Sales Techniques: Are You Responsible?

By: Cheryl A. Clausen


As a sales professional, do you take full responsibility for your actions? Do you take full responsibility for what happens to you? You are responsible for your actions, your decisions, and what happens to you. Blaming yourself or anyone else, using excuses, and denial only hurt you and keep you from being able to succeed. But the people who are supposed to support you just make things more difficult, and they don't do what they say they will. Ok, so you know this to be true. That just means you're responsible and as a responsible person you take action to get it done yourself.

Getting angry is a waste of energy and it puts your focus on the wrong things. Your focus needs to be on getting whatever you need to do to succeed done in spite of anyone and everything else. Take control and develop a plan to work around incompetent people and systems.

Have you ever met with a prospect and things seemed to be going well when all of a sudden they reacted in a way that completely caught you off guard? This can be a very unpleasant experience and leave you feeling inadequate. But it's just an opportunity for you to learn how to avoid or deal with that reaction when it happens again. Think through and replay the entire conversation in your mind trying to identify the exact moment when there was a change in the prospects attention and interest. Then come up with a plan to change your behaviors so you can better handle that reaction if it ever happens again.

If this has happened several times before you really need to figure out what you're doing that is causing that reaction. I'm amazed how often sales people have the misguided notion that when something goes wrong that you need to ignore it and doing what you've been doing until you get different results. That isn't going to happen. If something goes badly you need to stop doing that in that way; or you can expect to continue to get results.

But you did that because someone else told you to do it. As your mother would say if someone told you to jump off a bridge would you? You will be told to do a lot of things that supposedly worked for someone else. But if the person telling you is an extrovert and you're an introvert, if their values are radically different than yours, if their behaviors are very different from yours, etc. does it even make sense that it would work for you?

You have to succeed in sales based on your own values, behaviors, and attitudes. If something doesn't feel right to you remember that's just your little inner voice telling you that you shouldn't be doing this. Listen. Not listening just gets you in trouble.

All buts aside the buck starts and stops with you. You are responsible for finding the way that's right for you to succeed in sales. You are responsible for taking the actions you know you need to take. And you are the only person who can really hold you accountable for those actions. Your actions are really all about your motivation. If what you're doing isn't motivating to you perhaps you should find something else to do. If it is motivating for you, once you figure out how to make it work for you it will be almost impossible for you not to take action.

Article Source: http://www.articleyard.com


Information about the Author:

Author: Cheryl A. Clausen can help you get unstuck. Use top Insurance Sales get her free ecourse. Use top Sales Coaching check this out.

No comments: