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MEASURED SUCCESS INC

Top 25 Reasons You Can’t Sell

Work Smarter and Increase Your Sales

Cheryl A. Clausen

11/30/2007

Copyright Notice: © Cheryl Clausen. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized use, sharing, reproduction, distribution or distribution of these materials by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise is strictly prohibited. No portion of these materials may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, without the express written consent of the publisher. Published under the Copyright Law of the Library of Congress of The United States of America by: Cheryl Clausen, Measured Success Inc.

2 Top 25 Reasons You Can’t Sell

Contents Introduction Top 25 Reasons You Can't Sell ...................................................... 4

Reason Number 1 You Can't Sell – You think your failures or lack of success is someone else’s fault. ..................................................................................... 6

Action Item 1 ............................................................................................ 9

Reason Number 2 You Can’t Sell – You don’t understand why your prospects don’t want what you have. ................................................................................... 10

Action Item 2 .......................................................................................... 12

Reason Number 3 You Can’t Sell – You think you need a killer presentation ........ 13

Action Item 3 .......................................................................................... 16

Reason Number 4 You Can’t Sell – Your own fear has a strangle hold on you ...... 17

Action Item 4 .......................................................................................... 19

Reason Number 5 You Can’t Sell – You don’t know how to gain interest .............. 20

Action Item 5 .......................................................................................... 23

Reason Number 6 You Can’t Sell – You struggle because you think everyone is a prospect .................................................................................................... 24

Reason Number 7 You Can’t Sell – You think you have to have all the gizmos to succeed ..................................................................................................... 26

Action Item 6 .......................................................................................... 28

Reason Number 8 You Can’t Sell – You don’t know how to get a commitment ...... 29

Action Item 7 .......................................................................................... 31

Reason Number 9 You Can’t Sell – You don’t know what to say ......................... 31

Action Item 8 .......................................................................................... 34

Reason Number 10 You Can’t Sell – You talk too much even though you think you don’t ......................................................................................................... 35

Reason Number 11 You Can’t Sell – You don’t know how to listen even though you think you do .............................................................................................. 37

Reason Number 12 You Can’t Sell – You’re trying to persuade ........................... 38

Reason Number 13 You Can’t Sell – You don’t set appointments for the right reason ................................................................................................................ 40

Reason Number 14 You Can’t Sell – You prejudge others and yourself ................ 42

Action Item 9 .......................................................................................... 43

Reason Number 15 You Can’t Sell – You haven’t earned referral rights ............... 44

Action Item10 ......................................................................................... 46

Reason Number 16 You Can’t Sell – You don’t get what your prospects need ....... 46

Reason Number 17 You Can't Sell – You don’t earn their trust ........................... 48

Reason Number 18 You Can’t Sell – You don’t understand the Law of Attraction .. 50

Reason Number 19 You Can’t Sell – You’re trying to succeed by being someone else ................................................................................................................ 52

Reason Number 20 You Can’t Sell – You don’t work on being the best ................ 54

Action Item 11 ........................................................................................ 56

Reason Number 21 You Can’t Sell – You want the quick fix instant solution ......... 57

Reason Number 22 You Can’t Sell – You forget sales boils down to people liking you because you’re genuine ............................................................................... 59

Reason Number 23 You Can’t Sell – You’re thinking about what you need not about what the prospect needs .............................................................................. 60

Reason Number 24 You Can’t Sell – You don’t give first .................................... 63

Reason Number 25 You Can’t Sell – You don’t understand you need to aim small miss small and fail forward fast .................................................................... 64

Summary .................................................................................................. 66

Introduction Top 25 Reasons You Can't Sell

If you’re reading this book you recognize that you have opportunities to improve your sales success. The best way to achieve more of your potential is to identify the reasons you aren’t getting the sales you should be now. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken, and you can’t solve problems you don’t understand. This overview will help you to identify the things within you that are holding you back. Unfortunately, everything on this list is your responsibility and it’s all your responsibility. Accept that and determine what you’ll do to correct your mistakes.

Only the top 3% of sales people ever achieve mega sales success. Statistically 10% of you are great people in the wrong career. If you suspect you may be in the wrong career, or want to prove to yourself that you’re in the right career there’s a quick way to do that (take assessments that reveal your natural behaviors and motivators). Another 10% of you are barely surviving. 77% of you get most of the things you need to do right, but you can’t make forward progress until you get unstuck by removing your remaining barriers. If you’re in the top 3% who get it, you really get it. You make sales look effortless and your peers are green with envy. Even though you’re the super star everyone else wants to be, you don’t know how to help other people have the kind of success you enjoy.

Stop guessing what the problem is and take the assessments by visiting:

http://coachingmegaagents.com/Assessments.php

So what are the top 25 reasons you don’t have the sales success you deserve:

1. You think your failures and lack of success are someone else’s fault.

2. You don’t understand why your prospects don’t want what you have.

3. You think you need a killer presentation. 4. Your own fear has a strangle hold on you. 5. You don’t know how to gain the interest of your prospects. 6. You think everyone is your prospect. 7. You think you have to have all the latest gizmos to succeed

in sales. 8. You don’t know how to get a commitment. 9. You don’t know what to say. 10. You talk too much even though you think you don’t. 11. You don’t know how to listen even though you think

you do. 12. You’re trying to persuade. 13. You don’t set appointments for the right reason. 14. You prejudge yourself and others. 15. You haven’t earned referral rights. 16. You don’t get what your prospects need. 17. You don’t earn their trust. 18. You don’t understand the Law of Attraction. 19. You’re trying to succeed by being someone else. 20. You don’t work on being the best. 21. You want the quick fix instant solution. 22. You forget sales boils down to people liking you

because you’re genuine. 23. You’re thinking about what you need not about what

the prospect needs.

