No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline (21 page)

Read No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline Online

Authors: Brian Tracy

Tags: #Self Help, #Business, #Non-Fiction, #Psychology, #Inspirational

 
Chapter 11
 
Self-Discipline and Sales
 
“Nothing happens until a sale takes place.”
—RED MOTLEY
 
 
 
 
T
he most important element in business success is selling. Nothing happens until a sale takes place. All the factories, businesses, offices, and producers of goods and services leap into action only when someone, somewhere makes a sale to someone.
 
Selling is one of the hardest professions in America. It is also the only profession in which a person can start with limited skills to achieve one of the highest incomes in our economy. Moving onward and upward in sales is like driving on the Autobahn in Germany: There are no speed limits. You can go as far and as fast as you want by stepping on the accelerator of your own ambition and determination to excel in the profession of sales.
 
Business Success or Failure
 
Thousands of bankrupt or insolvent companies have been analyzed over the years to determine why they failed. After all the data was sorted and studied, virtually every business failure came down to one reason: “low sales.” In contrast, whenever a business was succeeding, growing, yielding profitability, increasing its share prices, and offering opportunity for more and more people, the reason boiled down to one factor: “high sales.” Everything else was secondary.
 
Almost everything you do in a business either increases or decreases sales.
Everything
either helps or hurts.
Everything
either attracts and keeps more customers—or drives them away.
Everything
counts when it comes to sales.
 
The Discipline of Generating Sales
 
Whether you are a salesperson or a business owner, you require the self-discipline to focus and concentrate on generating sales
every hour
of
every business day.
 
A group of researchers interviewed several hundred senior executives and business owners and asked them, “How important are sales and marketing to your business?”
 
Without exception, they all replied, “Sales and marketing are absolutely essential to our survival and growth.”
 
The researchers then conducted a time-and-motion study of these same business owners and executives, following them around and tracking their time usage over the course of a month. At the end of that time, they completed their calculations and determined that the average business owner or executive—who professed that sales were “absolutely essential” to survival and growth—was spending
only 11 percent
of his time on sales and marketing. The remaining time was spent on meetings, discussions, paperwork, administrative work, luncheons, and a variety of other activities that contributed
nothing
to sales generation.
 
If you are a sales manager or business owner, you must discipline yourself to focus most of your time and attention on getting your salespeople to generate the sales on which your company depends. You must spend 75
percent of your time
working with your salespeople and accompanying them when they visit your customers to make presentations and sales. Do your paperwork before or after work, but during working hours, when customers are available to be seen, you should dedicate yourself entirely to sales generation.
 
HOW TO GO BROKE
 
Some years ago, I started a new business. I developed the product and then began advertising via direct mail, radio, television, and newspaper. I allowed myself to become completely overwhelmed with planning, paperwork, and advertising activities. By the end of the year, I was out of money, and my business was almost broke.
 
At that time, I realized that I had taken my eye off the ball of sales. I then sat down over Christmas and designed a complete sales process. On January 2nd, I picked up the telephone and began making appointments. Over the next two months of aggressive and focused sales activity, I did more business than I had done over the entire previous year. I saved my business—and my home—and I never lost sight of that focus again.
 
 
One of the most important questions you can ask as a salesperson, entrepreneur, or business owner is whether what you’re doing right now is leading to a sale. Ask this question of yourself repeatedly throughout the day. Every time the answer comes up “no,” you must immediately stop whatever you are doing of lower value and turn your attention to sales generation. In addition, make sure that all the people who are responsible for sales in your company ask and answer this question in the affirmative all day long.
 
Overcome Your Fear of Rejection
 
Assuming that you have an attractive product or service, one that is reasonably priced and suited to the current market, the biggest problem that telephone salespeople and outside salespeople face is
rejection
. The fear of rejection does more to sabotage a sales career and undermine sales activities than any other single factor. It is the major obstacle to sales success.
 
It takes tremendous discipline for salespeople to get up every morning and go out and face the inevitable rejection that they know they are going to receive all day long. Most people cannot handle this continuous rejection. Therefore, to avoid the emotional pain that comes with rejection, many salespeople engage in a series of “displacement” activities to avoid being rejected.
 
