Been selling for 10, 20, 30 years? That’s great. Or was it 1-year experience repeated 10 times? In Sales Ninja world: Experience ≠ Results. Experience gives you a higher confidence level because you are familiar with the product or the process. The key question here is, are you producing more sales and making more money every single year? If yes, I congratulate you, keep practicing what you are doing because results matter. If your performance is not going UP, then here are 2 suggestions for you:
1 >> Keep pushing yourself. Remember when you got started? How blazing your fire was? How much time you spend hitting the floors and punching the numbers on the phone to get appointments? The more years you are in selling, the more it turns you into an order-taker, mostly doing visitings and servicings and taking orders from your customers. That’s not selling.
I have a public listed client who dominates the market with more than 50% market share. With over 20 years in the business, the relationship with the clients is solidly strong. The CEO launched a new product and wants the team to sell it to the clients. The results were miserable. Experience field reps with strong relationships with their existing customers unable to cross-sell other products. Why? Very experienced salespeople, but they forgot how to sell, they were servicing. This leads me to point number 2…
2 >> Go back to the basics. Selling is all about mastering all the basics and practicing all the basics. It does not matter how experienced you are, you must use the basic skills of selling at all times. The more I conduct sales training in Malaysia or for that matter any other countries across the world, the more I realize how important mastering the basics are. Most salespeople know the basics, but they have not mastered all of them. They just do a few of this and a few of that. That’s not Sales Best Practices. It’s called Sales Best Practices because it must always be… Practiced!
No skilled athlete or fighter is going to say, I’ve swung a few times, I’m the master, I don’t need to swing anymore, let’s do something else. Michael Jordan is famous for a story of him shooting 1000 baskets in his practices before he stops. That’s practicing the basics. A fighter before battle practices straight punches, the most basic of all punches, but he/she keeps practicing that, why?? Because that’s Best Practices – it must always be practiced!
My view is this, it does not matter what you know or how much you know or how long you’ve been selling. It’s results – period!
Unconventionally,
HANZO NG
Sales Ninja Grandmaster
© 2009 onwards Sales Ninja Training. All Rights Reserved.
Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their salespeople into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation, and leadership training, visit our website.
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