24. You don’t give first. 25. You don’t understand you need to aim small miss small

and fail forward fast.

A long list of reasons you may not be able to sell, no easy fixes, or instant solutions just important truths about sales success that will help you to pinpoint where you can improve. Your biggest obstacle to your sales success is you and that’s why it’s all your responsibility. Getting out of your own way isn’t an easy or quick thing to do, but when you have your moments of revelation everything will change for you almost instantly.

Until you get yourself past these things you just feel stuck and frustrated, but once you overcome these things you have a fail-safe sales process that will get you moving far and fast. This overview provides a list for you to identify your areas for improvement but you need a lot more. You need to know what and where you’re mistakes are, and what you need to do to fix those mistakes. And that’s what we’ll be doing in the following chapters.

Reason Number 1 You Can't Sell – You think your failures or lack of success is someone else’s fault.

Ok: your sales manager’s a jerk, the underwriters just ruined a perfectly good product, no one is providing you with good marketing materials, everybody already has an agent, your presentation isn’t great and you don’t have all

the gizmos the competition does, you can’t get compliance to approve anything, etc. So what, all that may be true and more, but if you want to succeed it’s entirely up to you, and no one else. If you want sales success your first biggest step is to accept that no matter what isn’t working, no matter what you don’t have, no matter who’s a jerk, you and only you can change all that and make it work in spite of all your obstacles.

When you can’t sell or you’re just a little stuck it feels rotten, and it’s easy to lose your confidence and feel down on yourself. To overcome reason number 1 you have to change the way you think. It will take a conscious effort on your part to change the way you think because what you think is an ingrained habit that formed early in your life when things didn’t work out for you, and as you experience troubles in your sales career now you automatically think a certain way about the experience based on those past experiences.

There are really two parts to overcoming reason number 1 and neither involves rah-rah motivation. Overcoming reason number 1 requires self-leadership and opportunity expectation. You can have a positive outlook and mindset, and still be an absolute sales flop. Having a positive attitude and mindset is good because it makes you a pleasant person, and if you’re not a pleasant person you aren’t going to sell anything to anyone. But thinking happy thoughts alone will not put money in the bank in the form of closed sales.

Self-leadership is essential for sales success. Leadership isn’t about a set of characteristics or traits that someone is born with. Leadership is a developable skill set. Leadership is all

about achieving results through yourself and others. A leader sees the world as it is and accepts it. A leader takes responsibility for their own results and never places blame on others. A leader does the things others won’t to get results others don’t. A leader is totally responsible for their sales successes and their sales flops.

Opportunity expectation comes from accepting every situation and acknowledging there is an opportunity to be found. The opportunity that exists in situations that outwardly appear poor is potentially your greatest opportunity of all. Be glad you may be struggling to sell anything, or struggling to get unstuck now because when you figure out what you need to do to change that, you’ll learn a valuable lesson that will serve you over and over again. I’ve had clients that were terrifically successful their first couple years, and then all of a sudden there success came to a screeching halt. They came to realize and related to me that during that time of great success they were accidentally successful, and now they needed to learn how to be intentionally successful. Learn how to be intentionally successful by: learning how to turn failures into successes, learning the lesson to be learned in every temporary defeat, finding creative ways to turn temporary defeats into future successes, and using your imagination to make connections no one else has thought of. You have more opportunities in front of you at this very moment than you could ever handle. Use your self-leadership to start turning those opportunities into results.

Action Item 1

Use the table below to start changing how you think about and approach problems and challenges. In the first column list the challenges, problems, or obstacles that are keeping you from sales success now. In the second column list an action that you’re committed to taking to remove or overcome that challenge. Then in the third column identify the opportunities that will open up for you as you remove these challenges.

Current challenge Action you’ll take Opportunity

Reason Number 2 You Can’t Sell – You don’t understand why your prospects don’t want what you have.

You have exactly what they need it’s as plain as day, yet they just don’t get it. How can that be? Are they just stupid, lazy or what? None of the above, you’re approaching things the wrong way.

Your prospects don’t want what you have because you haven’t taken the time to learn about them and their wants. It’s that simple. If you want to be a sales super star, do your homework before you ever approach anyone. You need to identify very specific groups of people, these groups are called your target market, and you need to know them and their wants and needs. People buy to fulfill their wants before their needs so place your main focus on learning what they want.

How do you find these specific groups of people? Start with your existing affiliations. Unless you’re a hermit you already belong to groups of people. People naturally group themselves based on the type of work they do, how they like to recreate, and how they want to support their values and beliefs. So, what groups do you already belong to or what groups could you belong to because they’re part of what you like to do or believe in? When you belong you’re one of them, you know their language, you know what they care about, and you can learn what they want.

Figure out how to match what you have to what they want. Let’s use an example to demonstrate how understanding your target market’s wants will increase your sales. Let’s say you absolutely love golf. You play golf every minute you can. You attend tournaments. You belong to a club and participate in club activities. People associate you with golf, and they may not even know what you do to earn a living. Now let’s say you know that most of the people that also play golf, that you see on a regular basis, really want to retire to a golf community. These folks already know you and it’s your job to move them from just knowing you to knowing something about you. So when the opportunity arises and someone asks what you do you might respond that you’re the person who helps golfers to have the financial wherewithal to retire in a golf community. Can you see how that might get their attention? How they might ask you how you do that? Isn’t that exactly what you want, attention?

Your confusion about why your prospects don’t want what you have stems from you having a product or service and trying to find someone to sell it to. That, my friend, is the wrong approach. That is an approach that will lead to lots of hard work, extreme frustration, and very little reward to show for your efforts. Change your thinking and start getting the return on your investment you deserve. Know what your market wants and then give them exactly what they want the exact way they want it. It works like magic.

