فصل 22 بخش 3

FEELING LIKE AN IDIOT

If you’ve ever had any version of the dream of being in front of a group of people and then realizing you are naked, then you know what it is like to feel like an idiot. You’re caught, pants down. People are laughing at you and you feel frozen. Here’s the good news: Everyone fears that they will be exposed, caught, and shown to be inadequate or unprepared.

The word “idiot” comes from Latin. It was used to describe a common person who was not educated and not worldly. It is a word used to make a person feel bad, feel like he is missing out on something that “everyone else knows!” Feeling like an idiot is just the feeling of not knowing something. Oftentimes, we even intuitively DO know something, but we don’t act on it for whatever reason. You KNEW you shouldn’t have gone out to the bar that night, but you did anyway, and when you wound up in a bar fight, you felt like an idiot because you didn’t listen to your own instincts. The degree to which you fear feeling like an idiot is the degree to which you look to others for your self-worth. If you do something that is idiotic, the best thing you can do is quickly admit it and learn from it so you can move forward the next time.

Look, what I’m saying here is that being an idiot and the fear of being an idiot are two separate things. Everyone is an idiot at some point and in some endeavor, meaning you have to become educated and worldly—you’re not born that way. Great men of ability started out as idiots before they learned, practiced, and became great. But your fear of being an idiot will keep you from learning, practicing, and eventually becoming great. So go ahead, be an idiot and make mistakes. Free yourself from the fear of this by pursuing your ambitions and being willing to be an idiot. In this way, you will have the rare freedom of being able to stand naked in the face of judgment, and you will have a good time.

MEETING NEW PEOPLE

Overall, by survey, salespeople feel meeting new people to prospect is challenging. This is usually a symptom of thinking small and conservatively and following a contraction plan instead of an expansion plan. For example, do you know a salesperson who packs his lunch each day and eats at his desk to “save money?” Such an individual is withdrawing in life, not reaching.

The solution to meeting new people and prospects is to reach way out. Think expansive, not contractive. Where can I go today to meet prospects for my product? Where do you go in the course of your day to be seen and possibly get lucky? Get out and have lunch at a restaurant, not with a fellow salesperson. He’s not buying anything from you. Get out in the world where there are people, and meet them. How about your gym, city council, church, conventions, industry trade shows, or classes you take, whether they are related to your profession or just something to do for fun? I have never sold a client watching TV in my home!

The possibilities are endless if you are actually involved in living life. The first step is to commit to getting out among people. The second step is figuring out how to establish communication with someone you meet. The easiest way for me to meet and develop a relationship with people is to visit the same place over and over until I am comfortable with the settings and it is natural to start communicating with others. Then, if you just take notice of something you have in common with others and comment on it, you will see the communication start up. Also, asking people for help is a great way to get the communication flowing. This could be as simple as mentioning the fact that you like the shoes of someone standing in the grocery line or asking them where they got their shoes. They may be wearing a brand of sunglasses you like or driving a car you want to know something about. If you are in a restaurant, you can even admire the dish the person at the table next to you ordered and ask about it. The point I am trying to get you to see here is that the more you are participating in life and taking an interest in other people around you, the more you will meet people. Be interested in others, communicate with everyone, reach out by being seen and making contact, and watch your pipelines start to fill up.

BREAKING THE ICE

It is always the salesperson’s duty to break the ice when establishing a relationship. Customers have not called you or driven to your company or agreed to an appointment because they are not interested; if you are going to help customers get what they want, you need to get to know them. Sometimes just breaking the ice is a bit uncomfortable. The more you do it, the more comfortable you will become, and the more you believe in what you are doing, the less of an issue it will be.

Many times your prospective clients are guarded when they are shopping or when you are calling on them due to previous bad experiences with salespeople. You need to know how to approach prospects to make them feel welcome and at ease without turning them off or making them feel pounced on. It’s simpler than you think: (1) Approach the prospect; do not wait for the customer to approach you; (2) smile, and thank the person for their time (“really appreciate you coming here or making time for me”); (3) stick out your hand and say, “My name is ____,” and ask for theirs if necessary. Keep your hand out there until the person shakes it; make physical contact where you can, as it breaks that physical boundary. Smile and keep smiling regardless of their attitude.

Once the communication line has been established, immediately move into explaining what your goal or purpose is with the time the person is giving you. Once you break the ice, do not spend the next thirty minutes building rapport and wasting your client’s time. There is always time for that later! Before you present your product or company, take interest in the client by finding out what problem he is trying to solve with your service or product or by even making the time to see you. If Bob agrees to see me, then he is trying to solve some problem.

