Selling is everywhere! Kids sell to get more `TV time’, prime ministers sell on new legislations, personal trainers sell to get new clients, teachers sell to encourage their students to listen. No matter how you slice it, you will be involved in selling at some stage. So here are some foundations that I believe all successful sales people seem to have.
1. Control and take responsibility for your mood.
Successful sales people take responsibility for their own moods – they don’t take rejection personally and don’t blame the traffic/weather/other people on how they feel. As the saying goes, “It’s not what happens to you that shapes your mood, but how you interpret what happens to you that matters.” An easy way to control your mood is through your physiology and your mind. Physiology such as your posture and putting a smile on your dial and your mind through what you think about. Focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want.
2. Know your outcome and do things on purpose.
Many people seem to climb the ladder of success to find that it’s leaning on the wrong wall. Successful salespeople understand what they want and why they do what they do. They have goals that keep them focused and therefore are always doing things on purpose, rather than spinning their wheels getting no where because they don’t know where `somewhere’ is.
3. Look at your beliefs.
The one thing about beliefs and successful salespeople is that it makes no end whether your belief is right or wrong, but more how it makes you act – it’s your actions that determine your results. Successful salespeople look at the results that they want and then look at the action they need to take. For example, who would have the better results in selling a gym membership – Person A, who believes that exercise is critical to someone’s well-being, or Person B, who thinks that exercise is only a luxury? If you want to change your results, then simply change your beliefs.
4. Look at your communication skills
Successful sales people know and understand that communication skills bring rapport, rapport brings trust and trust brings sales. The important part of communication is that the intention of what you mean, means nothing – the results mean everything. If you don’t get the results that you want with your existing communication skills, then you must change your approach.
5. Step up and take action.
One of the most pertinent points for successful sales people is that they are prepared to step outside their comfort zone, prepared to ask that extra question to help someone join, prepared to overcome objections and have the guts to walk into a shopping center and begin encouraging people to exercise. If you step outside your comfort zone, you’ll soon find that your comfort zone becomes huge. So just as you have taken action to open your own gym, you have to do something that normal people won’t do – successful salespeople do those little extra things to step up, take action and succeed in life.
Dave Wright is the President and CEO of Creative Fitness Marketing. He can be contacted via e-mail at dave@creativefitness.net, or go to www.creativefitness.net.
