Managing your emotional states 😁🤨😞🤯😳

Today I had a crappy day. Two opportunities that I was counting on were cancelled or delayed. 

It is easy to feel depressed with sales. The natural reaction is to blame the customer, product or just a slow market.  

I have stated before you need to be in a positive mental state in order for people to buy from you. Nobody wants to buy from a depressed individual! 

So how do you make it?  

You need to train your mind to see beyond the current obstacles.

There are several ways to do this:

• visualise positive interactions with your customers 🤓
• recall an experience when you pushed past a negative emotion and it turned out good 😇
• have a good laugh about the current situation and be kind to yourself (my favourite)  🤪

I believe this approach help you get past those grey clouds!  Happy selling! 🌤

Matching your customer’s speed

As a customer I get annoyed when the sales person wants to move faster than I am ready. 

This is bad for the sale because:

1. it signals to the customer you are not listening to them. It also implies that you also don’t understand them.  
2. it implies that you are only in the transaction to make money, and you don’t care for them. 
3. and finally it gives the impression that the customer is getting “sold” to. That by far is the worst impression you want to make!  

You can counter these problems and make more sales if you ask many simple “find out” questions in the first meeting such as:

1. how does your organisation make decisions? 
2. when do you need to start realising the benefits of this proposal (then work backwards to determine when they need to buy)? 
3. what are your timeframes? 

By asking these simple “find out” questions you will understand the customer’s buying behaviour.  

You will know when to use the customer’s reasons to put the pressure on, and when to back away!

Eat That Frog!

As a founder you are wearing many hats, including sales. 

If you allocate two hours each day for sales, your business will grow - regardless of your skill. 

When to Sell  

If sales is not your thing, then you should do it first thing. Start at 8.00 am and don't stop until 10.00 am each morning. 

Essential activities 

• Researching LinkedIn (free version) your target organisations and contacts
• Outbound messages (Email, LinkedIn or other format)
• Networking with your contacts for third party introductions
• Phone prospects (setup meetings and follow up)
• Meetings with prospects and new customers.

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10 reasons why the first meeting is so important

Here are 10 reasons why the first meeting with a prospective customer is so important: 

1. you have the opportunity to give them something of value which can build a good relationship of trust. What you give can be non-monetary such as a white paper or sharing your specialist insights. 🧞‍♂️
2. ask the most important question: how does your organisation make decisions?  🧠
3. better understand how the customer wants to make process for their business in the next 6-12 months.  👁
4. listen and understand what the customer is experiencing right now.  🍮
5. learn the name of their receptionist or office manager. They can be surprisingly helpful in the future! 🤗
6. observe how they respond in person to your business pitch... do they ask follow-up questions, or not? 😴
7. learn why they accepted the invitation to meet with you. They are very busy! Why should they waste their time with you? 👩‍🎓
8. the first meeting sets the stage for the future customer/supplier relationship.  👔
9. understand the signals whether you really want this is a customer. Toxic customers need to be fired sooner rather than later. 🤮
10. an opportunity to make a good impression. Surprisingly this can be achieved if you speak less and listen more! 🤐

Dealing with sales targets and budget pressure 💵

Sales is hard because at the end of the day you are measured by the dollars you bring into the organisation.

If you work for a company then your boss assigns your sales target and applies pressure.

If you are a startup founder then your success relies on setting and meeting revenue expectations. 

Throughout my career I have felt the pressure of achieving budget.  

The only way to deal with this pressure is to focus on the activities that bring about sales - not the budget itself.  

For example if your personal sales target this year is $2M, try to answer the following questions: 

1. how many sale  transactions are needed to reach $2M? 
2. what is my average win rate? This determines the number of proposals you need to submit.
3. how many meetings are needed to reach the number of proposals? 
4. how many outbound phone calls and emails will I need to make in order to meet organise the meetings? 
5. how will I source the prospects and leads?

If you focus on these five activities you will not have time to stress about meeting your sales targets! 

Squeeze in one more phone call 📱 or email 🖥

There is a popular quote by Muhammad Ali on how he trained to become the no. 1 boxer of all time:

I don't count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.

Since starting in a new sales job, I have applied Ali’s philosophy to sales: 

• before going for a lunch break I make one more phone call; or 
• send one more outbound email before going home

Your sales efforts begin to compound when you increase your outbound efforts.  

So far the results of this approach has yielded a lot of success.  

Give it a go 😀 

Rainbows 🌈 and Unicorns 🦄

At the start of my sales career I worked alongside George, a mature tele-sales representative whose individual sales transactions were less than $200. 

I could not believe how positive he was on each phone call, knowing that he needed to make A LOT of phone calls to make budget. 

George was clearly delusional!

However George was always sounding enthusiastic and happy to speak with customers. You could tell by the sound of his voice! When the rejection did occur, he just shrugged it off and kept dialing. 

In order to get good at his job, George needed to have an irrational perspective. To really believe the customer you are speaking with needed his product! When rejection occurred he needed to not take it personally. 

George’s perspective carried him through years of making a good living through sales.  

At the time I was fascinated by his “rainbows and unicorns” perspective.

Now nearly 20 years on I realise that I am also delusional! 🤪

Fear of Rejection

I can’t believe that after 18 years of continuous selling I still get nervous calling new or important customers!

I just made a call to someone that I worked with quite closely in a precious role. The response was warm and I could not believe I was feeling nerves...

But nerves can help sharpen your mind and provide focus to the situation. 

If you are a startup and new to sales, don’t feel bad that you are uncomfortable. It’s completely normal. 😀 

Your Physical/Mental Health and it’s impact on Sales

Many who are new to sales, worry about the impact of rejection on their psyche. 

Its true that to be successful you MUST remain positive, despite having the occasional bad day.  

Underpinning your positive attitude is the need to keep your body and mind in a good healthy state.   

Why is health connected to sales? 

Firstly being an entrepreneur is a job. Your job requires many years of effort to see the fruits of success. You won’t make it in the long run if you ignore your health. 

Everyone has a different approach for maintaining their health. Some go to the extreme with highly competitive sports and training. Others will timebox activities with families and friends to keep the balance.  

The second reason is that we all want to buy from people we like and can trust. You and I can sense when someone’s life is out of balance by the way they speak and the tone of their voice.   

Sales is about being in a state of happiness, working with customers and genuinely caring about helping them make progress.  

You cannot fake that.  

As humans we have well developed detectors to sense when someone is trying to “sell” us. Nobody likes to be sold to.

However they are more than willing to work  with partners keen to see their success.   

In short

• Take care of your mental and physical health.
• Be happy!
• Enjoy the thrill of helping customers succeed through your efforts and solutions.  

Take your time to develop the solution collaboratively with your customer!

Today I had a first meeting with a senior manager for an existing customer. 

Over the past few weeks I had been socialising a novel approach to solve one of their ongoing challenges. The reaction so far had been warm. However when I described it to this senior manager, she got excited and asked for a full description of the solution.  

If you are the technical founder of a startup, it is very tempting at this stage to dive into a technical briefing. But don’t do it! 

If you elaborate the solution too early you risk missing aspects that will enable you to win the sale. It is far better to work collaboratively with the customer, with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) from both sides, to develop the solution. 

 You cannot always collaborate. But when you do, it can be very powerful.  

I know this is really simple stuff but even experienced sales people can fall into the trap!

A great tactic to implement this approach is offering to run a workshop with SMEs on both sides. Your proposal will then be designed for acceptance! 😀