Action Item 2

Use this table to start figuring out how you can have what your prospects want. In the first column list your target market. This is a very specific group of people that you want to work with. I wouldn’t recommend focusing on more than 1-3 target markets especially to start out because it will be too overwhelming for you, and completely unnecessary. Find out the top three things each target market wants. You’ll easily be able to do that with a little research. Then start thinking about how you can communicate your solution in terms of what they want and record those thoughts in the last column.

Who What they want Solution match

Reason Number 3 You Can’t Sell – You think you need a killer presentation

And that belief is killing your sales success. Your sales success is never about a “presentation”. The only person a presentation is helping is you. You may be using it as a crutch so you don’t forget anything, and so you have something to say. You think it helps you to move the prospect forward and gets them to buy into your line of thinking. These are all false presumptions, and the sooner you change your thinking about your “presentation” the sooner you’ll start having greater success.

If you knew absolutely nothing about your products, but you went ahead and met with a few people you would have greater success than you probably are now. And here’s why: you wouldn’t be trying to sell them anything, you’d really have to listen to what they told you, you could relax and act like a normal person instead of a pushy salesperson, and the people you met with would like you. If all you did when you met with them was to engage them in a conversation like you would any new person you’ve ever met, asked them about what they wanted, listened intently and asked more questions to make sure you had a full understanding, and then you told them that they’ve given you a lot to think about and you wanted to spend a few hours reviewing their needs to make sure you provided the best option for them, and scheduled a follow-up appointment for a couple days later you would make more sales. At the end of this meeting they’d like you. Because they like you and you expressed concern for doing what was best for them they’d trust you, and because they trust you when you meet for that follow-up appointment and you handle that even half-way right you’ll more than likely gain their business.

When you try to use a presentation to gain business it doesn’t work because it’s all about you and what you have to offer. A presentation is all about selling and people hate to be sold. The minute you open your Power Point, brochure, or presentation notebook your prospect withdraws and disengages because they perceive they’re being sold. Never whip out your presentation, and take off full tilt giving them your whole spiel. Instead, wait until there’s an appropriate moment, a pertinent question, and then gain their permission to show them something you have that speaks to that question. Go directly to that item, use it, and leave your presentation material. Only go to points in your presentation material when there is a logical reason to do so in relation to the “conversation” you’re having, and always get their permission first. When you do this you’ll notice a big difference in your prospect’s body language. When you whipped out your presentation and launched into your spiel did you notice how your prospects physically leaned backward away from you, and perhaps at certain points they even folded their arms, and the longer you talked the more their eyes glazed over? But when you’ve gained permission to show them something they’re interested. Notice how they lean forward, how they focus on what you’re showing them, how they’re engaged and actively listening, and how they ask you questions.

When you fall into the presentation trap you have limited logic. Here’s what I mean by limited logic. The presentation forces both you and your prospect into an artificial sales conversation. Plus this artificial conversation may have little to do with what is on the prospects mind. Because you’re focused on the presentation you’re missing important cues from the

prospect; and the prospect feels like they’re being sold, manipulated, or maybe even coerced. These are all feelings you never ever want to evoke in a prospect. When you evoke those feelings you may get this one time sale because there are a lot of people who will go along with things they don’t agree with just to get you to leave. But you’ll never get a referral from this customer, and they’ll cancel their policy as soon as a better option comes up. They won’t like or trust you, and the word of mouth marketing they do for you will make others avoid you like the plague.

You don’t need this crutch and the sooner you get rid of it the sooner you’ll see your sales success increase. Every sale begins with a simple conversation. It begins by you being able to get yourself introduced to your prospects, and establishing rapport. When you actually hold the appointment you need to continue what you’ve started by continuing to be a genuine person who cares about other people and wants to help your customers get what they want. It’s a simple conversation where you want to be listening rather than talking, so you can understand, and once you understand your objective is to help your prospects discover how your solution is the best option for them. Presentations put you in the talking position and you want to be in the listening position if you want to enjoy greater sales success.

Action Item 3

I want to challenge you to scrutinize the next 6 sales appointments you hold. For your first 3 sales appointments I want you to continue using your presentation, but I want you to start noticing the impact of the presentation on your prospects.

What body language did you notice: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

At what point did the prospect disengage from you: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How comfortable did you feel and how comfortable did your prospect appear to feel: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Now I want you to put your presentation materials away and only get them out when they add value to, or reinforce the sales conversation you’re having.

What body language did you notice: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

At what point did the prospect become animated and fully engaged: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How comfortable did you feel and how comfortable did your prospect appear to feel: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reason Number 4 You Can’t Sell – Your own fear has a strangle hold on you

Your own fear is keeping you from sales success. Fear isn’t a logical response it’s an emotional response, and emotional responses have very little if any logic to support them. You’re afraid: to focus on a target market, to ask people for an

appointment, no one wants to talk to you, to make phone calls, of marketing yourself, of failing, and of succeeding. You know you’re afraid, but what you may not know or understand is why you have that fear. So let’s look at the reasons you may be holding these fears.

You haven’t grown into your own skin. Whenever you’re new at anything you go through a phase that I call growing into your own skin. You really aren’t sure exactly what benefit you bring to people. Plus you want to sell anything you can to anyone who has a pulse, so the benefit or value you bring changes with each person you talk to. You don’t know how to make yourself unique, so you’re no different than the competition. Because you’re just like everyone else you don’t know why someone would want to meet with you. All these self-doubts are visibly obvious to everyone you talk to reinforcing your fear.

