What happened at the end of 2008 and through 2009 was remarkable. It was an historic downturn and the worst economic crisis that any of us have ever experienced. If you worked in sales, you faced the hurricane force headwinds of demand for your product or service declining by an order of magnitude. If you worked in sales you worked much harder to produce results—results that may not have been what you or your company desired. It was the worst of times.

The end of 2008 and all of 2009 was as difficult a sales environment as any of us have ever experienced, and with luck, something we will never have to experience again. But the real trouble with going through periods that cause the kind of deep stress and entrenching that was required to survive the Great Recession is that the mindset that is required to survive sticks. You hang on to the entrenched, survival mindset longer than is necessary and longer than is useful.

At some point, you have to move from keeping your head down and plowing through in darkness to lifting your eyes to capture a new vision of a better and brighter future.

Will You Notice the Light?

I usually save my question for the end of my posts. But this post is really about the questions that you need to ask yourself now. Your sales results are the result of what you believe and how you act on those beliefs. At the halfway point of this year, let’s do some checking in.

Have you shed your entrenched, head down, nose to the grindstone, survivalist mentality for something more useful?

Have you lifted your eyes yet?

Have you traded old fears for new hope?

Have you traded your goal of survival for a new ambition?

Do you still believe that nobody is buying?

Have you made the choice to act?

Have you captured a new vision of what 2010 means to you? Has it changed from what it was in 2009?

A New Vision for 2010

The great danger in retaining the fear and the behaviors of the past few years is that they prevent you from capturing new opportunities. Those that believe there is a better future act on those beliefs and make it their reality. The find opportunity and they make opportunities. The first do so win, and they win big.

There is still time in 2010 to make of it what you will. There is still plenty of time for you to attach a new meaning to 2010, to create a new vision for what it will mean to you and your company (if you haven’t already). And there is still time to take the actions that will produce the results that can and will define 2010 for you.

But to see that vision, to really capture that vision, you have to lift your eyes and look up. Then you have to march forward and act on your new vision. There are lots of people who are counting on you to both provide the vision and to act on it.

Be changed by what you experienced during 2009. But be changed in a positive way. Capture the lessons that allowed you to survive; you may someday need them again. But don’t allow the fear of the darkness to prevent you from going out into the light.

Is it the easiest time in history to make sales? No, it probably isn’t. But there is no reason to believe it is still December 2008, either.

Lift your eyes.

Make your future.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Your personal development can and will do more to improve your success in sales than any other single factor. Personal development focuses on the one factor that is common to every sale in which you will ever be involved: you. Developing the foundational attributes of success in any endeavor and the foundational attributes of sales are the key to developing both your confidence and your competence in sales.

When you call your prospects and dream clients, they always start with the answer “no.” With good reason.

The word “simple” means that something is not complicated. It doesn’t mean that something is without difficulty. Selling is difficult. Here are five simple (but not easy) ways you can sell more.

Focus Less on Closing and More on Being Effective at Every Stage

Salespeople place far too much emphasis on closing. The problem with focusing on closing sales is that you are focused on the scoreboard instead of on playing the game well and playing the game to win.

Instead of spending your time on the eventual outcome, spend your time, your effort, and your energy on prospecting effectively to open new relationships, on making effective sales calls that lead to an advance in the sale, on building the consensus necessary to selling your solutions, and on building a compelling presentation.

Spend your time and your energy on ensuring that you are effective at every stage, and the score will take care of itself.

Focus More on Solving Business Problems

Making more sales means solving more business problems. Making bigger sales means solving bigger sales problems. Becoming the lifelong partner and provider of choice means solving the most challenging problems your customers face, and in doing so, helping them build a competitive advantage in their space.

To sell more, spend more time discovering these problems and helping your clients solve them.

Stop Selling to Prospects Who Can’t Buy

Your time is limited. You have to use great discretion in how and where you spend your time. There is no reason to spend time with prospects that cannot buy. The faster you can qualify prospects out, the faster you can move on to prospects and clients where you, your company, and your products and services can be of value and of service.

