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 Do you accept any outdated myths as facts?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.

In today's blog post, we discuss the importance of calling a sales audible at the line of scrimmage.  Like an elite Quarterback, an elite salesperson must be willing to change things up when they're not working and be open to trying something completely different in the field.

We've all been there before and we all know the definition of insanity by this point.  So, what can you do about it when things aren't going your way and you are ready to increase sales?

An audible is, "A change in the offensive play called by the Quarterback at the line of scrimmage."

A few years ago , I thought of that definition in Chicago, IL, as my Uber driver made several deviations from her GPS directions in transporting me from the Midway Airport into downtown.

As I rode along with the windows down on a beautiful and sunny day in the Windy City, my thoughts turned from sightseeing to salespeople—specifically, the need for salespeople to make changes on the fly, whether that be during the initial phone call, the first meeting, or even at the time they present their solutions.  

Is there a better time than right now to try something different in your sales approach?

Anyone and everyone who has had any exposure to our company knows that we are completely sold on the importance of process.  We have table-pounding conviction around how important it is for a business driven by sales to have certain key processes in place regarding their sales infrastructure. 

And, of course, we believe that sales training creates the most return on a client’s investment when the salespeople and sales managers are following a sales process where opportunities are moving through the funnel in a stage-based and milestone-centric manner. 

We believe that firms who don’t have a consistent sales process (everyone following the same steps and using the same terms to describe stages in the sales process) but who implement such a process can often see a 15% to 20% increase in new business sales.

But, here is something worth remembering—life is complicated.  Ferris Bueller (I can’t come to Chicago and not think of him) told us to slow down or we might miss something. 

And the same is true with selling.  Sometimes you just need to slow down and do something unconventional.  Sometimes you need to do something that is contrary to what even your training has taught you to do. 

Sometimes you just need to call an audible.

To be clear, usually your training is going to be correct.  But, sometimes, you will need to remember that selling is both science and art, and the art part means you might need to listen to your heart and occasionally let that heart override your mind. 

Of course, the best in the business know when to listen to their head and when to listen to their heart.  And if they get it wrong every so often, so what? 

They get back up and they keep going.

So, listen to your heart.  Sometimes you will need to call an audible to get back on the saddle and to increase sales within your organization.