You don’t understand your customers. Because you don’t understand your customers you don’t know how to communicate to them in a way that gets their attention, and makes them want to meet with you. When you understand your customers and the top things they want you can create a core marketing message that gets them to ask you how you do that, and as you explain they suggest that perhaps you should meet to talk about that. You’re looking at your service as a boring necessity that people have to have rather than finding a way to make what you have to offer part of the solution for what your customers want. Your product is the emotion your customers want to have.

You expect perfection. You want every phone call every meeting every conversation you have to go perfectly. And by

perfectly you mean you either made a sale or you set a sales appointment. What if you made a conscious effort to have at least 10 imperfect conversations each week? And after your imperfect conversations what if you evaluated when, where, and how you could have improved that conversation? Is it possible that if you did that you would begin to have more perfect conversations, and you’d know why those conversations were perfect? Then wouldn’t you be able to have perfect conversations more often?

You haven’t figured out how to adapt everything you need to do to fit you and your strengths. You’ve been shown “systems” for sales and parts of those systems may be working very well for you, and parts of those systems feel like you have your left shoe on your right foot. When you’ve tried a “system” a number of times, and it just doesn’t feel right don’t presume the “system” is right and the problem is you. There isn’t one “system” that’s perfect for everyone because you aren’t everyone you’re you. You have to adapt and develop your own selling style until you’re comfortable with it because it builds on your natural strengths. Tiger Woods doesn’t focus on what he doesn’t do well. He focuses on what he does well and strives to do it better, and that’s what you want to do too.

Action Item 4

What are the things that you’re afraid of? What parts of your current sales process aren’t working for you? List each fear and each aspect of the sales process that isn’t working for you in the first column. Now brain-storm how you can change your actions

adapting them to feel right for you, so they’ll work for you and record those thoughts in the last column.

What isn’t working for me What I can do that will work

Reason Number 5 You Can’t Sell – You don’t know how to gain interest

You don’t know how to gain the interest of your prospects. You use marketing to effectively gain the interest of your prospects so they reach out to you wanting to know more about how you can help them. You can use the shot gun approach to marketing which is what the average salesperson chooses by

default. When you use the shot gun approach to marketing be prepared to: work very hard, have a poor response to your marketing message, and to earn an average income. The other approach is the laser approach to marketing. When you use the laser approach to marketing you can expect to attract more clients with less work, you can expect an above average response to your marketing message, and you can expect a better than average income.

Let’s clear up some marketing terminology. When you decide how you will market yourself there are two words you need to understand. The first word is target market. Your target market is the group of people you want to work with and the group of people you want to connect with. Most agents believe their target market is anyone who needs insurance. It’s actually harder to find and identify with anyone than it is to find and identify with someone. The other word is niche. Your niche is what you help your clients to get. Most agents think their niche is insurance. Wrong, insurance isn’t a niche. If you really understand the word niche you realize that your niche is related to an emotion your ideal clients want or don’t want.

You want to get the attention of your prospects, so you can fill your appointment calendar. It’s much easier to do that if your prospects understand why you and why them. Your marketing message is immediately more interesting when the person receiving the message knows that you have something to offer someone just like them. In fact, as they receive your message you want them to be thinking that either they are someone like that or they know someone like that. Their attention and interest grows when they also understand that you

help someone like them with exactly what they want or don’t want.

You have to have a marketing message that they understand as being emotionally meaningful to them. Your sales will increase when you get the attention of people who actively want what you have to offer. These are qualified prospects. And when your appointment calendar is filled with qualified prospects your close ratio will go through the roof. You’re like the ice cream truck pulling into a neighborhood filled with little kids on a hot summer afternoon. When your prospects recognize and understand that you have something they really want, or that you can prevent what they really don’t want they’ll flock to you.

Once you have their attention you need several non-threatening ways they can raise their hand and enter your sales funnel. Clearly identifying your target market and communicating how you can help them to fulfill their emotional wants is the first requirement for a full appointment calendar. The second requirement is providing options for advancement in your sales funnel. When the only option you offer is an appointment, that’s going too far too fast for many of the people who are thinking they may want to do business with you. When you try to go too far too fast you often blow a good opportunity forever because they lose trust in you, and view you as a pushy salesperson. We don’t all like to communicate or be communicated with in the same way, so set up several options to advance and further develop your relationship with these prospects in a way that caters to different communication styles. Getting the right attention in the right way is potentially the

fastest and best way to develop a solid business for current and future insurance sales success.

Action Item 5

Complete the table identifying exactly who you work with. Think about what they want and list that in the second column. Now that you have their attention how could they connect with you and enter your sales funnel? Enter those ideas in the last column.

Who you can help What you help them to get

How they can connect with you

Reason Number 6 You Can’t Sell – You struggle because you think everyone is a prospect

Everyone isn’t a prospect and most of the people you try to appoint aren’t even suspects. You can change your success by changing who you try to appoint.

Your sales success increases when you only appoint prospects and qualified prospects. In the world at large there are people who have no need for what you have to offer. There are people who are suspects. Suspects are people who fulfill one or two of these criteria: they have a need, they have the money to do business with you, or they can make a “yes” decision about doing business with you. A prospect fulfills all three criteria, but they may not be ready to make a buying decision right now. A qualified prospect fulfills all three criteria, and they want to take action now.

Even a qualified prospect may not be a prospect for you because they don’t see anything about you that makes you the person they want to do business with. You and I and everyone else in the world at large likes to feel both important and special. When you narrow your focus on a target market, and take the time to do your homework so you know a lot about that target market, it’s easy for you to make them feel important and special. Because you understand them and their needs, and the way you communicate to them makes it perfectly clear to them that you do. If you sound like and act like the agent they have now, or the other agents that are chasing them for their business, they have little if any reason to choose you.

