Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

A Great Salesperson Has to Sell

Selling is about more than showing up.

Is this you? You visit a customer, tell them about your product, see if they are interested, and listen to any objections to doing business with you. Then, if the answer is no or maybe, you shrug it off and walk away.

Then when you get in the car you tell yourself, “If we had a better product, I could have made that sale.” Or “If the customer knew who we were before I got there, if we had better marketing leading to brand recognition, I could have made that sale.” Or “If we had better pricing I bet I could have convinced him to buy from us.” Or “We need a better website, we need social media, we need faster quotes, we need higher technology, we need better product, we need, we need, we need.”

What’s wrong with this picture? Where is the sales effort in this scenario? Why aren’t you looking at yourself and how you played the cards in your hand instead of wishing, hoping and needing something different?

I have worked with many sales teams over the years, literally hundreds of salespeople, and the one thing that always stands out is that the truly great sales people never talk this way. They always succeed regardless of the cards they have been dealt.

Remember that great movie Glengarry Glen Ross? This was story about a bunch of sad, beaten-down sales guys who were trying unsuccessfully to sell what I assume was some kind of swamp land in Florida. Alll they did was complain about “the leads” that Mitch and Murray were sending them from “downtown.” They wanted the “good leads” that Kevin Spacey’s character refused to give them until they closed some business with the leads they had in hand.

Now think about Al Pacino’s character, Ricky. He was on top of the world. Ricky was making and exceeding his quota. Ricky was going to get that Cadillac. He acted like he did not have a worry in the world, and he had the same leads, the same crummy office, and the same depressing rain-drenched atmosphere as the other guys. Yet he found a way to make it work. Good old Ricky sold that swamp land and never complained.

Before you start throwing towels at your computer, let me get to my point. Ricky understood that he was not going to be able the change the way the business was run, and he had no influence over what Mitch and Murray did. He knew he had two choices: either get the hell out of that company or make the best of things playing with the cards in his hand, which is what he did. And he did this because he was a true salesperson.

And what is a true salesperson? It’s someone who finds a way. It’s someone who studies the situation, evaluates his product, and learns all he can about his customers and what makes them want to buy from him. Then he goes out there and does it. He is a student of the game of sales, learning everything he can about how to be a great salesperson. The true salesperson looks at her job as a career, as a profession, and she considers herself a professional. And like every true professional, she lives, breathes and eats her profession. She does everything she can, reads all that she can read, attends all the classes she can attend and dedicates her life to the business of sales.

When a true sales professional makes a sales call, he knows that the chances of that prospect wanting to buy his product are very slim. He knows that his job is to get someone to do something he does not really want to do. That is the challenge of sales and in order to meet that challenge, the salesperson has to come into that meeting “heavy,” as Tony Soprano would say. He has to come into that meeting “carrying,” with everything he needs to convince that customer to buy from him.

At that point, his sole challenge is to convince that customer to do something that he really is not anxious to do. Getting that customer to change his mind, see the value in what he is selling and convincing that customer to agree to buy the product…ladies and gentlemen, that is sales! And it’s also only common sense.