This means that you cannot pad your activity with sales calls that will result in no sales simply to make the activity goals. In the long run, your time is far better spent doing the heavy lifting and prospecting like crazy to identify prospects that can buy.

Study and Practice the Fundamentals

Sales isn’t about gimmicks, tricks, shortcuts, or secrets. If something sounds to good to be true, it is. You should leave it alone. The only certain way to success in sales, and to selling more, is to study and practice the fundamentals.

Instead of resisting the fundamentals, embrace them. Go to your bookshelf and pull off all of the books on sales whose titles include the word “never” or “secrets” or “closing“ or “shortcuts.” Take these books to your fireplace and burn them. You may as well search your computer for all of the similar PDF’s you have downloaded, as well. You don’t have to burn them, but you sure as Hell need to delete them. Let this purging serve as a clean break from any of this kind of thinking that may have crept into your thinking.

Embrace prospecting. Embrace cold calling. Embracing studying sales. Embrace writing a set of needs analysis questions that demonstrate you understand your business and your client’s business. Embrace learning to be a masterful listener, and masterful presenter. And most of all . . .

Learn to Close and to Obtain Commitments

Closing is not the single event at the end of the sales cycle. Closing is the ability to ask for and obtain the commitments that move a sale forward. These commitments have to be gained from the time you ask for the commitment to meet for an appointment all the way through the execution of the sale when it is eventually closed.

Closing should be natural and easy—if you have created value during each and every sales encounter. Asking for the commitment to move forward together is as simple as saying something like “I believe we have learned enough to be confident that we can move forward from here together. Can we schedule to take this next step together, or is there something you would still need from us?”

Is it perfect? No. Do you have something better? I am certain you do, and I hope you’ll share. But is it a Hell of a lot better than the Ben Franklin close? It’s not even a contest.

Conclusion

To sell more, stop focusing on the scoreboard and play the game. Spend you time solving your clients most pressing business problems, and stop spending time with people who cannot buy. Forget the shortcuts, the tips, the gimmicks, and the tricks and spend your time learning the fundamentals. Following these first four ideas will help you create the value that makes obtaining commitments natural and easy. Now go sell more!

Popularity: 2% [?]

On this blog, Sales Bloggers Union, you can find 15 different perspectives on a single topic every month. Much of the time you will find ideas that vary widely, and sometimes you will find ideas that contradict each other—sometimes they are even diametrically opposed.

The Internet, just like any library or bookstore, contains content that is written by individuals and organizations to share their viewpoint on a certain subject. There are hundreds (if not more) of great blogs about sales, many of which contradict each other.

So how do you go about deciding which ideas you should pursue? How do you choose which ideas are valuable to you and your effectiveness as a salesperson? Who should you believe?

The following three rules will help answer these questions and give you a framework for reading about and studying sales on the Internet.

1. Identify Articles With Different Perspectives

When you are interested in a topic under the general subject of sales, do a search for that topic. Identify articles with different perspectives. Find the articles that most appeal to you and that you feel are most helpful to you. Read those articles.

Then, read the articles that lay out a different perspective. Especially read the articles that bother you. Read the articles that you disagree with completely.

Ask yourself why these ideas make you uncomfortable. Do you know the ideas to be wrong for your circumstances? Do they contradict one of your long-held beliefs? Ask yourself why the person would write what they have written. Try to discover the writer’s truth; what is her experience?

For example, I believe that cold calling is an outstanding way to reach high-level decision-makers. That is the truth of my experience. But you will very easily find dozens of articles insisting that cold calling doesn’t work at all. That is the truth of that writer’s experience.

2. Decide and Act

If you are searching the Internet for ideas about sales in order to be more effective, you have to make decisions about which perspective makes sense for you, and you have to act on those ideas.

As you read the different perspectives you come across, make a list of action items and takeaways. Write down how you will implement those ideas in your work. But don’t just write down the ideas from the articles that you agree with. Take the time to jot down your ideas as to how you would implement the ideas from the articles with which you disagree. Even though these ideas may not be right for you now, they may make more sense later . . . and they may even make you more effective in some other areas.

