The Custom Sales Training Blog

In my last article I talked about talent as being the most important single component in new hire success.  Desire is a component of talent.  Desire is a huge part of success in any business, none more so than sales.  This article will give you useful tips on how to measure desire before you hire.

First, get rid of the idea that someone has to have previous experience in the same industry.  Gallup and other folks have repeatedly proven the fallacy of this idea.

Next, keep in mind is that past success is a good predictor of future success. Look at the resume and the application.   Do they show that your applicant has stuck at something in the face of adversity for an extended period of time and accomplished a goal?

…stuck at something in the face of adversity for an extended period of time and accomplished a goal.  Isn’t that a definition of a successful sales person in a nutshell?

You start out in your territory with very few accounts and learn the ropes, learn your territory and knock on doors or make calls.  It takes a while for your first sale.  Likely as not, you sold the customer wrong, the product or service doesn’t work and you either lose them or do damage control.  You take your licks and go out and find more customers and sell them right and then you start getting repeat business and referrals.

By year two you sort of know what you are doing and you make a decent living.  Along the way you have to deal with customers going out of business and your own company shooting you in the foot with bad delivery or bad product or bad credit or bad management.

In other words …stuck at something in the face of adversity for an extended period of time and accomplished a goal.

If the prospective employee has done sales, you look at track record.  Have they come in and grown a territory?  Have they switched territories to get better opportunity?  Or, are they constantly changing territories to look for the lucky one?  You want sales people in it for the long haul.  So make sure they have long-hauled somewhere else.  If they haven’t, if they’ve job hopped and tell you what is wrong with every place they’ve worked, stay away from them because they don’t have the stick-tuitivenss that you need.

If the applicant hasn’t done sales before you have to look at other things.  Did they put themselves through school while supporting a family?  Did they stay on the job despite dealing with an illness or an aging parent.  Do they have a side gig as an artisan?  Have they been competitive as a gymnast, runner, body builder, boxer?  Have they learned a foreign language or raised a bunch of money for a charity while fulfilling all their other obligations?

Finally-Do they work hard trying to get the job?  Do they go above and beyond researching for the interview, learning more about the company and its products and customers than just about anybody else?  Do they amaze you with their tenacity and creative approach to get the interview?

Action Items:

1.  Get rid of the idea that the applicant has to have previous success or experience in the same field.

2. Make sure your applicant stuck at something in the face of adversity for an extended period of time and accomplished a goal.

3.  If they have done sales, have they stuck with a territory and built it, or have they job hopped or territory hopped?  If they are hoppers elsewhere they will hop with you.

4.  Are they tenacious and planful in their approach to getting the job with you?

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

Hiring great sales people is never easy.  In this article I will help you understand what it takes to hire great sales people.  And, you will hire and fire fewer people.  Why? An easy hire is a quick fire.  The more energy you spend identifying what you need your sales people to do and who you need them to be, the less energy you will spend interviewing, hiring and firing.

You will then have more energy to spend managing and leading sales people who will be around for a while.

I look at sales help wanted ads in my area on monster for a simple reason.  They are leads for my sales training business.  There is one particular company that hires sales people in my area all the time.  And, their office isn’t that big.  Hmmm?  Based on a little personal knowledge this is because they churn their sales staff like people used to churn butter.

If you have to hire 20 people to get one of them to stick, four things are going on.  Bad leadership, bad hiring, bad product or service, and bad training.

First rule-Previous experience in the same industry isn’t a good marker for future success.  (Check out research by the Gallup Corporation).  People with lots of experience have lots of ingrained bad habits to relearn.  People who are good at learning, willing to work hard, be open to fail and success and wonderfully honest will find a way.

Second rule-Sucess is a good marker for future success.  Example: kids who get great grades in high school will find a way to get good grades in college.  In sales we want people who have shown discipline and the ability to produce success combining linear process and non-linear process.  Huh?  A lot of sales process is linear.  Cold calling, identifying leads, following up, asking for referrals, asking for the order.  Building rapport, judging people, knowing when to drop a prospective customer and when to pursue are all non-linear.  Look for analogous experience.

Third rule-You can’t make up for a bad hire with training.  There is such a thing as bad seed.  All the training in the world isn’t going to make up for dumb, lazy and lying.