First of all, they make
fewer
calls. According to Columbia University, the average salesperson works about ninety minutes per day—in other words, only about one and a half hours out of an eight-hour day. He spends the rest of the time warming up and getting ready, shuffling paperwork, checking the Internet, reading the newspaper, chatting with coworkers, coming in late, leaving early, and taking extended lunches and coffee breaks. As a result, by the end of the day, on average,
the salesperson has worked only ninety minutes.
 
Increase Face Time with Customers and Prospects
 
When is a salesperson working? The salesperson is working only when he or she is ear to ear (on the phone) or face to face with someone who can and will buy within a reasonable period of time.
 
The rule for sales success can be contained in six words: “Spend more time with better prospects.” There is no other way to generate a high, consistent, and predictable level of sales results.
 
Because of the fear of rejection, however, salespeople procrastinate and delay throughout the sales day, doing everything possible to avoid getting face to face with people who can say “no!”
 
The key to sales success, as I learned as a young salesman, is to realize that
rejection is not personal.
Prospective customers always say things like, “No, I’m not interested” or variations of, “I don’t want it,” “I don’t need it,” “I can’t use it,” “I can’t afford it,” “I’m not in the market right now,” or “I’m happy with my existing supplier.”
 
The professional salesperson realizes that these are simply normal and natural responses to any commercial offer in a competitive marketplace. Again, they are
not
personal—so don’t take them personally.
 
Remain Positive and Optimistic
 
The key to sales success is to eliminate the fear of rejection, to become so confident and optimistic that you can call continually all day long and still remain positive and cheerful. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
 
There is a direct relationship between the number of new customer contacts you make and your level of sales. If you want to increase the number of sales, simply
discipline yourself to call on more prospects.
 
When you increase your levels of sales activity, you also activate the Law of Probabilities to work on your behalf. You tap into the law of averages. You “work the numbers” to ensure success.
 
How to Double Your Sales Income
 
Practice the “Minutes Principle” in your sales work. This principle says that, if you are earning all the money that you are earning today with only the number of minutes you are spending face to face with customers today, by increasing that number of minutes, you can also increase your sales.
 
With outside salespeople, we encourage them to double the number of minutes they spend face to face with customers. We teach them to use every bit of intelligence and creativity they have to increase the amount of time they spend talking in person with prospects rather than following the path of least resistance and allowing themselves to procrastinate getting out into the marketplace.
 
In almost every case, when a salesperson doubles the number of minutes that he or she spends face to face or ear to ear with customers, that salesperson’s sales double as well. This is not an accident. It is based on law: the Law of Probabilities.
 
Control Your Sales Activities
 
You can seldom tell where your next sale is going to come from. Therefore, you have to “cast a wide net” and speak to as many prospective customers as possible.
 
The actual sale itself is not under your direct control. It is controlled by a variety of factors about which you can do very little. But the
activities
that lead to sales are completely under your control. The rule is “Do what you can with what you have right where you are.”
 
To achieve high levels of sales success, you must discipline yourself to plan your days and weeks in advance. You must discipline yourself to
plan
your sales activities—especially your prospecting activities—every single day, and then you have to discipline yourself to
follow through
on your plans and resolutions.
 
Improve Your Ratios
 
There are certain ratios in selling that largely determine how many sales you make. These ratios vary depending on your level of experience and ability, the competition, the prices of your products or services, and the general market. Nonetheless, these ratios always exist:
• There is a direct ratio between the number of
cold calls
you make and the number of
prospective customers
that you will be able to talk to or visit.
• There is a direct ratio between the number of
prospective customers
that you see or talk to and the number of
prospects
that you can follow up on.
• There is a direct ratio between the number of people you
follow up on
with proposals and presentations and the number of sales that you
close.
 
You can also think of this as a “sales funnel”:
• Into the funnel—i.e., the broad end—go your prospects.
• The second part of your funnel is your presentations.
• The third part is where you follow up and close the sale.
 
Keys to Sales Success
 
You have two responsibilities when it comes to achieving success in sales:
1.
First of all, keep your funnel full.
Always have more prospects to call on than you have time during the day. Never let your funnel become empty.
Never
run out of prospects.
2.
Second, get better at each stage of selling.
Study, read, listen to audio programs, and upgrade your skills in prospecting, presenting, and closing sales. The better you get, the fewer prospects you require in the top of the funnel to generate sales out of the bottom of the funnel.

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