Lots of people talk about goals and having a plan to achieve said goals. And there is lots of information out there about how important it is to have an tracking system in place to make sure you execute your plan effectively. But what about the GRIND required to increase sales and achieve success?

There is a sales production target out there – somewhere. It’s different for every person and every organization but it’s out there. And for every person and every organization there is the actual sales production result that is being achieved today. That is the Sales Opportunity Gap. 

The Objective Management Group Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis is the guide that makes you the hero to close the sales growth opportunity gap. The findings in this analysis clearly lays out the current status of the sales team in these areas:

• Will to Sell and Will to Manage Sales
• Sales DNA, Sales Management DNA
• Sales and Sales Management skills
• Systems and processes that support sales growth
• And more

These items are critical to understand if you ever hope to strategically and intentionally grow sales in your organization (or for yourself).

But this alone is not enough. Goals and Grind are also 2 requirements to get you from where you are to where you could be.

I'm reading Bob Rotello’s “How Champions Think in Sports and In Life”. I am in the middle of the chapter: Goals, Plans and Process. Lots of people talk about goals, goals setting and having a plan to achieve said goals. And there is lots of information out there about how important it is to have an accountability system in place to make sure you execute the plan. But the thing that struck me about Bob’s chapter is the discussion about the GRIND.

GRIND: it’s not talked about enough when it comes to discussing how to achieve a goal. The grind is the day-in and day-out stuff that you have to do to leverage your natural talents. The grind is the hard stuff, the stuff where we have a tendency to procrastinate.

So, what’s the grind in Sales?

• Making the prospecting effort on a consistent basis
• Pre and post call sessions
• Practicing your sales skills
• Inputting data in your CRM
• Going to sales meetings
• Having 1-on-1 coaching sessions with your manager

This is the grind. This is the stuff day-in and day-out that, when executed properly, leads you to your definition of success. This is what leads you to accomplishing your goal. Without the grind your goal is just a dream.

Selling is hard. Especially with the easy access prospects have to critical decision-making information. However, the struggle often begins with how and what we think.

In this blog, Tony discusses the personal beliefs and myths that often get in the way of a sales persons ability to see greater overall success. 

There are no secrets in sales! The internet and the digital world have pretty much eliminated any secrets to success in sales, and how to do almost anything else. All you need is a mobile device with access to the internet, and you can find just about anything you want to know.

With facts and strategies being so readily available, why do most salespeople (about 80%) still struggle to be successful? A lot of it has to do with beliefs and myths. What about you? Do you accept any outdated myths as facts? Some may include:

1. People only use 10% of their brains
2. There is a dark side of the moon
3. Behavior is affected by the full moon
4. Sugar makes children hyperactive
5. Lightning never strikes the same place twice

So what is the best method to move past the myth and see success? It starts by getting to the root cause of the problem.

As many of you know, Anthony Cole Training Group has specialized in providing specialized sales growth solutions for banking, investment advisory, and insurance. Primarily, those growth solutions include:

1. Hiring better salespeople
2. Executing an effective sales process
3. Sales Management training

During our years of developing and delivering content to hundreds of sales organizations, we have used the #1 sales assessment tool on the planet. Not only is the accuracy of the sales inventory assessment tool unbelievable, but the Sales Effectiveness and Impact Analysis have been a game-changer. One of the most compelling segments revealed in the assessments is about personal beliefs. Each of us has personal beliefs that dictate our behaviors and thus determines our outcomes. This holds true for all areas - sales, sales management, and sales leadership. Whether aware or not, we all have beliefs about what we do that impacts our opportunity for success. 

5 MYTHS MOST SALESPEOPLE BELIEVE

Here are the myths that many salespeople believe to be fact:

1. People buy from people they like. Now, you may have purchased something from someone that you like, but that didn’t drive your decision. What drove your decision was your confidence and trust in the person, the product, and the company behind the product.
2. People make buying decisions based on price. Staying with you and your purchasing habits for a second, let’s talk automobiles. According to MotorTrend, the cheapest car available today is the Chevrolet Spark with a base price of $14,095. If you own one, then you are a rare breed. The volume of sales of this vehicle in 2019 was only .75% of all vehicles sold in the U.S. If people only bought the lowest priced item, this would not be the case.
3. Closing skills are the most important. This might be surprising to you, but in the last three studies I conducted in the banking segment, the top 33% of bankers, wealth managers, and private bankers who severely lack closing skills still led their teams in sales.
4. The customer is always right. That is not the case. Due to information access, they're more educated regarding product knowledge, availability, options, and pricing but to assume they are right about everything is incorrect. However, this in and of itself is not the problem. The problem is this; if salespeople believe this, then they will never be gutsy enough to execute the challenger sale, the value-based selling system, the SPIN System, or our Effective Selling System.
5. Prospects are always honest. 95% of respondents in all of our studies believe prospects are honest. That is until we conduct our first meeting with our clients and go through the process that buyers go through when executing their buying process. If a prospect were completely honest, they would tell the insurance agent who cold-called them that they got a renewal that is too high, and they want some competitive bids to keep the incumbent honest. We all know that doesn’t happen!