Fourth rule-Bad management will kill talent and production.  The most important elements of a good hire are talent, fit, management and training-in that order. And, bad managers can create a toxic workplace filled with favoritism, lack of recognition and negativity.

Fifth rule-Talent will out.  The key is talent.  Good people will find a way to work around bad process, tough territories and average management.

Most important rule-Different people can sell different things.  Sales ain’t sales. Some people are great at selling something they can touch and feel.  Others are great at selling service or consulting. Some people are great at selling when people stop by and others are great stopping by and selling.  Some people are great at selling big stuff and some great at selling little stuff.  Sales ain’t sales.

Action items:

1 . Stop being lazy by asking for a lot of experience selling your particular product or service and look for analogous experience.

2. Look for previous success that is both linear and non-linear. Example: A black belt and raising money for a charity.

3. Don’t rely on training to overcome a bad hire or bad fit.

4. Make sure your great people have decent management.

5. Pay for talent.

Most important.  Understand that sales ain’t sales.

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

When should I stop calling on a potential customer?  Some people say call on them until they die.  Others say call on them four or five times and then move on to greener pastures. What ever you call it, marketing process, sales call process or making new friends, make sure you are planful in your approach and stick to your plan. Then you will have a successful sales call process-and not be a pest.

What to do really depends on your territory.  If you are, like many sales people, limited to five hundred to a thousand or so potential customers by your territory, then you use one process.  If you have as I do, a virtually unlimited universe of customers to call on, you use a different process.  I do leadership, management, project management and sales training-and of course my Courteous Conversations course.  Since I know how to drive and sleep on a plane and put on a webinar, I can work anywhere.

Does this mean that I call on a customer a few times and then move on?  Nope.  Why not? If they are a great potential customer I will call them using my process and then stop-for a while and keep in contact with them on a regular basis.  How often?  I will put them through a short cycle of calls and emails every 90 to 120 days. These are only for potential  customers that are a perfect fit for me.  Customers that look like, smell like, talk like and walk like customers that I have helped out and their checks cleared.  The finest kind. These I will stay in touch with.

Initially, once I have identified them as a  good potential customer I will make a first call and leave a series of voicemails.  I will space these calls out, five total at most, many times four, over a two to three week period, leaving different target messages.  If I don’t talk to a decision I will sometimes follow up with a physical letter or a physical sample.  I never, ever, ever spam them with email unless their executive assistant told me to send them an intro that way.

If I am calling on them face-to-face I will leave a sample such as a white paper or audio or video much sooner.

If I do get to an executive assistant and not the decision maker, I will make sure I can send a link to samples and add them to a feed or newsletter and send them a free white paper.  Eventually, if you know what you are doing, your free stuff-read free samples that actually help them-and honesty and  polite persistence will earn you a shot at a small part of their business.  This test business, if you exceed expectations, will earn you a bigger role in their business.

Now, what if you do have that limited territory?  Same process, but instead of putting them through a short cycle of marketing every 90 or 120 days, put them through a one or two call and email or physical sample cycle every 30 days or 60 days. Or, if face-to-face, drop off something that helps them once a month or so.

Remember-However you label it-marketing process, sales call process or making new friends, create a plan for your approach and follow your plan. Then you will have a successful sales call process.  Calling on a customer too often smacks of weakness and desperation, making you a pest.

Action Items:

1. Figure out your territory.

2. Create a process

3.  Be disciplined in sticking to it.

4.  Don’t be a pest.

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

Everyone says that Sales is a numbers game.  What numbers are important?

People track all sorts of numbers: The number of calls they make, face-to-face or by phone, the number of emails they send, the number of calls to appointments, appointments to sales, size of sale, numbers of referrals, time to close,  and where the lead came from.

I am going to suggest that you track some of the most common things and some uncomon ones too.  Track these things and you will see your sales improve and your fun.

1.  Since selling is about you, selling yourself first and then your product or service, track yourself.  Are you rested, upbeat, positive, well fed, hydrated, confident and a little hungry for success, or desperate, tired, down, hungry, and dehydrated?

2. Keep track of who you are calling and why.  Do you have a past record of success calling this type of company, industry, personality type, business size? If you don’t, or someone you respect doesn’t, then why call?

