Sales & Becoming a Winning Salesman
Sales and Becoming a Winning Salesman: How to Suceeed at Sales
Only 20% of people entering the sales industry will survive their first year selling. According to recent studies, only 33% of all the current sales quotas in the United States are reached. For a new salesman, it takes almost 4 months for them to start earning an income which many new salesmen can not survive. The reasons for failure and low numbers have nothing to do with the product, low commissions, management, the market or advertising, yet many salespeople complain about all of these things. Below are keys to succeeding.
1. Protecting Your Morale
If you have low morale or confidence issues, you will never make it as a sales agent. With what ever you sell, it is important to not put yourself in positions that demoralize you. Don’t market to people who are continually abusive.
2. Being Productive
The first key to success is to make sure you are productive. What does that mean? How much time in a day are you actually selling? Or are you sure you are actually selling?
Below is a method to determine how much of your time is spent selling and this one little chart may launch your sales career into orbit after you use it. It is called the “Pin-task Analysis.” “Pin” stands for Productive time, Indirectly productive time and Non-productive Time. In a nutshell, it measures how productive you are as a salesman in doing the right things every day. The more productive you are, the more money you will earn. To start you should have an hourly calendar in front of you. The next thing is you start tracking what kind of time you are doing throughout the day. Productive is time you spend talking face to face to someone who can make you money. Indirectly Productive time is anything you do that can start a sale (advertising, phone calls, visiting people who can refer you). Non productive time is everything else you do besides that, including picking up your paycheck. If you are on a 40 hour work week, you only need 30% (2.4 hours a day) productive time a week and 30% indirectly productive, then you should be able to earn a 6 figure income.
The reason for failure is the attitude of the salesman. Unless one can accept responsibility for his or her failure and change his or her relationship to this problem, sales is probably not the career for them. Bad salesman spend their time complaining about all the reasons they can’t succeed. All of these reasons, tie them up in knots, take up valuable time, and give the excuse not to market or sell the product effectively. The sale is not about the product; If you are a salesman, the sale is all about you I will try to explain that concept as we proceed. If you are complaining about any these issues, then that is valuable time that you are not selling. And if you are doing anything at your job more than selling, it will be hard to succeed. Basically what this means is that a good salesman controls everything and leaves nothing to the fault of success of another. He controls the environment of the sale, the context of the sale and the consulting in the sale.
Chasing after money should not be the goal. Earning a commission is the result of doing excellence unto another person. If a salesman does excellence, people will chase him down to pay him. This principle changed my life when I first heard Doug Yeaman share it at a sales conference. Sales are about people and helping people and not chasing the dollar.
Ralph Migliozzi
Broker Originator Serving Northern California
NMLS 282851 DRE #01002038
(p) 530-330-3073