TRAINING ALONE DOES NOT GET LASTING RESULTS

Time and again, companies spend money on sales training to introduce them to a new:

• sales language
• sales approach
• prospecting method
• time management process
• cross-selling strategy

What happens is that the company spends a lot of time, money, and effort, and yet, at the end of the event or training, they cannot point to any discernable difference in outcomes. Behaviors stay the same, problems that existed before are still there, effort changes for a while but soon returns to pre-training levels and salespeople still blame the economy, the company, or the competition for lack of success.

Top people are still performing at the top, people in the middle of your sales bell curve are maintaining, and your bottom 20% are not performing any better than the bottom 20% you had the year before. Why? Because the root problems associated with these beliefs were never uncovered.

For you, your team, and your organization to see greater success, it's critical to identify, address, and build strategies to overcome the myths or beliefs that are hindering personal growth.

Years ago, while attending the Objective Management Group International Sales Conference, Dave Kurlan, president of OMG, talked about how to effectively manage opportunities through the pipeline.  He made the analogy that prospects are like fruit and vegetables in the produce section of your local grocery – they are all perishable.

Ways of Dealing with a Difficult Prospect

Sometimes, reaching out to prospects is like pulling teeth.  

Some prospects are difficult because they don't understand the value of what you have to offer, while others simply do not want to be bothered by a salesperson right now.  

No matter the reason, you still need leads and so being able to move forward with a prospect

Not Every Prospect has the Same "Shelf Life"

Prospects- they have a shelf life and can have thick skin, just like fruits and vegetables.

Some of them last longer than others. 

While some produce is ripe for the picking, and others have a toughness to them.

Bananas – not so long, apples and mandarins- a little longer, potatoes and squash- they'll last the longest. 

The bottom line is that none of them last forever.  You need to either pick them now or find a way to preserve them for later.

Below, we'll give you some tips on how to help deal with some of those more difficult prospects and in hopes to get them closer to the sale.

How to Deal with Difficult Prospects

Practice Actively Listening

Listening is one of the most important, yet underrated forms of communication.

When people think of listening, they generally associate it with silence or not talking at all.

However, that is not completely correct.

Active listening means that you are trying to understand what someone is saying rather than just wait for your turn to talk.

It takes practice but can be a great tool for not only for your sales profession, but in any conversation in the future.

Practice the Beginner's Mind

The beginner’s mind — also known as the zen mind — is a strategy of approaching every situation as if you were starting from scratch.

When you open yourself up to the beginner's mind, your perspective on everything can change.

When we adopt this way of thinking, it becomes easier for us to enter conversations without any preconceived notions or prejudices about our prospects and their situations; instead focusing solely on what they are saying while putting ourselves in their shoes.

Instead of telling yourself "the prospect should have known this", or "they should have called me back by now", put yourself in the beginner's mindset and it becomes easier to recognize that no one is perfect and you can tailor your approach to better accomodate.

"Chunk" Your Problems

Chunking is the process of taking one big problem and breaking it into several smaller, more manageable portions.

These small pieces are easier for us to tackle because they allow our brain time-out from thinking about all those difficult details while still moving forward with progress made on previous sections!

Chunks can also be used strategically when coming up against challenging problems--chances are if given several tasks in order then maybe we'll find an issue that needs addressing immediately or at least feel less overwhelmed by responsibility alone.

Don't let Prospects Perish

Here is the point.  When going out into the market, you can find yourself wasting your time with prospects that aren’t quite ready or are already past their prime time for consumption. You may experience:

• That the prospect is too "green"
• They just opened a new account with their bank partner
• Just renewed their insurance
• Their lease expires in 11 months

If you want to close more business, more quickly at higher margins, then find the highly perishable prospects and work with them on solving their problem. Present a solution to them and get them off of the shelf.  Do not neglect the potatoes, bananas, tomatoes or green beans; continue to check on them, plant them in your database (your CRM) and, when the time comes to make potato salad, they will be ready.

For more online sales resources, check out some of our other sales articles over at our Sales Brew.

If interested in sales training or sales coaching, we have a dedicated professional team of sales experts that can help drive better sales performance and build better sales teams.

Contact us today to learn more!

Money should be looked at as a vital resource. A resource like food, air or water. In other words, you cannot live without them. Money buys you freedom of time and the freedom to choose. So, in order to choose and then achieve your personal goals, you must have money!

Here are some specific steps to help you translate your small, big and important personal goals to a business workplan that will help you achieve these goals.

Break down your goals into these 3 categories: short-term, medium-term and long-term goals. And then within each one of those categories, identify your goals as either urgent, somewhat urgent or not really urgent at all. This process will help you narrow down the types of goals you need to focus on first and foremost.

Typically, when people think of goals, they think in terms of things they want to have or things they want to accomplish like eliminate debt or pay for a wedding. More challenging goals that we also need to consider are those types of goals that we call ‘freedom to choose’ goals. An example might be the ability to work 4 days a week or the ability to take a month off to do ministry work in a third world country. Those goals also require financial freedom. So, at the end of the day regardless of the type of goal, there is normally some sort of financial requirement attached to the ability to achieve that goal.

