Frank Rumbauskas — January 7, 2017 Follow @FrankRumbauskasI read an interesting story this weekend about a salesman who consistently made $ 5,000 per month no matter what he did. (And no, this isn’t a good thing – read on.)
The company would put him in a great territory, or give him a hot-selling product, and he’d coast along and wind up making $ 5,000 that month.
Or they’d put him in a lousy territory where others had failed miserably, but he’d try harder, and somehow manage to earn $ 5,000 in commissions.
The strange part is this: NO MATTER WHAT the conditions or circumstances were, his mind was somehow programmed to earn $ 5,000 – no matter what!
Why Does This Happen?
The reason is simple: Subconscious programming. I won’t go into details here, but I heard a good example while listening to a Dan Kennedy CD in the car the other day: He says to never say things parents commonly say, like, “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” or the phrase “hard-earned money.” This programs your kids to fail in life, because it programs them to believe that money is hard to get.
Salespeople, likewise, frequently program their minds – without even knowing it – to make their quota every month, and only their quota. In a good month they’ll coast and pretty much stop working once that number is achieved. In a bad month they’ll work extra hard to hit that number and stay employed for at least another month.
To make matters even worse, most salespeople are taught in new hire training, or in books they read on their own, to do two things that I really hate:
1. Be over-responsive and run out to meet with any prospect who will meet with you, without first doing a good job at trying to qualify them out.
2. Cold calling. Yes, that goes without saying – I HATE cold calling because it produces the lowest percentage success rate of all sales activities, and it angers and annoys the victims of your cold calls.
Here’s the bottom line: Once salespeople are subconsciously programmed and are set in their ways, they become AFRAID to try something new – ideas that might actually work much better than what they’re doing now. In other words, they’re AFRAID of sales success!
How To Succeed At Sales
If you want to be a huge, superstar success at selling, there are a couple of key points to keep in mind to achieve that.
1. Take your quota, whatever it is, and DOUBLE it. Don’t do this to put pressure on yourself, but rather, to re-program a new goal into your mind. You’ll find that with regular practice of auto-suggestion, or repeating to yourself either aloud or in your own mind, “I will sell double my quota every month,” soon you’ll start doing it as if by magic, the same way most salespeople somehow magically hit their quota, and only their quota, every month!
2. Make sure you are only dealing with prospects who are fully qualified, who have a current need for your product or service, and who are capable of buying. Don’t make cold calls at random and then wonder why you’re getting zero results.
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