Successful salespeople recognize themselves as salespeople

You can’t be successful in sales unless you completely accept that you’re a salesperson. If you’re in any doubt about it at all, or you have any sense of resistance to that fact, you’re never going to achieve the results that could otherwise easily be yours. Salespeople who make the grade, who sell and who exceed their targets are always those who regard themselves first and foremost as salespeople, and are proud of that fact. What about you? When you look in the mirror, are you proud of the salesperson staring back at you?

If you don’t see a salesperson

If you aren’t proud to see yourself as a salesperson, you’ll never find the motivation to do the things that are essential: make calls, prospect, open new relationships and really put in the effort to look after your customers.

You’ll hold yourself back from dreaming big and approaching prospects that may seem out of your reach and you’ll never bring in a breathtakingly surprising deal. You won’t go the extra mile to ensure your customers are so blown away by your service and your care that they’ll never consider going anywhere else. You’ll get worn out too quickly by the size of the task before you. You’ll try less hard and ultimately, you’ll quit. Everyone loses if you allow your lack of self-belief to hold you back … but nobody will lose more than you.

If you aren’t proud to call yourself a salesperson and to embrace the role, you’ll waste time on tasks that don’t move you forward. You’ll be busy, being busy, but that busyness will have nothing to do with work.

You won’t ask difficult questions. You won’t seek out ways to provide the best solutions. You won’t follow up and you won’t do the easy work that is necessary to become successful.

But if you do see a salesperson …

If what you see when you look in the mirror is a proud salesperson, full of self-belief and convinced you’re in the right profession, then you’re already further down the road to success than most other people in your line of work.

You’ll understand that it takes time to be brilliant and over that time, it takes a great deal of effort. But you know you’ll get there. You’ll understand that if you don’t motivate yourself and get yourself started, you’ll never make a big success of your career and you’ll put in the effort to ensure that nothing is left to chance.

You’ll love dealing with customers, want to help them, to give them a brilliant experience and to want to keep you in their lives for a long time into the future. You’ll see this as your mission.

You’ll know that trust is critical but that it takes time and that it must be earned. You’ll think through every move you make to ensure you maintain the highest standards so your customers and colleagues can believe in you. ma

You’ll believe in integrity – that you do what you say you’ll do. You’ll put that ahead of money because you’ll know that in sales, money comes to those whose efforts deserve it.

If you see a salesperson, you’ll see someone who has selected the greatest career in the world and who has the ability to create a future that others can only dream about.

So who do you see, really?

Yours in sales
Mark Keating
CEO
mark@salesguru.co.za