Selling is the foundation for success in any economy but none more so than the one we are in today. In a market that is highly competitive, operates on razor-thin margins and where technological advancements can wipe out entire industries overnight, you are either doing the selling or being sold. That means you are engaged in selling in almost every aspect of your job.
Here are 3 tips to ensure you are maximizing every sales opportunity that comes your way:
1. Set goals that exceed your target.
Look at the top achievers in your market and increase your targets by ten times what they do. Then create a plan based on this new impractical goal. I did this at the age of 25 in an industry I had no experience in. The top people were making $60,000 a year, so I created a plan for how I would make ten times that or $600,000. Seems crazy, right? It was. I never hit my target, but I did get in the top 1 percent of all the sales people in that industry.
Related: 5 Secrets to Winning More Sales
2. Have a "why" to keep you motivated.
Sales people and organizations we work with are often missing a purpose to keep them motivated about their proposition. These kinds of targets will keep you focused while providing you with reasons to push hard in the marketplace. I use very aggressive financial planning to keep me motivated. The best sales people I have ever met know how to bank their earnings and are driven to create even more income. My goal is to accumulate ten times my income in savings. That means, if I make $100,000 dollars a year, I want $1 million in savings and if I make $1 million a year, I want $10 million in savings. This kind of purpose keeps me grinding.
3. Make sure you are sold first.
The most important sale you will make in your lifetime is the one you make to yourself. When I first started my consulting business, I would cold call a specific market to sign up clients. Once I was done, before moving on to the next market, I would call every client back to gather their success stories. This made me even more deeply committed to what I do for people, which made me lethal in the next market. I start each day by making a list of clients who love our products and services and my sales team shares a list of their own winning clients who love what we are doing.
High achieving sales people understand that prospects don't just appear and sales don't just close. They must stay on an aggressive hunt to keep their pipeline full.