When you try to appoint everyone you look desperate and needy, and people want to get as far away from you as possible. If you’ve ever been to a networking event at the chamber you have a clear visual of exactly what I’m talking about. These are the folks that are trying to sell you something at the networking event, or pressing you for an appointment. You notice how people literally scatter to get away from these desperate souls who have no idea what they’re doing wrong. Remember you don’t want to appoint just anyone you only want to appoint prospects and qualified prospects. That’s the surest way to get sales and grow your business. But to get those appointments with these chosen people you must never appear desperate. The quickest way to move closer to an appointment is actually to pull away a little. In other words, if you’ve done a good job in crafting an attention getting core marketing message so they’ve engaged you to find out more about you they may suggest you should talk further. Rather than pouncing and going for the appointment right there, maintain some control. Let them know you may not be the right person for them, but you’re willing to get together so the two of you can find out.

Everyone isn’t your prospect and the more comfortable you are with this fact the sooner you’ll have sales success. Accepting and understanding this is part of your growth and development. It doesn’t have anything to do with rejection. It has everything to do with you understanding exactly what you do, who you do it with, and why you do it with them.

Reason Number 7 You Can’t Sell – You think you have to have all the gizmos to succeed

Remember when the first laptop computers began to be used as sales tools? Remember how sales people whined they couldn’t sell because their competitors at XYZ Company all had laptop computers and they didn’t. Unless you’re selling the gizmo itself you don’t need a gizmo to be extraordinarily successful in sales. In fact, gizmos can turn off your prospects and actually hinder your sales.

There is one very old tool that you need access to. That tool is the telephone. You can use the telephone as a lead generation follow-up tool, to confirm appointments, to gain the information you need to complete the sale, etc. How comfortable are you with this basic sales tool? Many sales people are actually very fearful of the telephone, and because of that fear they’re missing a lot of opportunities.

You can overcome your telephone fear by being properly prepared to make the call long before you ever pick up the phone. Before you ever make a call you need to understand exactly why you’re calling this person, you need to have a succinct message that conveys the value you offer, and you need to identify potential options for advancement. When you make the call there are four parts to every call. You don’t want a script, but you do want an agenda for the call. The four parts to every call provide your agenda: opening, qualification, listening, and closing.

Don’t dismiss the pre-call preparation and research. There is a direct correlation between your pre-call research and the results you’ll get from your calls. Your research objective is to: identify a specific group of people who want what you have to offer, to understand that group and why they want what you have to offer, and what they pay attention to. As a result of your research you’ll be able to develop your succinct attention grabbing message. Test your message with some people face-to-face before you start making calls. If your message doesn’t get your desired result in a face-to-face setting it really won’t work over the phone. Remember you’re just trying to gain enough attention and interest to introduce yourself, and establish rapport with the other person. You aren’t trying to make the sale. An appointment isn’t the only potential outcome from the call. Everyone you call won’t be ready to take immediate action, so before you make the call know the options you can offer allowing you to further develop rapport and a relationship with the person you’ve called.

The agenda. In the opening you want to quickly introduce yourself and make your attention getting statement or question that will give the person you’ve called a reason to give you another 10 seconds. When qualifying you’re objective is to engage the other person so they can indicate they either are or aren’t a legitimate prospect. The next part of the call requires you to listen. Let the person you’ve called talk and really listen to what they’re saying. The more they talk the better the outcome of the call. Finally, you need to close the call, and this is the point where you offer an advancement moving this person into your sales funnel, or out of your sales funnel if they aren’t a match. And you can do all this without any sales gizmos.

Action Item 6

Prepare for your calls.

Develop a succinct opening statement or question that will get the other person’s attention and demonstrates your understanding of their struggle including your ultimate result solution so they know exactly who you work with and why.

Opening:_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What do you need to know to determine if the person you’re speaking with is a qualified prospect?

Qualification: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What do you need to understand about the other person?

Listening:____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What advancement options can you offer? What will you ask if the person you’re speaking with isn’t a prospect?

Closing:______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reason Number 8 You Can’t Sell – You don’t know how to get a commitment

A commitment is either a commitment to take an action that advances someone through your sales process, or it’s a commitment to do business with you. You need to know how to achieve both if you want long-term sales success.

At no time do you ever want to use hard sell closing techniques or a slick line to get a commitment. That makes your prospect distrust you, and decreases the likelihood they’ll do business with you. It also decreases the likelihood they’ll stay with you if they do cave under your pressure and agree to do business with you. A commitment should naturally evolve from your conversation. There should never be a point in your presentation where you have to say something manipulative to get them to buy.

You earn commitments that stick by helping your prospects to naturally reach the conclusion that they want to buy. Because it’s their idea, it’s a great idea and backing away from their commitment later would require the prospect to disagree with their own argument. This is the opposite of what happens when you pressure a prospect for a commitment. When you pressure someone for a commitment they aren’t ready to make they don’t feel comfortable with the commitment, and the longer they think about it sometimes the madder or more uncomfortable they get, and the less likely they are to fulfill that commitment.

Learning how to help your prospects naturally reach a commitment decision will greatly increase your sales success. That lesson is the difference between a fail-safe sales process where your role is the role of an assistant buyer, and all the other sales methods you’ve probably tried. Learning a fail-safe sales process begins with you changing your mind set and objective for the appointment.

Your most profitable objective is to understand the prospect. As you seek to understand you’re listening instead of talking, your finding out the details of what has to change between where your prospect is now and what they want, you’re gaining an understanding of what’s getting in their way, and you’re finding out how this is impacting your prospect. By the time they share all this with you while you listen intently they discover if they need your solution and why, and they discover why they need to take action on that decision now, or what needs to happen so they can take action on that decision. At the end of your conversation they’ve made a commitment and all you had to do was be a good listener.