Let’s stick with cold calling. After you have found articles on how to be more effective at cold calling and taken some notes on how to apply them to your work, then write down some ideas from the articles that are opposed to cold calling. Both sets of articles will deal with prospecting, and there are lots of ways to prospect for new clients.

What could you apply to your work from this second set of articles? How would it change what you are doing? Can you think of a circumstance in which the advice that you disagree with might be useful?

Act upon both sets of these ideas. If you can’t act on some of the ideas, keep the ideas; they may be helpful in the future.

3. Remember: There is No Right and Wrong, Just Effective and Ineffective

Sales is a dynamic, human endeavor with lots of moving parts. Like lots of things in life, there are no right and wrong answers, there is only effective and ineffective. As circumstances change, what was wrong before may be the right answer now.

The key to success in most human endeavors is to have a strong command of the basic ideas and principles, and then to build an enormous set of exceptions. These “exceptions” are the little variations from the main rules, and sometimes they are in complete opposition to the basic ideas.

These exceptions are the building blocks of effectiveness and provide you with the ability to identify when you are you using the wrong approach and to change it. If what you know to be true isn’t working, what would work?

The openness to ideas, especially ideas that you disagree with and that make you uncomfortable, is one of the foundations of mastery. Judge these different perspectives on their effectiveness in a single situation, knowing that there is no right and wrong.

There is only effective and ineffective.

Popularity: unranked [?]

At the end of each year, those in sales management will pull out their spreadsheets and work out the coming year’s goals and targets. If you are lucky, they will have left well enough alone with an unnecessarily cumbersome commission plan.

At some point, you will be given goals and targets and your commission structure. You’ve been through this exercise before, so you may give it a quick glance, bitch about how management doesn’t understand, and then file it away both literally and figuratively.  Managements plans and goals are rarely a source of motivation.

A Better Way

But there is another way. A better way. That way is to write your own targets, goals and commission plans.

What if instead of accepting management’s goals and targets, you set your own personal goals and targets?

What if instead of simply trying to meet the minimums that have been established, you instead wrote your own personal plan to meet your own goals?

What if instead of calculating your commissions based on their plan, you calculated your commissions based on your plan and targets?

How much more motivating is it to sit down and determine your own path, your own plan, and your own goals? The answer is that it is much more motivating. It’s also more fun and more professional.

The Voice That Only You Can Hear

Motivating you to reach your targets and goals is not your sales manager’s job. The real motivating voice for each of us is the voice that only we can hear. Planning to reach your goals and targets begins with the conversation you have with that voice.

It is critical that you have that conversation around your own personal goals, targets and compensation . . . it is far more important than the conversation you have with your sales manager.

Here are some questions to get you started with your own personal goals, targets and commissions. Let these questions guide your conversation and motivate you.

Five Questions: How To Reach Your Goals

Here are the five questions you need to ask during your personal goals and commissions planning:

1. Regardless of the goals and targets that were set out for me, what do I really want to accomplish with my sales year?

Too many people have the same sales year over and over again.

Even though you may work for a company, your goals and your ambitions in life are yours and yours alone. This includes your life in sales.

What you accomplish with your sales year can extend far beyond what your sales managements has in mind. What clients do you want to win? What areas of your performance do you want to improve? A year from now, how will you judge whether or not you had a successful year?

2. Regardless of the commission structure I have been presented with, how much am I going to make in commission?

Your organization may control the structure by which commissions are calculated, but you have total control over how you work within those calculations. Study your commission structure to make sure you understand what levers your company is trying to pull. Try to find out what results will lead to the greatest commissions. Use what you have learned in conjunction with your personal sales goals to write your own commission targets.

Don’t rely on your sales manager to do this for you. As a professional salesperson, it is your responsibility to know and understand the rules of the game. Then play the game within those rules.

3. In order to reach these goals, who would I have to be?

The Master Key to Sales Effectiveness is self discipline. Self discipline allows you to be the person that makes the better choices about what to do with their time.