3. Track your preparation.  Do you have answers for common objections, success stories, an outline for creating rapport, an opening sales statement that generates excitement and an appointment, good supporting documentation, an easy to install or try sample?  If not get those things lined up first.

4.Track you efficiency.  How many good calls do you make per hour, day, week?  Is there a way to improve the number of good calls you you make per time period? Can you be more efficient in wrap-up, record keeping, transition. If you are smiling and dialing four hours a day, going from 13 calls an hour to 15 means that you could cut your call time down to less than three and a half hours-or  increase your sales by 15% in the same amount of time.

5. Track your optimum calling or selling time.  A lot of people won’t call on Friday afternoons.  I have great success in calling business owners on Friday afternoons.  They have time to talk because their staff leave them alone then.  How will you know what works for you unless you try?

6. Track your referrals.  Do you always ask for a referral, even from people who don’t become customers?  What are your results?

7.  Track the effort required to make each sale.  If it takes knocking on 100 doors to make a sales to a type of customer that puts a $200 a month in your pocket forever, vs ten calls to make a $500 one time sale, which one is better for you?

8. Track your fun.  It’s not all about the money unless you are broke.  If you have your nut covered and selling to a particular type of personality or selling a particular product is a real pain, why do it?

9.  Track how long it takes you to prepare for your sales process.

10.  Track how well you know your customer’s business.

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

You can find a way to not hate cold calling and give up your call reluctance.  And, if you are disciplined, you can find a way to enjoy it.

Why should you learn to tolerate making business development calls?  How else can you spend nothing but time and create business seemingly out of thin air?  If you are a solopreneur like me then somewhere over half of your time is best spent marketing.  One of the best ways to market yourself is to call on people who might do business with you, find out if they can use your services and give them reasons to consider using you as a vendor.  You can do this face-to-face or by phone.  Face to face is more fun and it also limits the geography you can cover.

What’s the first step?  Why don’t we rename the process? Calling it cold calling is like saying “Why don’t we spend a big chunk of time getting psychologically beat up by people we don’t know?”

When I block out calling time on my calendar I sure don’t call it cold calling.  I call it smiling and dialing or even better-making new friends.  What about Business Development? S & D or MNF or BD.  Think about going to the dentist.  In your brain you have probably already labeled it “having a stranger stick their hands in my mouth and cause me pain or discomfort!”  You did, didn’t you?  Now let’s try labeling the visit, “having a nurturing professional take care of my dental health so I can smile proudly and enjoy one of the world’s greatest joys-eating!”

The second step is to create the habit of making new friends.  Just like you create the habit of going to the gym.

Most of courage is having done a thing before.  If you haven’t spent a lot of time making new friends before, or haven’t done it in a while, it is unreasonable to ask yourself to spend three hours a day smiling and dialing.  Why? It’s like saying- “I want to get in shape. I am going to spend three hours a day working out starting tomorrow and cut out all snacks and eat healthy starting tomorrow!”  If you shared the previous statement with any of your friends they would tell you that you have doomed yourself to failure.

You get into making new friends shape the same way you get into physical shape in the gym.  That means having a plan, starting slow, building up to higher levels of calls gradually, creating a support system and getting expert help.

Let’s say you have a plan.  Tomorrow you are going to make five making new friends calls by phone.  You are going to make new friends by phone four days a week.  Your goal is to eventually make 100 marketing calls by phone each week. You will start at five calls the first day and then add one call a day until you hit your hundred calls a week goal. By the end of six weeks you would be making 100 calls a week.  If you were to stay at this level and call for 48 weeks a year, by the end of year one you would have made over 4600 calls.

If one fifth of one percent of those calls became new customers.  You would have eleven new customers.  How many customers do you have now?

Action Items to give up call reluctance and learn to smiling and dialing, making new friends and business development.

1. Change your label from cold calling to Making New Friends, or Smiling and Dialing or Business Development.

2.  Have a plan, start slow, build up to higher levels of calls gradually,  create a support system and get expert help.

Happy Selling!

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

Now, once the last objection has been answered and other objections prevented, we can just ask for the order, right?  Of course we can.  And, if we use the right bridge, one that makes the decision a painless one for our potential client, they will buy.

