This video’s gonna cover a trap many salespeople fall into stay tuned until the end for a two-step process that you can implement today.
Over the years of recruiting, hiring, and training new salespeople, a trend began to emerge. The bright-eyed recruit would go out after training and immediately crush.
Right out of the gate. They’d win sales. This would go on for a bit, and then after they got some experience, they hit a wall and suddenly can’t sell anything.
This is when you start hearing things like… These leads aren’t as good as they were, and these aren’t our kinds of customers. They’re just price shoppers and the economy’s messed up and people just aren’t buying right now and all that kind of stuff.
Some would fight through and come out the other side while others would flail for a while and then either quit or be let go.
So what’s the difference between the fresh new recruit and the experienced sales rep? Besides the fact that the experienced sales rep probably isn’t following the process as closely as they did when they first learned it, which is the topic that we could have a totally different video dedicated to, they also don’t have the same outlook or attitude they had from when they first started.
A new recruit doesn’t know what to expect when they go out on their own. The company is brand new and awesome, and they’re excited to be representing it. They just learned a bunch of cool new stuff that they can’t wait to go share with prospective clients, who they’re also ecstatic to be meeting with to help and see if they can win their business. They’re excited, passionate, and hungry.
The experienced rep has dealt with some disappointment. They’ve had some sales not go their way. They’ve cut out things from the process and still gotten sales. So those things have stayed permanently cut out of the process. But now what was working, it just isn’t.
The customers where everything clicked in the beginning are now standoffish and resistant. The company isn’t as new and awesome as it was in the beginning, and the salesperson has become jaded. The experienced salesperson thinks I’m doing the same thing, so it has to be something else. Then they start seeking out all of the wrong that is being imposed upon them.
Now when they get a new appointment, they start judging the zip code it’s in, the lead source, the reason for the appointment, the ethnicity of the last name.
When things aren’t exactly the way they want, they start thinking thoughts like, now here we go again. This is probably a total waste of my time. By the time they arrive for the appointment, their outlook is so negative and toxic that the salesperson starts seeking out all the reasons why the homeowner won’t buy.
It’s like the customer’s auditioning for them instead of the other way around. What the homeowner says and does will dictate how much effort the salesperson puts into the call. When the homeowner doesn’t say or do the exact right thing, the salesperson starts disqualifying them and kind of gives up mentally after determining that they’re a low probability sale.
When you set all these conditions and expectations on prospective clients, you’re all but guaranteeing that very few will ever buy from you, and if you don’t recognize it and fix it, your sales career will likely be short.
Maybe that’s why they say sales is either the easiest, low-paying job you’ll ever have
or the hardest high-paying job you’ll ever have.
The salesperson who wrote that probably fought their way out of the darkness and into the light of a proper mindset by following a solid process and focusing on serving their customers properly instead of how the customer can serve them.
You see, the customer is not auditioning for us. It’s the other way around. And how we win the audition is to our service, to them, and the value we bring.
This makes me think of another quote I learned from one of my mentors when I first started selling. He used to say, if you just focus on helping people, their money will come play in your backyard.
So instead of trying to over qualify people and make your focus so narrow that very few will fit, ask yourself the following questions…
number one, does this person have a problem that our company was put on earth to help solve?
Number two, is the person I’m meeting with, the one that will make the final decision to buy or not.
If the answer is yes and yes, then stop disqualifying them and start focusing on helping them to solve their problem. Once they’re infected with your sincere desire to help them, they’ll be 10 times more likely to want to learn how your solution to their problem is superior to the competition, and then invest with you.
Get started in the helping spirit. If you have any attitude, adjusting tips or tricks that have helped you get out of the sales funk, please share them in the comments.
Oh, and by the way, if you need help with your sales process and wanna learn how roof coach might help, schedule an initial consultation today.