Action Item 7

Sales Conversation Checklist:

I’ve helped the prospect to understand, and I understand exactly what they really want.

Both the prospect and I understand their current situation. The prospect has told me in emotionally qualitative or quantitative terms exactly what it would mean for them to get what they want.

The prospect has told me what it means if they don’t get what they want.

The prospect has told me what is keeping them from having what the want now.

The prospect has told me the problem that’s most important for them to overcome, or the thing that’s most important that they get.

Together we have explored how not having what they want is impacting their lives in other ways.

The prospect has concluded that getting what they want or avoiding what they don’t want is much more valuable to them than the cost of the solution that will get them there.

Reason Number 9 You Can’t Sell – You don’t know what to say

You don’t know what to say and it’s killing your sales success. Whether you’re meeting people face to face or your sending out a marketing message you need to know what to say. The biggest reason this is so hard for you is because you think you have to say something about you and what you want to sell.

Your sales success rests in your ability to follow the basic sales process. The sales process at its most basic level can be broken down into: introduction and establishing rapport, discovering wants and needs, exploring the impact and benefits related to those needs, presenting a solution, gaining the business, and following up. But you can’t do all that in one fell swoop and that’s where you may be getting all twisted up. You have to start at the beginning and get permission to go to each next step. And when you meet someone who tries to go too far too fast you have to rein them in and bring them back where they should be.

Your success begins with your introduction. Pretend you’re on vacation somewhere you have no hope of getting a client because you can’t do business there. If we met how would you interact with me? Would you ask if I had kids? Would you ask how long I’d lived there? Would you ask what I do? Would you ask how I like to spend my time? When you were asking all those very basic questions do you think I’d open up and start telling you more than maybe you wanted to know? Would you begin to understand what’s important to me? At the end of our little conversation do you think we’d have rapport, so the next time we met I’d be sure to greet you? Do you think I might even come up to you and start making small talk with you? Could you do that with people who are prospects too? Thinking about the sales process you have to get to this point before you can move any further so this is really important.

What if at some point in this conversation I turned to you and asked what you do? Would you be able to tell me in a way that would help me to understand who you work with and why?

You see when you make your message really broad and general it’s vague. It doesn’t give anyone a reason to ask you to tell them more about that. It won’t get the person you’re speaking with to think of who they know that’s like that, or to identify themselves as someone like that. If they can’t do that they won’t be able to raise their hand as a prospect, or help you to connect with someone they know who’s looking for someone like you to help them. This lack of clarity in your message is hurting your sales more than you’ll ever realize until you craft a message that does all those things. When you get this message right the people you talk to will listen intently. You’ll see them thinking as you’re talking, and they’ll start asking you questions.

Whether you meet someone face to face or generate a marketing message your message needs to be about your prospect. At this point your objective is to gain favorable attention and pique their interest. So you can begin to put the focus back on them through your questions. And you can really listen for understanding, so when they ask if you can tell them more about that you can do so in a way that gets them thinking they should explore this a little deeper.

Action Item 8

Develop a Core Marketing Message

Your core marketing message will be used to peak interest and get people wanting to know more about you and doing business with you.

Start by getting their attention:

I work with (your target market)…

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Who (have this issue, challenge, problem)…

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When I work with them they get (this ultimate result)…

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Don’t worry that it has to be perfect just yet. Ideally you want to start with a good starting model and then test it on a few people and watch their reaction. You want to get them to ask you to tell you more about that.

Now that you have their attention they’ll want to know a little more:

Be prepared with an actual story of working with a client and moving them to that ultimate result.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

At this point you should have a core marketing message. You’ll work at perfecting your message by practicing it with the people you meet and using their reaction to determine if you still have work to do. When you get it right you’ll know immediately because the other person will be fully focused on you and wanting to know more.

Reason Number 10 You Can’t Sell – You talk too much even though you think you don’t

You know listening is important. You know telling isn’t selling. You think you aren’t talking much at all. Yet you just aren’t closing your appointments with prospects who really are a good match for you, and that you have an excellent solution for. How could this be happening? What could possibly be wrong? If you haven’t taken a close look at your listening skills in awhile this may be where you find your problem.

Do your appointments start off well and appear to be moving toward a close? As the prospect opens up and begins to share information and stories with you, do share a similar story? Have you even caught yourself telling a story that’s one

up on your prospect? Uh oh, as you begin to get more involved with the prospect it’s so easy to want to share your own story, or tell one better than the prospect but you don’t want to do that. When you share your story the focus moves from them to you, and you want and need the focus to stay on them. Out of these stories that they share with you come important pieces of information that will strengthen your relationship, and increase your sales success both now and later. Their stories tell you what’s important to them, how they like to spend their time, who they know, and generally how they think and what they value.

How often do you interrupt, talk over, or finish the thoughts of your prospects? These are bad habits you need to make a conscious decision to both be aware of and stop. When you interrupt when your prospect is speaking, talking over them, and finishing their thoughts you’re communicating that your thoughts are more important than theirs. Your thoughts are absolutely unimportant, and you never want to share your thoughts unless your prospect specifically asks you for them.

Your client asks you a question and you get so excited to answer their question that you go into way too much detail. Yes, you’re the expert and you know a lot; but you want to keep your answers simple and to the point. When you take off and go into too much detail using industry lingo you kill your sales. A real expert knows how to take the complicated and make it simple to understand. And they can do that in a very succinct manner, so they can quickly turn the focus back to the prospect.

You can increase your sales success by listening both with your ears and your eyes. When you’re listening with your ears you’re listening for content and tone. You can expand your listening by using your eyes to pick up on your prospects body cues. Those body cues help you to know when the prospect is engaged and right there with you, when they have something they want to say, and when they’re feeling comfortable with you and what you have to say.