Much of your effectiveness is determined by the choices you make. Do you choose to browse the Internet instead of prospecting? Do you choose to leave your email open all day, responding to every trivial email in real time? Do people describe you as someone with great water cooler knowledge like the latest sports scores or the latest results on American Idol? Or do they describe you as a disciplined, focused salesperson with results worth envying?

4. Based on my effectiveness now, what activity would I need to take on a daily and weekly basis to ensure that I can meet my personal goals and targets?

Based on your current results, how much time do you need to dedicate to the basic sales activities to reach your personal goals and commission plans? How much time do you need to prospect? How many prospects do you need in your pipeline? What does your average sale need to be?

Once you have answered these questions (and the ones you will ask yourself as you work through your plan), you can break these down into the daily and weekly activities you will need to take to remain on target. Will it be perfect? Absolutely not. Will it serve as a guide so that you can make the necessary adjustments? Absolutely.

5. Whose help will I need to enlist

Even though this is your plan, there are a people whose help you can enlist. Do you need your sales manager’s help with resources? Do you need some of your team members help with subject matter expertise to influence a prospect? Do you need help from those around you in minimizing distractions? Ask for help from those who can help you reach your goals and targets.

Conclusion

In the end our successes and our failures have more to with what we believe and the actions we take than any external factor. Regardless of the goals and targets set for you, your personal and professional development are primarily your responsibility. Don’t simply accept the goals and targets that are given to you.

Where you end up at the end of the year is your responsibility. Chart your own course and make your destination your own!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Introduction

This past week we lost the legendary Jim Rohn. Rohn was a great motivational speaker. I remember listening to How to Have Your Best Year Ever where Rohn insisted that one of the primary ideas behind success was to plant in Spring so you could harvest in the Fall. I’m paraphrasing, but I believe it was: “You have to learn to plant in the Spring or learn to beg in the Fall.” His point was simple and one of my favorite themes: you can’t cram for success.

The 6-Month Quarter

How you will perform in Q1 is already mostly decided. Most of the deal you will land have already been set in motion, Is there a chance that you can make the Q1 – 2010 numbers by starting on January 1st, 2010? Sure there is. By why tempt fate?

Instead of working from quarter to quarter to make your quota, it is easier to think in terms of the 6-Month Quarter. Think of Q1-2010 starting on October 1st, 2009 and running through March 31, 2010. The planting needs to be done between October 1st and December 31st. The harvesting (or begging, if you didn’t plant) is done between January 1st and March 31st.

“But wait,” you say, “if I am harvesting all of the prospects I developed in the first quarter, what about the second quarter?” Q2-2010 starts on January 1st!

In Sales, It’s Always Spring

It doesn’t matter what your sales cycle is; it might be 6 months, it might be two years. Whatever it is, the period will reset at some point and a measurement will be taken. How you do from one measuring point to the next is the result of what you do long before the clock starts ticking.

You can’t cram success, and you can’t cram relationships. The trust and understanding that allows a client to choose you and your company to create value for them doesn’t happen in the last week of your period, and it doesn’t happen because you need to make your sales quota. These relationships need be nurtured over time. Seeds need to be planted. To grow, they need to be monitored and care for until they mature.

Fortunately, for those of us in sales, it is always Spring.

Three Questions and One Project

1. Based on you sales cycle and the average time it takes you to move a deal from prospect to close, when does your quarter really start?
2. How much time each quarter do you set aside for laying the foundation for future results? (You might call this something like prospecting. I prefer to call it opening relationships).
3. Do you have enough live deals in your pipeline now to ensure that you make your Q1-2010 numbers, even if things go worse than you expect?

Project: Rewrite your calendar.

Maybe you don’t need a 6-month quarter. Maybe you want your Q1 to start on December 1, 2009 and run through February 28^th, knowing that your sales cycle doesn’t permit you to win deals in four weeks. Whatever works for you, write it down.

Make a calendar that outlines when you need to be planting if you wish to harvest on a certain date. You are always going to be opening relationships, but it helps to know how many you need to open now if you expect to close a portion of them at some point in the future.

I know it’s December, but I hope your March went well.

Popularity: unranked [?]