Let’s look at an example with a bridge between countering a price objection and asking for the order.

Objection:  Price

… you are absolutely right Mrs. Customer.  Our sales-simulation training program is too expensive.  If we could have found a way to get the quality in the audio without using the same engineer and studio that produced Cake’s first platinum album, we would have done so.  If we could have found a way to have the many vignettes be as effective as they are without using professional actors, we would have done that too.  And, I know, based on what Joe Jones, the number one producer of new small business accounts for xyz insurance told  me, that the annual commission from one new account pays for this program five times over. 

Now, the big barrier here is making sure that this is a good investment in time for your reps.   What I would like to see you do is have one of your sales reps use the program on a trial basis. Pick someone who has some call reluctance and decent potential.  The one copy price for the 3.5 hours of CD audio and the 357 page workbook is $449, plus digital copies of everything.   Put this rep through the program and if you don’t see payback within 60 days I’ll give you your money back.  And, I will make it an even better investment with a half hour coaching session by phone at no additional cost.  Now, which one of your reps do you have in mind for the trial program?

Now, let’s look at what went on.

1. First we dealt with the price objection in the right way.  The right way is showing that there is no way to produce the product at less expense and have it provide the value stated.

2. Then, we showed the tremendous ROI.

3. Next, we brought up the real objection for most businesses and that is difficulty of implementation and risk.  By bringing it up we clarify it for the customer so that it can be dealt with.  If we don’t clarify this objection then their answer will be no and even they won’t know why.

4.  After that, we then showed the customer exactly how to implement a painless test, gave them an additional reason to buy which was a half hour coaching session at no additional cost.

5. Finally, we used a wonderful bridge phrase that started with one of my favorite words.   Now, which one of your reps do you have in mind for your trial program?

We led the customer to think about an individual rep and then said,  “NOW”

Now is a wonderful word.  Now brings the conversation to the present and a point of action.  Now, what would you like for desert?  Now, which movie do you want to watch?  Now, how much is this new sales training tool going to help you?

Now is your new wonder word.   It is a bridge and a call to action.  Now, here are your action items.

Action Items:

1. Deal with the objection using a specific ROI story.
2. Deal with the hidden objection of risk and difficulty
3. Bridge to a painless trial using “Now”

Happy Selling!

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

 Objections or push-backs are natural.  You will always face brush-off objections, especially on your initial call. Once you counter brush-off objections you have a choice. You can either let objections come up and handle them or handle them before they come up as part of your sales presentation/rapport building process.

Before you become an expert at preventing objections make sure you can handle brush-off objections such as:

“I’m not interested!”

“I don’t have time to talk!”

“I don’t have any budget”

“I’m happy with my current vendor”

It is human nature for people to be resistant to change and these brush-off objections help your customers resist change.  Another reason potential customers use these objections is to save themselves time and the hassle of bad sales calls.  Most sales people can’t handle brush-off objections.

Let’s use an objection prevention example from sales training.  I will demonstrate how to head off an important hidden objection that is seldom mentioned by our customers and IS OFTEN THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON THEY DON’T BUY!

This hidden objection is the customer’s previous experience of how difficult it is to implement any new process.  This is especially true in behavior modification such as process improvement, or sales or management training.

And, here is how preventing this objection looks:

Mr. Customer, most of my clients were hesitant to try our sales simulation training, not because of cost or because it didn’t work-they had too many examples of customers who had great ROI for that to be an issue.  The major barrier in their minds was implementation, that it would take too much time, too much monitoring, and be too difficult to learn a new sales language.  How similar is this to what you have found with other training? 

Here we listen very carefully to our customer.  They might do us the favor of revealing another barrier to our sale.

Well Mr. Customer, Jack at Jack’s insurance was thrilled find out how easy it was for his sales reps to simply pop the CD into the player in their car and listen in between sales calls or on their commute or listen to it on their iPod at they gym. And, all of his reps saw measurable improvement with just this part of the program. 

Another client, Charlie with Charlie’s insurance watched her reps get into the workbook lessons, and saw additional measurable increases in sales.  The few new acronyms were so natural that it was more like learning a name for the way the way they should have been doing things all along that doing something unnatural. 

