Salesperson: I’ve tried that it doesn’t work.
Lynn: Oh, how many times did you try it?
Salesperson: Once.
As people, we know that mastery of anything takes:
- Learning new skills.
- Actively practicing.
- Many less than successful attempts.
- Refining our activity.
As salespeople… somehow, we throw that all away and seem to expect the FIRST TIME something new is attempted to *poof* work perfectly.
Perhaps, it’s that the stakes of mistakes are measured in commission dollars.
Maybe, there is a fear of not being taken seriously.
Of course, change is hard, and old sales habits are easier to fall into even if they’re not helping us succeed any longer.
What STOPS you?
When you look at yourself, determine what STOPS you from not trying new things to make you a better salesperson.
I went all the way back to my 2006 coaching training when I started to think about this.
Underlying Automatic Commitments are beliefs or judgments which we hold on to about ourselves, our environment, and those around us. The concept and those commitments aren’t “good” or “bad” in and of themselves.
What STOPS salespeople (ok people) in my experience is the AUTOMATIC part. The commitments we aren’t aware we’ve made to ourselves when trying new things:
- Commission dollar measurement => might be an underlying automatic commitment to winning
- Fear of not being taken seriously => could be about never being laughed at
- Old sales habits easier => may be an underlying automatic commitment to taking the path of least resistance
The worst part of these commitments is they are AUTOMATIC. We don’t even know we’ve made the commitment to ourselves… about ourselves.
For me: the uncovering takes questions from other people.Understanding the impacts means self-reflection.Implementing new commitments requires effort.
Reward vs. Risk
Last year, a Forbes article titled In Business, As In Life, The Greatest Risk Is Doing Nothing, by Chuck Swoboda. You can check that out for yourself.
For our conversation:
- Start – looking at what will happen if you do nothing differently.
- Consider – how things would be if you change something.
- Decide – which is better, for you.
- Click Retry – anytime you discover the risk of change doesn’t outweigh the reward of taking action.
Click Retry
If only all the mistakes, missteps, misspeaks we make were as easy to correct as clicking retry using our mouse. Of course, on the computer and in life – that doesn’t always fix what went wrong.
Although the picture of the skier isn’t me, it has been me falling. Sometimes getting hurt; my pride -or- my body -or- both. To make it down the mountain, I have to get up. I have to take a breath, shake it off, and keep going.
Much like in skiing there are days that inside sales exhilarates me, others are hard work. To get better (and that is the key to mastery… always looking to be better than you are today) takes trying new things.
In the words of Thomas Edison, it’s critical to remember “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Then click retry.
Cheers,
Lynn