STAYING MOTIVATED

One of the questions I get a lot from people of all industries and careers is, “How can I stay motivated, especially when I don’t feel like I am getting anywhere?” This is not a unique problem to salespeople; it’s a universal challenge experienced by anyone trying to accomplish any goal. Whether you are trying to make that big sale, trying to lose those extra pounds, training for a marathon, or learning a language, disappointments and failures occur along the way to any worthwhile aim.

The key to success is knowing how to stay motivated in the face of barriers, stops, and things not going quite the way you’d hoped or planned. The number one way for me to stay motivated is to stay busy moving quickly from one activity to the next without a lot of time in between. You know the old adage, “Is your glass half empty or half full?” The reality is if you are moving fast enough, it won’t matter because you are going to the next activity. My motivation comes from my attention on the future, not from something done in the past.

When I am moving on to the next thing, I don’t have time to get sucked into focusing on what went wrong. Instead, I concentrate on what I have to do next. I believe a lot of depression is actually a mislabeling of inactivity! If there is a fire in your kitchen, I assure you that you won’t be depressed. You will be consumed with putting that fire out or watching your house burn down. You might be depressed later, but not while it’s happening!

The other thing with staying motivated is you need to stay away from bad news and doomsayers. Their goal is to drag you down and make sense of where they live and the choices they have made. They will only leave you feeling like more of a failure, more hopeless, and more apathetic about taking any more action toward your goal. Instead, stay positive, keep connected to people on your team, in your group, or via training who share your goal and who will help you celebrate your little victories on your way to the big win.

STARTING OVER WITH NEW CLIENTS

Making a brand new start can cause anxiety and uncertainty. If you are starting over with a new product or new company and need to get back to square one, it can make you feel defeated. When you find yourself in this situation, the thing to do is make a plan and, most important, get into action! If you are starting over, you have already been at the beginning point and gotten past it. You know what to do. Make your prospect list, work your power base, get up to speed on your new product or service, and get started! Get into action fast. The faster you start presenting your pitch, getting interest, and building your pipeline, the quicker you will work your way out of the condition of being unknown and brand new. Get your name, product, and message out right away. Don’t wait to become an expert on your new product or company. Know enough that you yourself are sold on the product, and go make it known to others.

LOSING BUSINESS TO OTHERS

It can be demoralizing to lose a deal to a competitor. You have two choices of action when this happens: (1) You can blame something or someone else and be a victim, or (2) you can learn from it and win the next one. If you choose the first plan of action, it actually makes you worse. The reason for this is that you are not taking full responsibility for making the sale. You are allowing the consideration to creep into your thinking that something or someone other than yourself is in control of the transaction. This leaves too much room for failure and opens the door to your competitor to keep swooping in and winning your deals. Instead, when you have lost a deal to a competitor, try choosing path number two. Take a good look at what happened and why the competitor’s product or service looked superior to yours. It may just be in the presentation. A great tool to use in getting this information is to have someone other than yourself, preferably a manager, make a “What happened?” call to the client. This is a nonthreatening call, which is not pushing for the sale, but is done more along the lines of a quality-control procedure to find out how the customer’s experience was and how the sales team did in representing the company. This is very effective and can garner some valuable information that you can learn and put to use in the future. The difference is that this puts you at cause, as you are actually doing something about it instead of crying in your milk like a little bitch.

LACK OF CONSISTENCY

Your lack of consistency always boils down to a lack of real discipline. Discipline is not some concept for body builders and military personnel. Discipline is part and parcel of our everyday lives—it means you have exerted some control over random elements and made something of them. You would need to discipline an unruly garden to turn it into a thing of beauty in the same way you need to discipline yourself as a salesperson.

Your process of making the phone calls, reaching out to new people, handling a customer correctly from the beginning, following up—these are all things that merely become part of your existence when you learn your craft, train, and grow stronger. Your fears are like weeds in a garden, which grow out of control if you lack the discipline to contain them. There are a finite number of things that you must do every day, and when you do them, an incredible blooming occurs of your successes and income! If you don’t do them, you will become overwhelmed by weeds, decay, and unruliness, and you will be scared to even try because you lack control.