Jack and Charlie told me that the best part of the system was an additional tool that I am pretty sure will be important to you.  All the sales manager had to do to keep folks accountable on training was to ask to see the accountability sheets built into the workbook!  How important would accountability tracking for training be to you?

Let’s look at what we accomplished.

1. We got to talk about our numerous testimonials and great ROI our sales-simulation training program has.

2. We brought the hidden objection out of the closet.

3. We showed how easy it was to get ROI by simply listening to the program.

4. We showed the additional value of the workbook.

5. We removed the fear of learning a new sales language and completely changing their current process.

6. We hit the hot button for all sales managers-accountability!

Action items.

1. Identify objections that could derail your sale

2. Cover them in your presentation

3. Watch your sales go up!

In the next blog we will talk about that missing piece-the bridge between presentation and asking for the order.  We will also talk about how to make the initial sale as painless as possible.

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

What ever you call what you do-sales, business development, cold calling, making new friends or saving the world-your sales training has to cover prospecting.

We have all heard that the best potential customer is one that mirrors your best current customer. Clone your winners, low hanging fruit, duplicate your best customer-however you want to say it. And if you are not looking closely at your customer base and identifying clear metrics about them,  you are leaving customers and referrals on the table.  And, you are wasting time.

I want you to think about cloning your best relationships. How many of us believe that the client buys us first and then the products or services? Did you all raise your hands-figuratively of course.

Think about your top four or five customers. These are customers, clients, patients or affiliates who you can tell the absolute truth to. If you messed up you could say,

“George, I don’t know how to say this other than to just say it. I missed the deadline for entering your order for those puts on Google. You have just missed out on $4000 in profit.”

Or if they were getting ready to mess up you could say:

“Bob, do not, I repeat do not, invest in this development. It is doomed to failure. The timing is wrong, the location is wrong, I wouldn’t trust the other investors as far as I could throw their leased Maseraties. Don’t do it!”

We all have customers like this, right? Instead of thinking of your prospective customers as retired CEOS, or Dentists, or medium-size business owners, think of them as people. What do these people have in common?  We’ll use advertising customers as an example, and this process will work with anyone.

List attributes of  each of these individuals decision makers,  rainmakers, the buck-stops-here people that you deal with. Don’t even try to think about what they have in common. Take them one at a time. Let’s start with George because he is your very best customer.

George: Married, 55 years old, university educated Marine veteran, grandfather, fly fisherman, hiker, libertarian, introspective, gym rat, contributes op-ed pieces to local paper, great sense of humor, rotarian, obsessive compulsive about his advertising, volunteers for CASA, (court appointed special advocate) loves music of all kinds, you originally found him through a cold call.

Mary: Divorced, sixty-ish (and we all pretend its fifty-ish) grandmother, Republican, outgoing, performs in local theatre, has run 22 marathons, season ticket holder to local opera and ballet, lives in the same house she and her husband built 34 years ago, state college graduate, very, very picky about her advertising, once demanded a rework on an ad because it wasn’t the right shade of Robin’s egg blue, reads stories to kids at the library every other Saturday, originally found her through a cold call.

Fred:

…

You get the picture. The next stop would be to create a data base in excel or numbers and look at the trends and then ask yourself- Where can I find more people who love kids and exercise and run small businesses, and are open to cold calls, just in case you didn’t see the trend?

AND put together a list of your worst customers that you haven’t fired yet. I bet you will find the same kind of pattern.

Happy prospecting!

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

It this blog we will cover one of the most important things to do before making a sales call-getting your success stories ready and getting ready to tell those stories.

First, getting your success stories ready.  You will will turn your half page testimonial from a customer into a powerful story you can tell in twenty words or less.

Example: “I’m calling because Joe at Joe’s insurance said our widget saved him enough money to take his wife on a nice cruise.”

Why didn’t I use statistics?  Stories about an individual work better than statistics.  To see the numbers and examples read the book “Made to Stick”

Question John- “How in the heck do I get these testimonials from my customers so I can turn them into success stories?”

I am glad you asked.  You ask the client questions, take the answers and turn them into the testimonial.  Then you send the testimonial to the customer to edit.  When they don’t send it back, you send them another email asking their permission to use it as is.  They eventually agree and you have your testimonial.

