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3 Sales Lessons we all need

September 9, 2010 by patty 3 Comments

by Patty Azzarello

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sales-lessons

On a recent flight I had a fun conversation with a top sales executive about the profession of selling.

The best sales people have some fundamental things in common:

  • They put themselves out there over and over again with no fear
  • They hear “NO” a lot, and always keep trying
  • Disappointment, hurt pride, and failure have little impact on their continuing to do the first 2
  • They always tune their offer to what their customer values most.

Skip the disappointment

The best sales people get over disappointment quickly and jump right back in the game. They don’t let failures along the way discourage or stall them, or damage their confidence.

One of the best stories I heard about this was a sales person telling a non-sales colleague:

The difference between you and me is that if you went up to every woman in this bar and asked them for a date, and they all said, NO, you would not talk to them again.

If I went to every woman in this bar and asked them for a date, and they all said NO, I would go back and ask each one of them again. And a third time…

Three Sales lessons for your Success

1. NO is never a dead end

Every good sales person I know, can tell you how many NO’s on average it takes them to get to a YES. If their number is 17, when they hear NO for the 14th time, they don’t get discouraged.  Their reaction is more like, “Great, I’ve got through one more step to YES!”

NO, is not only a critical step in the process, it’s viewed as a positive step forward. This is so important in building your career as well.

You need to get turned down.

You need to get over disappointment quickly, and see this rejection as a step forward in the process. Then you need to put yourself out there again – as many times as it takes.

Don’t Stop Trying

I can offer my personal example.

While my corporate career, and sequence of promotions was highly successful by any external measure, people didn’t see all the failures.

They didn’t see all the times I heard, NO, and all the times I went for promotions and was passed over or turned down. The success came from acting like a sales person, improving my value, and putting myself out there — and to keep asking.

So out of about 25 times at the plate, by putting my fears aside, and selling myself again and again, I got about 20-something NO’s and 3 life changing YES’s

You don’t get to the YES without the NO’s.

I see people make the mistake of going for promotion once or twice, getting turned down, and getting discouraged. Then they stop trying.

They blame the unfairness of the environment. Or they manufacture an imaginary high ground, and cite that they refuse to take part in the political maneuvers they believe are required.

The biggest thing holding these people back is that they got turned down, discouraged and then stopped trying.

If you are not willing to keep trying, you are the one creating the obstacle to your success.

2. Find a Bigger Pond

Good sales people go where the opportunity is. If they are assigned a “bad territory”, they find a way to expand or develop it. If they are assigned a genuinely bad territory, they move on and get a different job.

I see many people make the mistake of not moving on, when their environment can no longer support their advancement. They will stay for years, frustrated that there are no promotions available.

I’m all for advancing within your company, and much of what I write about is to help you do exactly that. But if there are no jobs, and several people above you need to die before a position opens up, you need to take it upon yourself to move on if you want to advance.

Or if you have an incompentant manager, you will get stuck. You need to get yourself into a different spot.
Go outside your comfort zone, go get some NO’s from new people, and keep trying!

3. Increase Your Value

When a customer is not buying, a great sales person will pump up the value of what they are selling.
They do this by getting a better understanding of their prospect’s needs, and putting together an offer which is more useful and valuable, and therefore much harder to refuse.

This is also critical in you career.

If you are not seen as promotable, ask yourself why.

Go the extra mile to really learn about and understand what is most relevant to your executive management. Is it new customers? Is it innovation? Is it cost cutting? Is it developing people?

Learn what counts and tune your job to offer more of it. Build up your value.

No one will instruct you to do this. It’s up to you.

Doing your job as written is more like selling a commodity product. Instead create a new product, higher value product. Differentiate your value by tuning your job to have more business impact.

The only way to reliably advance your career is to be always be adding more value to the business.

But don’t forget to keep selling !

What about you?

When did having the guts to be persistent make a big difference in your success? I’d love to hear your story in the comment box below.

—–
Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Filed Under: management, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, career, job promotion, LinkedIn

Social Media List: Tweets, Business and Getting Started in a Career

February 17, 2010 by teresa 2 Comments

A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors and writers by managing their online promotion. As part of my job I read a lot of books (and I love to read anyway!).  I am here to offer a weekly post about one book I am working with and one book I have put on my reading list. The books will cover topics such as social media (Facebook and Twitter), organization, career building, networking, writing and self development and inspiration.

#EntryLevel Tweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle

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This week I would like to start off with a book I have read and working with entitled #EntryLevel Tweet by Heather Huhman.

When asked why she wrote #EntryLevel Tweet, Heather replies, “Hiring managers expect young professionals to be job hunting experts. And there’s a strong need for quick, easy-to-digest
information about entry-level job searching.”

When I was reading #EntryLevel Tweet I found myself shaking my head in affirmation because many  of the things stated in the book are right on. Such as:

~You need to choose a career that makes you happy and excited about going to work, but remember that not every day on the job will be fun. —>there is some part, it may only be 1% of your job, that you will not like doing as part of your job.

Also, she adds, Don’t beat yourself up for not making the right choice at first–most of us don’t! —>How true this is! I was going to be a marine biologist, until I went to college and found out I was not as good as math and science as I thought I once was in this subjects.

Huhman then goes on to discuss how the world for those seeking their first job out of college has changed. “Even in a candidate saturated market, there are many more (and better) ways to get in front of hiring managers than there used to be. —>Oh, yes, this is certainly true. There are people who can do a video resume for you. *Actually that is how my niece landed her first job as a reporter.

She continues to help recent grads by providing them stepping stones to secure the proper tools to obtain in order to be more successful at landing the job.

About the Author:

Heather R. Huhman is a career expert and Founder of Come Recommended, an exclusive online community connecting the best internship and entry-level job candidates with the best employers. As an experienced hiring manager and someone who has been in nearly every employment-related situation imaginable, Heather knows and understands the needs of today’s employers and internship and entry-level job seekers.

Her expertise in this area led to her selection as Examiner.com’s entry-level careers columnist in mid-2008. The daily, national column educates high school students through recent college graduates about how to find, land, and succeed at internships and entry-level jobs.

You can pick up your copy of #EntryLevel Tweet here.

@collegegrads read this #book if you want a quick, easy-to-read guide on how to go from a confused graduate to a confident entry-level worker.”
Dan Schawbel, @danschawbel, Author of ‘Me 2.0:Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success’

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

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Now it is time for me to share with you a book I have not read but it is on my reading list. My choice for this week is Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne and published by Harvard Business School Press.

Blue Ocean Strategy provides a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant. In this frame-changing book, Kim and Mauborgne present a proven analytical framework and the tools for successfully creating and capturing blue oceans. Examining a wide range of strategic moves across a host of industries, Blue Ocean Strategy highlights the six principles that every company can use to successfully formulate and execute blue ocean strategies. The six principles show how to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right, overcome organizational hurdles, and build execution into strategy.

About the Authors:

W. Chan Kim is Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute and The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD, France.

Renee Mauborgne is The INSEAD Distinguished Fellow and a professor of strategy at INSEAD. She is also Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute.

“Blue Ocean Strategy will have you wondering why companies need so much persuasion to stay out of shark-infested waters.” — BusinessWeek, April 4th 2005

You can purchase your copy on Amazon.

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Blue-Ocean-Strategy, books, business, career, Heather Huhman, ME_"Liz"_Strauss, published, reading, social-media, Successful-Blog, Teresa Morrow, tweets, Twitter

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