Take control each day and DO what’s needed. Create a checklist for yourself and make sure you reach and exceed each target, and then better yourself the next day. Calls to twenty-five people: DONE. Give my business card to thirty new people: DONE. Write fifty e-mails to clients: DONE. Demonstrate my product to ten people in person: DONE. Close three new deals: DONE.

Treat these items as a game and improve your “score” every day. Soon, the dreaded need for “discipline” will be replaced by fine-tuned habits that create wealth for you, your family, and your business.

COLD-CALLING/PROSPECTING

Who is my customer? This is a question all salespeople ponder when looking for prospects and a starting point for their business. You will innately have this answer the moment you fully understand and are sold on your product yourself. You see, once you are sold on your product, you will know all the problems that, product solves. Then you are armed with all the information you need to talk to ANYONE about the product or service you are selling. You will know immediately who has problems that can be resolved with your product or service, and you can target those people in your cold-calling and prospecting. How do you cold-call? Step one: Leave your fear, reservation, and inhibition at home. Step two: Look professional. Step three: Map out several potential clients based on who needs your product or service. Step four: Just go visit them! Be confident as you arrive. I have some real road warriors who work for me in my organization, and they cold-call in cities they are unfamiliar with every day. Their complete belief in the fact that our product can improve the lives of our customers gives them the confidence and courage they need to overcome any fear they may have and call on total strangers They walk into a company, bypass the salespeople, and go straight to the decision maker’s office just by the manner in which they carry themselves. They exude an air of “I belong here, I know where I’m going.” Believe in your product or service and negate your fear by getting into action. Pure, massive action will drown fear in no time.

COMMISSION ONLY/NO SECURITY

Growing up, we were all taught to study hard, get a good education, land a job with a major company, work nine to five, take two weeks vacation a year, and retire with money in the company subsidized 401k. This was the “safe” thing to do when planning for your future. Parents, teachers, and counselors preached this philosophy to countless students who were fighting to paint, dance, create video games, and think outside the box. As it turns out, this is a very dangerous course to take in life. Putting your future in the hands of the stock market and the CEOs of the large banks that rule the commerce of our society is actually a very precarious state. Witness the events in 2008 when even the giants like Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Chase, and Merrill Lynch were stung by huge losses and had to close thousands of locations and lay off millions of people. What we have come to value as secure and safe jobs no longer actually exist. The truth is, it has always been the innovators, the idea people, the creators of new technologies who have fared the best in our global economy. So when you get cold feet and start to worry about the insecurity of living on commission only, consider this: Would you rather depend on the board of directors, CEOs, and the Social Security system for your future survival, or would you rather rely on YOU? Who do you think is more vested in the standard of living of you and your loved ones, the presidents of the JPMorgans of the world or you? Your financial success is best trusted to the one person who has the most direct control over it, and that person is you. That is true security.

LONG HOURS

Working long hours is in the eye of the beholder. Frankly, as I’ve said before, you have the same number of hours in the day as anyone else. Rich men and poor men alike all have the same amount of time in any given day. The question is whether you are working for your dreams or working for others’ dreams. See, the reality is that even when you go home, you’re still working for something. Maybe you like to work out, so you’re working for the body you want. Maybe you have a family, so you’re working for them, getting dinner together, cleaning up, putting your kids to bed, and so forth. Maybe you go home and smoke pot, watch TV, zone out until you pass out, and start over again the next day. If this is the case, you are working like a charm for your pot dealer, because you are a perfect victim of the system and no longer in charge of your life. If I described you in this last example, please call my office and get some information on how you can get out of that horrible rattrap. We can recommend a book that will wake you up and make you feel alive again, more than any drug in existence.

The good news is that you’re working 24/7, whether you know it or not, so if you can maximize your time toward positive actions then you are working correctly. If you are just half awake and “clocking in” to any part of your day—or your life—then a half hour will seem like an eternity. If you are truly alive, the captain of your own ship, and working for YOU and YOUR dreams, then a fourteen-hour day will seem like nothing.

It’s all in your head, man, everything. You decide what you do or don’t do, but DECIDE. You can literally change time if you allow yourself to wake up and smell the “coffee of your dreams.” A career in sales carries a stigma of having “long” hours, but I ask, “Compared to WHAT?” In sales, you are working for yourself, you are in control of how much you make, and there is literally no ceiling on your income, no limits except the limits YOU put on yourself. So if you think that working for yourself is working “too long,” then you need to examine who you really work for and put in a letter of resignation, effective immediately.

