Sales Career Transformation

3 Solutions to Overcoming Fear in Sales

Devynn King — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:30:18 +0000

Like a professional athlete, the sales executive needs to consistently perform well. Sales Executives face two main pressures on a daily basis, the pressure to hit revenue goals (or profitable revenue goals) and the pressure to please and be appreciated by others. Thus, the constant pressure can lead to the need to either “be perfect” or “appear perfect” in front of clients and internal operations in order to get the job done. It can seems as if there is no middle ground, if the information provided is not perfect, positioned perfectly, or presented perfectly, there is a chance for failure. You may even feel the need to over promise and then hope and pray that you find a way to deliver. You want to be perfect for the customer, even if it means being at odds with your company. After all, you know that the checks written to employees are first written by the customer. Thus, the sales athlete is motivated to please or appease the customer, be it the external customer at any costs. The need to please leads to the need to be or appear perfect. Therefore, fear of failure leads to perfectionism.

How do you overcome fear in sales?
1. Insure that you have high drive that does not go into overdrive. In other words, stay balanced.

2. Insure that you are striving for perfection but not expecting perfection. Examine your core beliefs. Do your core beliefs contain a lot of unforgivable ‘shoulds’. Work smart and hard, strive to learn more about your profession, your company products, and your customers. Remember that going into overdrive and expecting too much will take you off your game.

3. Be your own best friend by insuring that your ‘self talk’ propels you forward. Insure that you are optimistic and resilient.

3 Elements of a Great Sales Plan!

Devynn King — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:39:19 +0000

A great sales plan helps you not only hit your goals but exceed your targets in spite of market conditions! The plan should start from a broad perspective and then drill down to executable tasks that need to be completed daily. Expect to revisit your plan and decipher the points that are working and not effective.

Vision
Personal Branding. What is your brand? If you were your own company and you were to market yourself, how would you describe yourself as a product? What are your strengths, what advantages and benefits to you offer your customers, both internal customers and external customers? Weigh against your now description, how would you like people to describe you in the future? What features should you add to your personal brand to make you more competitive?

To learn more about personal branding go to: http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/personal-branding-pledge-for-2010-from-nance-rosen/

Goals
What are the goals you would like to achieve in 2010? Think about all your goals, including spiritual goals, physical goals, family goals, and business goals. Think about what you want to achieve by the end of the year. Have a now picture and an end of the year picture in your mind.

Use the following link to obtain a free worksheet for setting goals and additional goal setting tips. http://www.deliverfreedom.com/goal_setting_worksheet.html

Plan
An excellent sales plan contains many elements. Starting from the top, you need to have an idea of the product lines and services that you are going to promote. Perform a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Obstacles, and Threats) analysis to understand your products and services better. Identify the benefits your clients obtain from your products and services. Describe the ideal customers that will most benefit from your products. Develop a target list of the customers you will go after. It is best to place that list in an excel file. Include the name of the client, link to their web site, reason the client will benefit from your products, the time frame for which you will approach the client, the date that the orders will come into the door, the dollar value that you will obtain from the client, the percent likelihood that you will close the business and the percent likelihood that you will close the business on time. Be brutally honest with yourself. If you are too optimistic, you will set yourself up for failure by not considering and therefore preparing for obstacles. Putting your plan into an excel spreadsheet will help you sort and filter your plan in many different ways. Compare your plan to your sales goals. Will you hit your goals? In general, you can count on failure therefore you need to insure that you have enough targets to cover for lost opportunity. The spreadsheet will allow you to generate an executable plan monthly to hit your goal.

Your job now is to “Get Busy.” Have a great 2010!

Eradicate Fear In Sales!

Devynn King — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:56:52 +0000

What are the benefits of eradicating fear in sales? The sales professional will gain higher access to decision makers, shorten the sales cycle, prospect more, and develop a richer sales funnel.

“Sales Career Transformations” is not another blog focused on how to sell in fact. You will not find tips about the “how to” of selling. Instead this is a blog that helps the starving corporate sales representative develop the psychological strength to perform consistently at high levels…stress free! This blog is for sales reps that are close to reaching goal but need that extra boost to execute fearlessly, the sales reps that feel overwhelmed by the pressures from their company, and want to take their sales to the next level. The secret is learning how to find limiting beliefs, sabotaging thoughts, and the subtle negative attitudes that hold you back from excellent sales results.

Sales people, by nature, love people. That means they love interacting with people, sometimes see themselves as servants and are, essentially, paid influencers. Thus, there are two main pressures that affect the performance of a professional sales representative, the pressure to consistently hit revenue goals (or profitable revenue goals) and the pressure to please and be appreciated by others. Higher levels of performance means that the professional sales consultant must overcome the fear of rejection, fear of success, fear of failure, fear of losing a sale, fear of asking for the close, and fear of prospecting, on a daily basis. These fears can lead to the necessity to go into overdrive. Overdrive can lead to the need to either “be perfect” or “appear perfect” in front of clients and internal operations. In response to fear, a sales executive may overpromise services to the client, promises that require unplanned extra work. This means erosion of profits, stretching operational functions, potential failure to deliver and client complaints in the market place. The long-term effect of fear is the increase of tensions between operations and the sales team and loss of market share. The overall performance of the organization suffers.

This blog we find effective ways to eradicate fear in selling!