Dear Inside Salespeople Everywhere,
I have really bad news; this job is H A R D. I would even say it is harder than ever as a matter of fact.
Here are examples from my week:
> some of my corporate prospects (outside of the sales department) don’t even set up their voicemail boxes so they don’t have to listen to OR respond to the messages.
> email is most often ignored.
> people don’t answer their phones.
> it’s not considered necessary to let someone know they’ve lost an opportunity – it socially acceptable to disappear without notice.
I have really good news; you are 100% in control of what you do about this.
Option 1 = get out of sales and choose another career.
Option 2 = learn, try, fail, try again, and repeat until you succeed.
What isn’t an option is sitting there complaining about inside sales being hard, how what used to work no longer does, that your boss doesn’t understand (hopefully you get the picture).
I get discouraged to – days go by when I’m sure I’ll never close a new client again…
THEN I have a great conversation with a new prospect; which energizes me to go on.
SOMEDAYS lots of people answer and I have the opportunity to show why having a conversation and thinking differently about an issue is valuable.
OCCASIONALLY a prospect clicks reply to my email and it’s like rainbows appearing after a storm.
In fact, every single day I have a “good things for today” call scheduled where I must share ONE good sales thing that happened with my accountability partner (he has to do the same). These aren’t earth shattering – most days they would seem fairly mundane… IF THIS inside sales career thing wasn’t so H A R D.
Need some examples?
* Made a tough call
* Training refocused my own self/time management
* Conference call with a product manager & new prospect
* Fourteen actual conversations
* BLITZ day = successful day
* Update on a deal with how to move forward
* Emotionally let go that I have to fix “it”
* Lost a BIG deal, but didn’t’ let it derail me
* Customer told me exactly how to win a deal
* Set objective to learn something new about customers AND did
* Focused on winning back 2015 client calls
* Finished the week with ZERO outstanding activities
That is real stuff!
Some days it’s difficult to come up with something, others it’s easy – I even received an IM from my accountability partner at 8:40 one morning saying, “I already know my good thing for the day.” I will share that this exercise makes coming in the next morning something to look forward to.
It’s a way to mentally and emotionally move past the HARD part and focus on the good stuff.
What do you do for your own inside sales success?
(originally posted on LinkedIn, please go there to share your answer in the comment section)
With my highest regards,
Lynn
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