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You are here: Home / Blog / Free Reprint Articles / Accentuate the Positive

Accentuate the Positive

December 13, 2013 By maurasf

Use positive attitude when you sell.
What’s your selling attitude?

If you’ve noticed the economy is less than ideal, you’re paying attention. You may have also noticed that salespeople have responded differently to the challenge. Here’s how one successful manager is doing her part to keep her staff and herself motivated to succeed with their selling challenges.

 

Your attitude sells. In today’s bad economy it’s easy to hear doom and gloom. It’s also easy to keep passing it along in the conversations you have with your customers. It’s also too easy to keep focusing on negatives when you sell. Another approach is to choose to look at a situation from a positive point of view.


Jill Almaguer is the District Sales Manager for Wireless Equipment Manufacturers for Agilent Technologies (https://www.agilent.com/). Her team was trying to sell to a past customer who happened to be very interested in Agilent’s competition. Agilent’s competition had an advantage. The customer was giving Agilent’s competition more time than Agilent to be considered. Instead of approaching the customer with a negative attitude, Mrs. Almaguer coached her staff to look at the positive. Instead of complaining about the unfair advantage that their competition had, Ms. Almaguer asked her staff to think of how the customer had benefited from working in the past with Agilent. This was going to be the subject of the sales call. They would focus on the benefits Agilent brought to the customer and ask for another opportunity to work together on the new project. They would emphasize past accomplishments and look to the future to do more.


Her customer will appreciate her strategy. Who wants to hear one more example of what they’ve been doing wrong? It’s stressful for you and your customers when you focus only on the negative outcomes of what you’re doing. Instead, take advantage of the opportunities to show them what is working well.


Get rid of more negatives. It’s stressful selling in a slow economy. You should not be adding to the stresses. You can eliminate time wasters that reduce your productivity. Mrs. Almaguer notices that she is more productive when she organizes certain tasks together. She says, “I try to return my calls in one block of time. I also block out time for my e-mail. I read and reply at once and I notice it saves me time rather than reading a few e-mails and going back later.” Think of the activities you’re doing throughout the day and see if you could save time by working them in a block of time.


Also examine what is taking up most of your free time. If it’s television, ask yourself if the time investment is paying you returns. If you need to catch the news, ask yourself if you can get it in your car to and from work or from a newspaper? If you set some goals on how you want to spend your time, you may avoid getting into the traps of some of the time wasters. By making the time for what you want to do, you’ll have less time to fill with empty activities like television. Goals can also serve as a source of motivation during difficult times.


This isn’t the first time we’ve had slow times and it won’t be the last. As a salesperson it’s your job to keep your customer focused on their performance in the future. What better time is it than now for them to buy your products or services? When the economy quickly rebounds, as it often does, you can make sure your customers are ready to keep up the pace.

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About the principal

Would you take auto mechanics classes when you buy a car? Maura did because she wanted to be able to work on her car. She takes that same approach to selling. She can show you how to get below the surface of selling to learn why and how different strategies work. She will show you which skills to implement that will shorten your sales cycle and increase your sales. She was Mobil Oil's first female Lubrication Engineer in the United States and one of Chevron's top 5 salespeople in the country. She knows what works for sales.

"I would recommend your work to other sales organizations who want to get better results from improved selling strategies."
Jamey Rootes
President
Houston Texans

Sales Expert at Allbusiness.com

Selling is the easiest job in the world. Just ask anyone who is not in sales. Read Maura’s ideas on “more brain…less mouth” selling to make your selling easier and more successful.

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