Your second step is to identify at least 12 freedom to choose goals and identify their associated financial requirement.

Next, we have to become laser focused. We want you to identify for the next 12 months from all the goals that you identified, which are the 12 non-negotiable goals. You can't miss these come hell or high water - you're going to achieve these goals! Now, what behaviors will you need to do to make these goals happen – break it down into steps and set some deadlines. A goal without a due date is just a wish.

You just completed the easy part! Now its time to roll up your sleeves and translate these individual personal goals and their financial requirement into a business work plan. We call it a work plan because in order to achieve success you must have a plan AND work the plan.

Here are the Workplan components:

• Your Success Formula
• Your Market Niche
• Your Prospecting Strategy
• Your USA

The Success Formula is the math that helps you understand the amount of activity in each step of your sales process that you must execute to get to your revenue goal. Keep in mind this one very important idea – your goal has to be YOUR goal. It must be a number driven by your needs and not the needs of the company. But here is the catch – your number should always be higher than what the company requires from you. Remember these are your personal goals to reach.

The best way to identify your Market Niche is to take a look at the top 20% of your current book of business and identify the common demographics. That is who you serve well and the trick will be finding more of them!

If your business is like most, your larger, top 20% clients probably generate North of 70% of your revenue and the rest of your book of business is made up of a smattering of various size accounts. To refine this into your workplan, you want to identify approximately the number of accounts you want to sell at each size. This will give you an idea of the number of sales at the various levels you need to make in order to reach your goal.

Your Prospect Strategy to reach out into the market place is the key to your success. The best way to meet a new prospect is to ask your current clients for introductions but you must have multiple strategies.

Your USA or Unique Sales Approach to the market place is critical. How will you stand out? Here is the test of the effectiveness of your USA or elevator pitch – If you heard your pitch, would you respond with one of the following?

• Tell me more about that.  
• That's me.
• How do you do that?

Most of us believe that in order to get a better outcome we need to start doing something. In reality sometimes the first requirement is to stop doing certain things. To complete your workplan, identify those things that you are doing that are killing your business and killing your ability to be more effective – then stop them!

Take a minute now and review this newsletter. Ask yourself - what are the top three things you need to execute because you believe that when you do, they will have the most dramatic and positive impact on your business.

Now go plan your work and Work your plan!

Video Transcript:

I want you to think about your success over the last 12 months. This assessment isn’t complicated.  Just break down your life into two areas:  Your work success and your personal success and think about your answer to these three questions:

Question 1: Over the last 12 months what was the most important thing you wanted to achieve in your personal life? 

• Rate yourself on a scale of 1 – 10, (1 is not even close and 10 is I blew it away)
• How did you do?

Question 2: Over the last 12 months what was the most important thing you wanted to achieve in your business life?  On the same scale - how did you do?

Question 3: And Last question – why did you get these results?

That one will take some reflection. Now as we get started on this meaty topic, I want you to think about this question:
What would you attempt to do if you knew you couldn’t fail? 

Goal setting is more than just thinking about and writing down goals. Goals without actions are just thoughts you have about what might happen.  Writing goals with action items is a waste of time if you don’t commit to time frames.  And ultimately you have to inspect what you expect. The joy of accomplishing goals is what will keep you moving forward.  This course is about goal accomplishment and not just goal setting.

There are many wonderful books on the topic of setting goals and achieving your personal best and I hope you are reading them!  We know that salespeople who accomplish their goals do these things consistently:

1. Their goals are written down
2. They have a time frame to achieve them
3. Their goals are defined and measurable
4. They have an accountability partner or a coach to keep them on track
5. They set too many goals
6. They stretch and set extraordinary, big hairy audacious goals

Mark Victor Hansen challenges people to write 100 goals so that you have more opportunity to announce VICTORY when you achieve a goal. And instead of just establishing reasonable goals make room for those that are extraordinary.  All the resources you need to have an extraordinary life are available to each of us.  Quoting Mark Victor Hansen again, “There is normally only one person between you and your greatest achievement.”   YOU

Your success is really about you versus you. It has very little to do with your company’s strategies or the economy or the competition.  This really is all about you and your desire and commitment to make your dreams, your plans come to fruition.

One of the challenges that people have when they attempt to write goals is a lack of process to create the plan.  My suggestion now is for you to take out your calendar and identify at least two hours of time for writing out in detail your goals/your plan for the future.  

OK, Remember the question - What would you attempt to do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Keep these things in mind as you get started on your 100 goals.

There are no goals that are too small, too, large, too far out, etc.  Don’t edit your thoughts – write down any and all goals that come to mind.  Don’t limit yourself because you think a goal is too big, too foolish, not foolish or big enough.

Next go through your categories of life and begin writing those things that are in your head and on your heart – goals for family, community, spiritual, work of course, financial, fitness, things you want to have and want to do. Write them all down and remember – no self edits!  Spend some time on this – don’t short cut it!

And keep in mind Steven Covey’s famous quote:  Begin with the end in mind…