Reason Number 11 You Can’t Sell – You don’t know how to listen even though you think you do

You never had a class on listening in school and you sure didn’t learn how to listen from going to school. Listening is truly a skill and it’s a skill you have to develop.

Listening requires intent focus. You have to intentionally place your focus on the other person, and all the communication signals the other person is sending out. Those communication signals extend beyond the words they use and their tone of voice to their body position and expressions. To listen effectively and stay focused you have to set your needs and your agenda aside. This enables you to be open to receive the communication your prospect is sending you.

Listen for understanding. Your sole purpose is to understand what the other person is telling you. You aren’t listening to pass judgment, or to find an opening where you can jump in and add your two cents. You want to calmly let the other person talk and

ask questions to deepen your understanding of what they’re saying. You’re also asking questions to check for any miss understandings so you can get clarification.

Don’t think about what you’re going to say next. When you do you’re taking the attention off the other person, and you aren’t hearing what they’re saying. These lapses in your focus can cause you to miss a critical piece of information that would provide the understanding that would result in a sale. If you take notes while the other person is speaking for recall later, don’t try to get down every word just jot down a key word or phrase.

Don’t interject your own story or opinions. That also takes the focus off the client and puts it on you. Not only doesn’t the prospect care, but you could cause the prospect to lose their train of thought, and again miss an important piece of information that would lead to a sale. Never interrupt, talk over, or complete their sentences. These habits are just plain rude and reduce your prospects incentive to talk to you.

Reason Number 12 You Can’t Sell – You’re trying to persuade

There’s a big difference between understanding persuasive words and phrases that increase the effectiveness of your statements, and trying to persuade someone to your way of thinking. Leave persuasion to the politicians. It doesn’t necessarily work all that well for them either, but that’s not your problem.

But isn’t selling all about persuasion? Nope, persuasion is a very risky proposition. Persuasion is about trying to talk someone into doing something. Carnival hawkers try to persuade passers-by to allow them to guess their weight and win a prize. Sales professionals don’t talk people into doing something. When you try to persuade someone you run the very high risk of making them defensive because no one wants to be talked into anything.

There are particular words and phrases that are naturally persuasive, and it never hurts to use them when it makes sense in a conversation. The word “because” is a very persuasive word. You’ve been conditioned to accept because all by itself as an acceptable response that explains everything. Think about when you were a little kid and you asked your Mom if you could have a piece of candy right before dinner. Her response was probably, “no”. And then you came back with, “but why Mom”. To which she responded, “because I said so”. End of story. And because of this early conditioning we all respond to the word because as preceding a perfectly acceptable and logical explanation. The phrase, for example, is a powerfully persuasive phrase. When you hear that phrase you expect it to be followed with an explanation that will make whatever preceded it make perfect sense.

Persuasive words and phrases do not put the prospect on the defensive. When your prospect hears these persuasive words they’re receptive to the message that goes with them. Persuasive words and phrases help the prospect to better

understand in a way that feels more natural. A comfortable and natural conversation always has a higher likelihood of a sale than one that’s manipulative.

Persuasion feels manipulative and it lowers trust. When you try to persuade someone their defenses go up, and their senses are on red alert for the catch. They don’t trust you or what you’re selling, and even if they buy they’re thinking there must be a catch somewhere and they just haven’t figured it out yet. Guilt is one particular persuasion tactic that’s really risky because now not only is their level of trust low, but they resent being made to feel guilty. Low trust sales lead to high customer turn-over and zero referrals. Don’t try to build your business around people you’ve persuaded to do business with you.

Reason Number 13 You Can’t Sell – You don’t set appointments for the right reason

The only reason to set an appointment with a prospect is to explore how you can do business together. Yet, many of you are setting appointments for any reason you can think of because you think if you can at least get them to meet with you at some point you’ll be able to get them to do business with you. If that’s your thought process realize this is a guaranteed way to keep you really busy with little, if any, production to show for all that work.

Get the attention of the right people for the right reason. To achieve this objective develop an attention getting and qualifying marketing message that you consistently communicate

in all situations. If you’re involved in a tips group they should be able to repeat this message for you, and clearly know who they’re looking for to refer to you and why. Once you have the attention of the right people for the right reason increase their interest by having stories you can share with them for how you helped someone like them avoid something they want to avoid.

The right message going to the right people gets them to raise their hand. That’s exactly what you want, but also realize that even the people who raise their hand will be in different stages of the buying thought process. Disqualify anyone who isn’t a prospect, and filter the prospects so you’re only meeting with the ones who are looking to take action now.

Only book and hold appointments with qualified prospects. A qualified prospect has a need that you can fulfill, they can make a yes decision, they have the money to do business with you, and they want to take action to fulfill this need now. These are ready buyers searching for the right solution. At that point all you have to do is help them to discover how you can provide them with the ultimate result they want. Consequently your production numbers go through the roof, because if you can’t sell to these people you’re in the wrong business.

What about those people who just aren’t ready to buy now? You certainly don’t want to lose track of, or not keep the people who are prospects in your sales funnel. They just aren’t ready to meet with you yet, and you don’t want to push them to meet with you when they aren’t ready because that damages your relationship. For these folks have a preplanned advance

that effectively and efficiently moves them through the sales process.

Reason Number 14 You Can’t Sell – You prejudge others and yourself

This is really all about beliefs and attitudes. Because of the beliefs and attitudes that you hold you’re missing tremendous opportunities each and every day that make the difference between sales success and failure.

Do you judge others by their possessions or their profession? Do you judge yourself based on your beliefs about your profession? You make these judgments because of the beliefs you hold. Do you think wealthy people drive expensive cars, live in expensive homes in expensive neighborhoods, buy expensive jewelry, and take expensive trips? These are the apparent trappings of wealth, but research indicates that these trappings are usually not good indicators of real wealth. Do you think insurance agents are pushy and that most people don’t want to meet with or talk to an insurance agent? Is that how you think people see you?

