Let’s look Inside the Sales Conversation for the week of July 11, 2022
Working in a bubble as many of us do, we sometimes ask, “What are others thinking? Am I unique in my sales challenges?” If these issues are your issues, why not join the conversation? Here’s a few recent discussions found in The Sales Vault and our free Sales Community on Slack.
1. “I've got way too many things to do”
Who doesn’t? Everyone is busy but not everyone is busy doing the right things. There’s a big difference between working and working productively. Do the items on your task list really belong there? Regardless of how you answer that question, here’s how to make sure you are working productively. Ask yourself, “What is the best use of my time right now?” If you can consistently make good choices by answering that question correctly, you can make the most of your limited selling time.
2. “Clients are ghosting me after a great meeting”
Yup. That’s not new. This is topic #1 or 2 among recent Sales Vault discussions. I’d like to introduce a word to you: Patience. Even before COVID, showing patience with a client was the solution to ghosting. But now, fuggetaboutit. You need to expect and prepare to not hear from a client while working on a project. When you had them on the phone, you were the shiny object and you had their full attention. But the minute you left or hung up the phone, something else caught their attention. Be. Patient.
3. “I quit. I just can’t do this sales thing.”
I have learned more from my failures than from my achievements. When I was at my absolute lowest, I not only learned the power of failure but it’s definition. Failure is a turning point. Failure is a learning opportunity. Failure is a motivator. But failure only occurs after you have put in 100% effort. In fact, I would even argue if you have tried your absolute hardest and you don’t achieve your goals, you have not failed at all. You have found one way that doesn’t work. From here, if you use what you have learned to go a different direction; if you get up off the canvas and get back in the fight; and if you never stop this pattern, failure is no longer an endpoint.
Sales is really, really, really hard. Even forty-year sales reps like me fall into slumps of despair, convinced the end is near. That’s part of the job and it’s part of the challenge to overcome the negative. Like the quote says at the bottom of my emails, “It’s supposed to be hard. It wasn’t hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”
