Staying motivated in sales is the tough part of selling. All too often when salespeople think of their selling it’s either all or nothing. They get the sale or they get no deal and nothing. Sales is not all or nothing. Sales is all and something.
Learn to deal with disappointment when you get no deal.
It may appear that not making the sale is in fact nothing. It’s really not. You are now faced with a situation that forces you to deal with a huge disappointment. It’s this disappointment that stops many salespeople from moving forward and staying motivated in sales. I’ve found that I learn more from my disappointments than I do from my easy and large sales. It’s not that I don’t want more easy, large sales! It’s just not realistic to think that’s going to happen.
You might think that recovery is a huge effort on your part. It’s really not. You can’t go back in time and sell to that customer again. All you can do is contemplate how to move forward. You can consider this observation to motivate you.
How far do you think east is from west? Miles? How many miles? It’s really just a simply turn of direction. I know your disappointment may seem more complicated than that, but it’s not. It’s your choice in how you see the disappointment. Instead of looking backwards at failure, turn and look forward at success possibilities.
What will you do next to stay motivated in sales?
It’s positive when you can move forward. Now that you are moving on, what do you do? Make a decision about what you will do differently. After all, what you did before didn’t get you what you wanted. Look at each part of your sales process to see what went wrong. Was the prospect truly a prospect? Were you talking to the right buyers? Was your product the best fit for the customer?
It’s when you are really stumped that moving forward is the challenge. That’s when you need someone to talk with who understands sales and the work you did. This person must be able to tell you hard truths and be able to offer better solutions. There are salespeople who are successful, but can’t tell you why. There are others who are successful and who can give you guidance. These sales coaches are who you want to speak with.
You can find them by always be looking for them. Listen to how other salespeople present their work to you. Do they explain what they did and why? They aren’t saying luck is why they’re successful. They have strategies that they implement that work. Just know that not all strategies will work for you. You can take some of these ideas and adapt them to your situation. You have to do something different going forward.
Do more of what works.
Make sure you are maximizing your successes. After all, when something works for you that is what you should continue doing. I find it helpful to periodically review the list of prospects I’m targeting. Do they still fit my ideal profile? Am I focusing on prospects who truly can buy now? If not, I reorder my priorities to focus more time on the high probability sales and less time on the lower ones.
Your goal should always be improving your processes because improving your process is what is going to get you better results going forward. It’s not the end of the world when you lose a sale. You have to realize that it’s time to make different choices going forward to get the results you want.