GUILTY: The Killer Of Sales Momentum (and 4 tips to avoid it)

GUILTY: The Killer Of Sales Momentum (and 4 tips to avoid it):from EyesOnSales.com

I wish there was another way to say it, but there’s not, so here we go:

You are a creature of emotion, and there aren’t many careers in life that can rival sales in the intensity of emotional buy-in and volatility.

I was trying to think of some great ramp up story or analogy but I figured I’d just cut right to the chase.  Choosing to sell as a profession requires for you to exist, fight with, endure, and enjoy a crazy and volatile emotional roller coaster.  Unless you are a robot, you are dealing with a rash of emotions throughout any given sales day.  In fact, I bet you, like me, can think of many times where you have gone from the absolute dumps to euphoria in less than 2 minutes! 

We can laugh about the ups and downs off hours, because they are funny to look at as you can watch yourself get pulled around like a puppet, but the reality is, at the end of the day, that when you experience disappointment or frustration during a sales day, than can single handedly kill your day.  Your negative feelings, frustration, and disappointment are KILLERS of your business, productivity, and income! 

The sad part is that the next win could literally be the next call or visit, so I’m sure you all agree with me that learning how to avoid, balance, and counteract those times when we deal with negative emotions, could only help your sales performance.

So, let’s dive in.  I’m going to outline 4 tips that I used and still use to help me fight off discouragement so I can get back and keep my positive sales momentum rolling:

Tip #1:  Change Your Expectations:  This week I was coaching a sales rep and we were talking about their pipeline.  I asked about one lead in particular and here’s the exact conversation:

 Me:  “Mr. Sales Pro, what’s up with The Smith Company?”

Sales Pro:  “He never returns my voice mail.”

Me:  “How many voice mails have you left?”

Sales Pro:  “A couple.”

You see, the main problem is that this sales rep is letting the prospect dictate his reaction!  Don’t let that happen!  What this rep needs to do is reset his expectation on what he expects is going to happen as a result of his voicemails.  Look, I don’t care how sexy your voice is, getting call backs from voice mail is now more difficult than ever.  On top of that, this rep is expecting every prospect to call him back from a cold call voice message, and if they don’t, it upsets him!

What I coached him on is he will be able to deal with this much more effectively if he just resets his expectation to not expecting a call back, but realizing he’ll most likely need to keep following up with them in order to speak with them.  This way, he puts himself back in charge of his follow up and is no longer a reactor/victim of the action of his prospect.

Tip #2:  The Magic Number Rule:  I made this up to help me deal with the whole, “This guy/gal never picks up their phone!” issue.  You have all been there, sometimes, your prospect picks up the phone on the first call, and another prospect might take 48 calls to reach.  Reality?  You never know how many touches or attempts it will take to reach someone.  That’s why call it, “The Magic Number Rule.” 

The rule states that every prospect will take a pre-determined amount of attempts to reach.  The trick is you don’t know what that number is until you reach it.  My best advice for you when you come across that prospect that, “never picks up the phone?”  Tell yourself you haven’t called them enough yet.  It’s simply a mind game.  Are you going to get frustrated about it, or just realize they will pick up, when the right number is hit.

Just like in the first tip, if you find yourself getting frustrated because no one is picking up the phone or seeing you in person, don’t let THEM control YOUR state.  YOU control it by reframing it to understanding this rule – that their number will be called by you….and soon.

Tip #3:  Play the Odds:  You finally get in touch with that hot prospect you have been calling on for 6 months.  You deliver your best offering to get an appointment or at least a quote to them.  They give you an abrupt “no” and your heart sinks.  You hang up the phone completely bummed (understandably).  Well, unless you think of it this way:

As a sales pro you should know the most effective responses to the most common objections you encounter.  Since your sales cycle rarely changes, the objections will be consistent and as a pro in your industry you should have responses you know give you the best chance to win. 

The same is true for all you cold callers out there.  If you have a 20 second pitch you should have that done SO pat that you could do it in your sleep during a bad dream!  Why is this important?

Because if you know that you delivered the most effective cold call intro, request for an appointment, or answer to an objection and they still respond negatively, what else could you have done?

Yes, I would be disappointed, and you should too, if you fail because you weren’t prepared or ready.  I get that.  But, as long as you swing the best bat you know to swing, there’s nothing else you can do.  At the end of the day, own YOUR part, and if you execute it and they don’t like it, move on!  Someone else is ready.

Tip #4:  Make Your Goals Activity Based:  I hit on this in the last article, but it fits perfectly into this piece also.  If you are focused on, and taking action with the RIGHT behaviors, the sales results you want will follow.  I’ve never experienced a sales person who is focused on the most important parts and doing them well, only to fail!  It doesn’t happen.  Now, yes, there might be a slump, but everyone goes through a little of that, but what I’m talking about is consistently if you are taking action on the most important pieces of your sales game, good results should follow.

That’s why your goals, as often as possible, should be centered on results and activities YOU can accomplish, not the responses of your prospects.  (example:  instead of saying I want at least 1 new customer today, change your goal to the number of phone calls you need to make to get that 1 client).  I know, I know.  You’re thinking, “Mark, if they don’t say “yes” I don’t get paid!”  I’m with you.  Hear me out.

You can’t control when people buy.  You can’t control who says yes or no.  You can’t control anything that involves the prospects reaction or action.  All you can do is INFLUENCE it.  That means your power as a sales pro in your process, execution, and action. 

For example, one day of cold calling could net you a big fat zero in qualified leads, but, you go out and do the exact same activity the same way the next day and get 5.  What’s the difference?  Nothing you did. The only difference is the results, which you couldn’t control.

