Our great profession of sales has a bad name, doesn’t it? Many people use the term “sales person” as a label for anyone they think is pushy, lazy and dishonest. This is a nightmare for professional sales people who don’t deserve this negative association.
Unfortunately, many salespeople seem determined to destroy the reputation of salespeople everywhere.
They have a negative attitude, moan, complain and do little to no daily proactive prospecting. Their sales pipelines are in a permanent drought and they rarely achieve their sales targets. They take no responsibility or accountability for their sales results, and fail to notice that their results come down to one thing…themselves! They make promises to both their sales managers and customers that they can’t keep.
All anyone at their company and customers remember, after dealing with them, is a negative experience. That pisses me off and they should be permanently barred from the sales profession.
There are however many professional salespeople that keep the light shining for us. I have interviewed numerous top sales performers and here are several things I believe are crucial:
- Be self motivated to succeed and don’t expect your sales manager to have to constantly do this for you.
- Be punctual, both at your place of work and at customers.
- Be friendly with a great attitude (if you need this explained, get out of sales)
- Get on the phone! Ensure that you make prospecting a regular daily activity. It’s not someone else’s job to constantly ask you to do yours.
- Be an expert on the products you sell.
- Be there to serve your customers and help them to be better off than where they are currently through what you offer.
- Always put your customer’s best interests first.
- Look and act professional at all times.
- Remember your company pays you to fulfill a role, do what you said you would do and keep your promises.
- Set the right example for what professional sales look like.
If you are flying the “professional salesman” flag high, I would like to thank you, keep on doing what you are doing. For the rest, raise your game or get out of sales!
Have a great sales month ahead,
Mark
Your comments are welcome… email info@salesguru.co.za
