewarding career, embrace it and manage your expectations.
Focus is the new competitive advantage.
Endless scrolling, information to absorb, expectations for immediate responses? customer targets to hit? sales KPI’s? So how do we build focus in a time when there is a deluge of information?
Here’s how you get started
Work on Self Discipline
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts 10 Key Takeaways for Enterprise Sales that I learned for Triathlon, self discipline is one of most fundamental skills that is needed to be mastered to be successful in sales. At its core, it’s about the choices that you make every day. When your choices gain some consistency, those choices will become habits. Then those habits become actions. Once you get there, the actions become natural and it gets easier to maintain than have to build.
Find an outlet – Let go of the phone for an hour here and there. The benefits are huge. I love a five minute video from Arthur C. Brooks, a Professor of Management and Social Scientist at Harvard University. He encourages people to learn how to be bored.
He comments that boredom switches on the Default Mode Network in your brain and makes us think about things that may be hard or unsettling. Being bored will lead you to asking yourself those big questions and create solutions for work and life. When we scroll through endless streams of information whether it be relevant or not, it is scientifically proven to be reducing your attention span.
From my experience, you don’t necessarily have to be bored to get those a-ha moments. Get physically moving on something that you enjoy, motion creates emotion, and turn off the phone or better yet leave it at home. Tri – it.
I became a triathlete three years ago. During my triathlon training which involves extensive hours of swimming, biking and running, I never bring my phone for swimming or running. I do bring it for long bike rides for emergency purposes only.
You will be surprised with the ideas and creativity you come up with. The key is to get your thoughts and ideas down on paper as soon as you can then execute on it. I could literally come up with a solid account plan and strategy after an hour in the pool with no digital distractions.
Clarity – once you start to become more focused your ideas and thoughts will become more clear. Also the ” internal company distractions ” will become quieter. Actions start to become more targeted, more customer focused, more efficient.
Managers should be reducing the amount of internal non customer productive demands you need to address. The true measure of a leader is found in the ‘noise’ they eliminate for their team. A manager who prioritizes perception over protection and coaching has misunderstood their mandate.
A career in sales can be incredibly rewarding because it offers the unique opportunity to solve real problems for clients while directly linking your personal effort and communication skills to your financial and professional growth. You get to represent the company and provide leadership to your extended teams and really have an impact. That’s an honor.
For more information see trainsellwin.com