What questions do I ask?

1. Give me one or two specific good things that happened since you used our product /service.

Then give an example of the kind of answer you want and make sure you ask specifically in threes.  What did you do with the money you made/saved using our product or service? Tell me about a customer that you served better as a result of using our product/service? Tell my about one way in which we exceeded your expectations. How we are cheaper, faster, better, easier, more fun…

2.  Please tell me why you chose us over our competitors.

Example: Was our sales person more upfront, did we make it easier to implement, or did we answer your concerns more effectively?

3. How is your world different using our product/service, than it was before?  (This is a repeat of question one in a different way) How much less time does it take to do process xyz now than when you were using our competitors process? How much more money are you making on each widget now compared to when you were using our competitors product?  How much easier is it to track than when you were using our competitors product?

You basically want to be able to say two things in your sales stories.  We made it easy to use and it saved or made money.

You will want to keep the large testimonials for your website and for use in long copy for sales letters.

After your get the testimonials and distill them into a very short story you still need to practice.  Remember that accurate mental rehearsal gives 75% of the value of practice and you still need to practice.  If you make the sales call by phone, practice saying the words so they are comfortable coming out of your mouth.  Get excited.  Your excitement, after you have gained trust, is what is going to make the sale.

If you are going to make the calls in person practice standing, smiling, getting excited and being expressive with your body language as you tell your short story.

Action items.

1.  Call your customer, stop by or email and ask them a series of questions that you can turn into a testimonial.

2.  Write the testimonial for them and send it to them for editing.

3. When they don’t respond, get permission to use the testimonial as is.

4. Distill the testimonial for your opening sales conversation.  Try to tell the story in 20 words.

5. Practice and do accurate mental rehearsal.

6.  Enjoy increased sales success.

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.  

Just like an athlete preparing for a competition a good sales person warms up and prepares.  The future customer is NOT the competition.  The future customer is your team mate.  And you need to be ready to work with them to achieve common goals.

The competition is anyone else who is trying to sell or is already selling your customer any other product or service-especially one comparable to yours.

In my business as a trainer and speaker I make a lot of marketing calls by phone and do a lot of informal presentation. Lets work on the marketing call.

First the preparation and then the warm up.

Prepare by knowing your customer.  Have as much information as is a good investment before you call. Understand what people in their business care about and know what kinds of barriers they have to doing business with you.  And most of you will be surprised to find that it is not about the money.  If you show that you have great ROI with any product or service and can make the transition to using yours as painless as possible-you will sell more.

Lets take sales training as an example.  I call on many people in finance and insurance. Why?  Because their people have call reluctance they need to deal with and they face a tremendous amount of competition.  If I can show them that I can help their sales people get over their call reluctance and make more effective sales calls I should be in right?  Nope.  Only if I can make it easy for them, but first I have to be ready.

I have to warm up my voice, just as an athlete would stretch and warm up before a race.  I have to hydrate because if  I let my throat get dry, my voice will sound as if I am nervous and this translates to lack of confidence.  I warm up my face by making silly faces.  And if If I really want to do well I stand up while I am calling.  Why?  Have you ever seen a powerful speaker come in and sit down to sway an audience?  Nope. Sitting constricts the diaphragm.   I visualize something that puts a smile on my face and other successful calls so that confidence and joy radiate.

I do my homework so that I understand their business and the perceived competition. They will have concerns.   Put together a list of common objections.  You probably only hear five or six and learning to deal with those will mean you are covered 90+ % of the time.

Make sure you have the brush-off objections handled.  In my world these would be: I don’t have time.  I am not interested.  I don’t have money.  I can’t invest the time in training.  We are happy with our current training.  I have tried sales training before and it didn’t work.

The good news is that you don’t have to use the dreaded “role play” to get ready.   Studies show that accurate mental rehearsal has 75 percent of the value of practice.  So going over the conversation in your mind, writing down objections and practicing your responses, and perfecting your opening sales state over and over again will be more than enough.

In the next blog we will talk about preparing your success stories and why they are better and more effective than the best statistics.

Watch your sales increase after you order the first audio download from John’s Selling When You Can’t See the Whites of Their Eyes Sales Simulation Training Program. Click on the New Low Price of $9.99.