Keeping your goals on your activity puts the emphasis and pressure on your ability to work towards an end YOU have control of and as long as you are doing the RIGHT activities WELL, the results always follow.

I wish there was another way to say it, but there’s not, so here we go:
You are a creature of emotion, and there aren’t many careers in life that can rival sales in the intensity of emotional buy-in and volatility.
I was trying to think of some great ramp up story or analogy but I figured I’d just cut right to the chase.  Choosing to sell as a profession requires for you to exist, fight with, endure, and enjoy a crazy and volatile emotional roller coaster.  Unless you are a robot, you are dealing with a rash of emotions throughout any given sales day.  In fact, I bet you, like me, can think of many times where you have gone from the absolute dumps to euphoria in less than 2 minutes!
We can laugh about the ups and downs off hours, because they are funny to look at as you can watch yourself get pulled around like a puppet, but the reality is, at the end of the day, that when you experience disappointment or frustration during a sales day, than can single handedly kill your day.  Your negative feelings, frustration, and disappointment are KILLERS of your business, productivity, and income!
The sad part is that the next win could literally be the next call or visit, so I’m sure you all agree with me that learning how to avoid, balance, and counteract those times when we deal with negative emotions, could only help your sales performance.
So, let’s dive in.  I’m going to outline 4 tips that I used and still use to help me fight off discouragement so I can get back and keep my positive sales momentum rolling:
Tip #1:  Change Your Expectations:  This week I was coaching a sales rep and we were talking about their pipeline.  I asked about one lead in particular and here’s the exact conversation:
Me:  “Mr. Sales Pro, what’s up with The Smith Company?”
Sales Pro:  “He never returns my voice mail.”
Me:  “How many voice mails have you left?”
Sales Pro:  “A couple.”
You see, the main problem is that this sales rep is letting the prospect dictate his reaction!  Don’t let that happen!  What this rep needs to do is reset his expectation on what he expects is going to happen as a result of his voicemails.  Look, I don’t care how sexy your voice is, getting call backs from voice mail is now more difficult than ever.  On top of that, this rep is expecting every prospect to call him back from a cold call voice message, and if they don’t, it upsets him!
What I coached him on is he will be able to deal with this much more effectively if he just resets his expectation to not expecting a call back, but realizing he’ll most likely need to keep following up with them in order to speak with them.  This way, he puts himself back in charge of his follow up and is no longer a reactor/victim of the action of his prospect.
Tip #2:  The Magic Number Rule:  I made this up to help me deal with the whole, “This guy/gal never picks up their phone!” issue.  You have all been there, sometimes, your prospect picks up the phone on the first call, and another prospect might take 48 calls to reach.  Reality?  You never know how many touches or attempts it will take to reach someone.  That’s why call it, “The Magic Number Rule.”
The rule states that every prospect will take a pre-determined amount of attempts to reach.  The trick is you don’t know what that number is until you reach it.  My best advice for you when you come across that prospect that, “never picks up the phone?”  Tell yourself you haven’t called them enough yet.  It’s simply a mind game.  Are you going to get frustrated about it, or just realize they will pick up, when the right number is hit.
Just like in the first tip, if you find yourself getting frustrated because no one is picking up the phone or seeing you in person, don’t let THEM control YOUR state.  YOU control it by reframing it to understanding this rule – that their number will be called by you….and soon.
Tip #3:  Play the Odds:  You finally get in touch with that hot prospect you have been calling on for 6 months.  You deliver your best offering to get an appointment or at least a quote to them.  They give you an abrupt “no” and your heart sinks.  You hang up the phone completely bummed (understandably).  Well, unless you think of it this way:
As a sales pro you should know the most effective responses to the most common objections you encounter.  Since your sales cycle rarely changes, the objections will be consistent and as a pro in your industry you should have responses you know give you the best chance to win.
The same is true for all you cold callers out there.  If you have a 20 second pitch you should have that done SO pat that you could do it in your sleep during a bad dream!  Why is this important?
Because if you know that you delivered the most effective cold call intro, request for an appointment, or answer to an objection and they still respond negatively, what else could you have done?
Yes, I would be disappointed, and you should too, if you fail because you weren’t prepared or ready.  I get that.  But, as long as you swing the best bat you know to swing, there’s nothing else you can do.  At the end of the day, own YOUR part, and if you execute it and they don’t like it, move on!  Someone else is ready.
Tip #4:  Make Your Goals Activity Based:  I hit on this in the last article, but it fits perfectly into this piece also.  If you are focused on, and taking action with the RIGHT behaviors, the sales results you want will follow.  I’ve never experienced a sales person who is focused on the most important parts and doing them well, only to fail!  It doesn’t happen.  Now, yes, there might be a slump, but everyone goes through a little of that, but what I’m talking about is consistently if you are taking action on the most important pieces of your sales game, good results should follow.
That’s why your goals, as often as possible, should be centered on results and activities YOU can accomplish, not the responses of your prospects.  (example:  instead of saying I want at least 1 new customer today, change your goal to the number of phone calls you need to make to get that 1 client).  I know, I know.  You’re thinking, “Mark, if they don’t say “yes” I don’t get paid!”  I’m with you.  Hear me out.
You can’t control when people buy.  You can’t control who says yes or no.  You can’t control anything that involves the prospects reaction or action.  All you can do is INFLUENCE it.  That means your power as a sales pro in your process, execution, and action.
For example, one day of cold calling could net you a big fat zero in qualified leads, but, you go out and do the exact same activity the same way the next day and get 5.  What’s the difference?  Nothing you did. The only difference is the results, which you couldn’t control.
Keeping your goals on your activity puts the emphasis and pressure on your ability to work towards an end YOU have control of and as long as you are doing the RIGHT activities WELL, the results always follow.