TRAITS OF A GREAT SALESPERSON

Is willing to be told no. “Can’t make the shot you never take,” said Wayne Gretzky. To be a great salesperson, you have to be willing to be told no and then allow people to tell you no more than once. Most salespeople never ask for the order repeatedly, failing to even ask for the no, trying to avoid the very thing they are certain to end up with.

Asks for the order regardless. Believe it or not, the number one reason salespeople fail is because they just never ask, “Can I get your signature here and here, please?” Most salespeople believe they ask for the order more than they do and in fact never even asked the first time, much less enough times. They are probably trying to avoid rejection, getting a no, or failure. Or maybe the discipline of asking hasn’t been developed yet. Many people who are unable to ask are operating under the false belief that if they are just nice to people, the people will buy from them. Only a very small percentage of the people will buy from you without you asking, and most will only buy after you have asked five times. If you are unwilling to ask for the order, you will only get the leftovers of those who are professionally trained to ask for an order.

Listens selectively. If you are one of those people who believes everything someone says to you is true and that what people say is what they will do, you will be a disaster at selling. People will say many things to you that are close to meaningless: “I can’t afford it, we are on a budget.” “We aren’t buying today, we are going to wait until —” “We never buy at the first place.” “I have to talk to my wife.” “I’ll see you later today.” The list goes on and on. If you are a gullible person and just believe everything your client tells you is “the gospel,” sorry, you aren’t cut out for selling.

Stays sold on his or her own story. If you happen to be one of those personality types that is easily sold on another’s story and unable to hold your conviction and belief about those things you are sold on, you will suck at selling your own products and be great at getting sold on others. You are stuck in some kind of reverse boomerang universe where you intend to sell your story, products, or services, and then end up buying everyone’s stories rather than selling your own.

Asks questions. If you hate asking questions and feel doing so is “too” personal or prying into someone’s business, you will not make it in the field of sales or as a negotiator. “What is your income?” “How long have you worked there?” “Who is the decision maker?” “Why can’t you do this?” These are questions you will have to learn to ask. If questions cause you discomfort that you are not willing to handle, this will determine your fate in sales or, for that matter, in all life negotiations.

Gets answers to questions. I know some salespeople who don’t mind asking questions, but they never take the time to actually get an answer. These people believe they are controlling the conversation by asking questions, but they fail as salespeople because they never insist on the answers. They ask a question and then ask another, sometimes answering questions themselves for the customer and never getting anywhere. The person who controls the sale is not the person simply asking questions, but the person who can get answers to questions.

Knows that price is not the issue. If you believe the lowest price is the reason people buy things, then you should not consider sales. You should become a clerk at Wal-Mart or a waiter in a restaurant. Cheaper alternatives can replace 99.9 percent of all products on this planet. Whether it is a purse, phone, TV, automobile, insurance, mortgage, etc., someone, somewhere can and will sell it for less. Even more of a reality is that most of the things that are bought and sold are not necessary to have, so if a person wanted the lowest price, the thing to do would be to not buy it at all. Too high of a price is actually a myth and not the reason people buy anything, but if you believe the lowest price is the reason people buy things, you should not be in sales.

Is willing to pressure and persist. If you are one of those people who became convinced as a child by your parents, teacher, and environment that getting your way is a bad thing, then you should avoid all sales jobs and any job involving negotiating, debating, or entrepreneurship. A diamond is only coal until the right amount of pressure is applied for the right amount of time. People will not separate from their money or make decisions without someone building value and then insisting on someone taking action. If you despise pressure or persistence, don’t do sales and do not go into business for yourself.

Believes in selling as a good thing. Most salespeople actually believe that what they are doing is wrong and unethical, and because they believe that what they are doing is a bad thing they will fail at it. Even one small dose of this type of thinking will kill your chances of ever making it in sales. Great salespeople are proud of their title and profession and know that nothing happens on this planet without salespeople.

Trains and prepares constantly. If you are one of those people who thinks they are going to successfully sell just because of their natural abilities and are unwilling to train and prepare, you will not make it as a salesperson. You can be an average salesperson, but you will probably die broke. Even great salespeople will be plagued with competitive threats, industry changes, and challenging economies over the life span of their careers, and they will find themselves at risk. To be great at selling, you will have to make a commitment to sales training, sales seminars and books, and staying connected to sales tips and sales strategies.

By the way, numbers 1 and 8 will not only ensure that you fail as a salesperson, but also that your life on planet Earth will be quite difficult.