The Hindu Business Line : You need the right kind of confidence

THERE are about 45 million sales professionals in the world today. Some salespeople are making a killing, and that should include the successful among you. But a large number of people are "left haggard and hopeless at the end of their workweeks," worries Todd Duncan in Killing the Sale, from Magna Publishing Co Ltd (www.magnamags.com) .

The blame, he'd say, is not on "an over-saturated industry" with too many salespeople chasing too few customers; "the real rub is that salespeople make mistakes." Not one, but "10 fatal mistakes," as the cover announces with a tombstone on top!

The very first mistake that is listed is `hyping,' defined as "relying solely on external stimuli such as success books, cassettes, videos, seminars, and the like to gain energy and maintain enthusiasm to sell." The blunt truth is that external stimulation alone cannot sustain your motivation. "Like sugar in your veins, it may give you a little pick-me-up for a short period of time, but before long you'll be left to fend for yourself." After the stimuli drain out, you have "difficulty getting out of bed each day or picking up the phone one more time or visiting one more prospect." The antidote is to identify your core motive for selling, because passion for selling has to be within.

Mistake #2 is `posing,' that is, selling action that precedes selling education. "In the merciless world of sales, posing is the equivalent of putting on a clown suit and jumping into a corral with a two-thousand pound rodeo bull." To be successful in sales, you need the right kind of confidence, not the kind of swagger that comes from arrogance or pretence, advises Duncan. Posing can get out of hand, which is when salespeople find it difficult to be genuine in personal relationships. Learn the right language, not the right lines, he exhorts, before listing five traits that can help in communicating trust to your prospects: TRUST — for timeliness, relevance, understanding, sincerity, and thoroughness. Speak the language of trust clearly and regularly to get rid of posing.

The third mistake is `tinkering,' where you skirt your problems, treat the symptoms and ignore the causes. This is the most common mistake, Duncan says, explaining with an analogy: "It's like adding oil to your car engine every two weeks instead of repairing the crack in the oil pan." That way, "you're sustaining momentum in the wrong direction, even when you think you're moving forward," points out the author. "When tinkering has become a habit, achieving success is like having to go around the entire block to get next door. It just adds a lot of unnecessary work and stress."

The next mistake is `moonlighting' where you build "a business-based life instead of a life-based business." As you know, the word means working more than one job, after business hours, "under the light of the moon". However, Duncan stretches the meaning to include "the belief that working more hours will lead to more success". Selling and living must complement each other, he insists. "Your sales career, if it is successful, should produce more life satisfaction. But if you don't know what makes you a satisfied person in the first place, you'll frequently invest time in things that don't matter and strive for things that don't add to your fulfilment in life."

The fifth mistake is `muscling,' where `lone ranger' actions are taken instead of "team-connected strategies." Muscling arises because of "overestimating the value of doing and underestimating the value of delegation." Muscling is multi-jobbing, something comparable to `over-training' in fitness jargon, and can lead to sales atrophy, warns Duncan. Combat muscling with `CEO mind-set,' that is "looking at your sales business as you would your own company, then determining to make investments that will ensure your `company's' long-term stability." Here's a simple exercise: "Determine how much money you could make per hour if you devoted all of your time to your top two productive activities," and then compare that figure against any investments you might need to make to shed the less-productive responsibilities.

We're only midway, and there are five more mistakes that I'm sure you'd get to know from the book. Great mistake if you didn't!

BookMark@thehindu.co.in

D. Murali

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