Controlling the Sales Process

Do you CONTROL your sales success?

Whether you are a sales person for a company or you are a small business owner, there are only a few things that you can directly control in the sales process to make you or your company successful.

Have you ever thought about what those things are?

I can remember as a salesman in the automotive industry that I was taught to focus on how many ups I needed to get so that I could get to the number of vehicles I wanted to sell. That was totally the wrong thought process. In the auto industry, a sales person that just focuses on “ups” – the people that come on the lot that you can grab and meet – were called “lot lizards”. All those “lot lizards” did was “run through ups”. You see the “lot lizard” never focused on perfecting their sales presentation to increase their closing ratio, which is the real focus that successful sales people achieve.

You cannot directly control your sales. There is no way for you to force a client or prospect to buy what you are selling. However, what you can do is indirectly control your sales. You simply must focus on the things that you can control. Here are three things that will indirectly control your sales results:

1. Work Habits – Work on the number of in person presentations that you can make to decision makers. Perfect those presentations and focus on the number of those presentations that you need to make to achieve the goals that you have for your success.

2. Study Habits – There are three main categories (you can add more as you see fit) that you need to focus on under your study habits:

(a) Industry – Know your industry and continue to study your industry to stay on top of new information that becomes available.

(b) Competition – You need to know who your competition is and what your competition has to offer to your clients. What is the selling process of your competition and is it effective?

(c) Product – Are you a product expert in your company? Do you know your product vs your competitions product? Are you selling the best product available and more importantly do you believe in this product?

3. Attitude – There are so many thoughts and topics regarding attitude, “attitude determines altitude” comes to mind. I simply want to ask you two questions under attitude. (1) What are you reading – what are you putting in to your brain that is feeding your attitude? (2) Who are you associating with? It goes back to the same theory of garbage in garbage out. The opposite of that is when we put great things in, great things can come out. Surrounding yourself with great people and putting great things in your mind through what you are reading will greatly enhance your own attitude.

Remember, you can’t directly control your sales success but you can indirectly control your sales success by focusing on your work habits, your study habits and your attitude.