All those beliefs you hold shape your attitudes. Your attitudes shape your behaviors and your behaviors influence your actions and your actions and behaviors determine your results. So, because of your prejudging that’s formed from your beliefs you end up taking the wrong actions with the wrong people because you don’t recognize real opportunities.

There is an opportunity in every experience or encounter. You just have to open your mind and your thoughts to see it. Your greatest sales opportunities are not found beating on the same doors as everyone else. Your greatest opportunities happen when you have the ability to recognize the opportunities others overlook.

So, what if you would allow yourself to let go of all your prejudgments about yourself and others? When you wake up tomorrow morning pretend like it’s the first day of the rest of your sales life, and start finding those opportunities. Get out of the rut you’re in and go places, read things, and do things you’ve never done before. As you take in all these new experiences realize there is an opportunity to be found that you can either take direct advantage of or that can lead to a direct advantage. Change your mind-set to one of expectancy and watch what happens.

Action Item 9

What target markets do you have a connection to that aren’t sought after by others in your industry? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What do they want that you can provide a solution for, and how can you communicate that to them?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reason Number 15 You Can’t Sell – You haven’t earned referral rights

Referrals are a gift that you earn as a reward for being referable. Referrals aren’t something that is owed you, or your right to have just because someone is a customer. Referrals are a complicated thing and a messy thing when you don’t know how to do it right.

Do you hate to ask for referrals because it makes you feel like a beggar? In many cases you should. Asking a brand new customer for a referral is a bad idea. They know very little about you at this point, and often have no reason to want to refer you because they don’t know enough about you. And you certainly don’t want to use high pressure tactics to get referrals. That’s a big mistake that’ll come back to haunt you.

You earn referral rights through the service you provide. That means customer fulfillment, connections, and added value. Just taking care of their needs is customer fulfillment and that doesn’t make you referable because that’s just meeting the standard of customer satisfaction. Referral rights are earned by exceeding your customer’s expectations. You have to do more

for them than be average and meet expectations. It’s the level of connection that you have, and the unexpected value that you bring that exceeds their expectations.

Connecting is about developing a relationship with them and making them feel special. Now many of you know that sending birthday cards is a good idea and tends to lead to more sales in the future. Birthday cards are good. For some of your clients the card they get from you is the only card they get. But really connecting is going beyond that, and knowing more than just the facts about your client. You want to develop a real relationship with them. Ideally you want to be touching each client in a meaningful way several times a year. Out of site out of mind and out of mind means zero referrals.

When I say touching them several times a year I did not mean pitch them several times a year. There’s a big difference. Don’t waste your time and money sending them brochures and fliers that tell them about you, or your services or products. Those items will get pitched in the garbage while your customer opens the mail. When you reach out to touch them you need to touch them in a way that’s valuable to them. Perhaps you find an article you know they’d really enjoy so you send it to them. Maybe you send them a brief note telling them how much you value them. Or you might send a note about some upcoming changes in the law that could affect them. When your customers get these touches they’ll appreciate them. It will keep you on their mind. And because you’re more valuable to them guess who they’ll refer when someone happens to mention a need you could help them with.

Action Item10

How many times do you want to connect with your customers a year? _____________________________________________

What’s the value added objective of each contact:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reason Number 16 You Can’t Sell – You don’t get what your prospects need

Your prospects need to have their wants fulfilled. People buy to fulfill wants before needs everyday all day long. You think they need insurance so they should want to buy insurance. Wrong, when they buy insurance they do so because they want something or they want to avoid something.

Do you know what they want? If you’re basing your answer to that question on what you think they want, or what industry experts have told you they want you don’t have a good answer, and that’s why you’re having trouble selling. People don’t like to be sold anything even things they really want. Remember your last car purchase. You may have really wanted a different car. You may have even been emotionally vested in a particular car and you wanted that specific car for your own. But then along came the pushy car salesperson using their ever so clever pushy

sales tactics on you that you’ve just never heard 100 times before, and even though you wanted to purchase that specific car you hated every minute of it and you hated the salesperson and the dealership for allowing that jerk to sell their cars. That salesperson didn’t understand what you wanted and tried to sell you. You wanted to purchase that car because to you it represented classy style and a symbol of your success, but you wanted to do so without being sold. Do your homework and know the underlying big benefit your customer’s want.

Do you have an effective way to communicate how your solution fulfills that want? You don’t unless you get to the underlying benefit they really want. They don’t want insurance they want something much deeper depending on the underlying product that provides that deeper level of wanting. For example, no one wants DI but they want a guarantee of an uninterrupted standard of living and fulfillment of the promises they’ve made to themselves and their family. In the event of an unforeseen circumstance where they live to tell about it, they don’t want to become a burden to the people they most care about and they want to maintain their dignity by knowing that they can still provide for themselves and their family. Build your message around the emotion your customers want or don’t want, and make it easy for them to understand.

Do you sound like every other salesperson? Your potential prospects don’t need to hear about or talk to just another also ran. Everyone likes to feel special. We like to feel that someone really understands us and our needs. When you make that perfectly clear you sound different, and people want to find out

more about how you can help someone like them. Your sales naturally increase because you’re meeting with the right people.

How can you position yourself as being different in the marketplace? You don’t do it by being just like everyone else or by trying gimmicks. You do it by focusing on a specific way that you work with people and the people who most benefit from that. You position yourself as the go to person for people like that. Always making sure you communicate the benefit you provide in common language that is so easy to understand that even a 9 year old gets it and can repeat it.

Reason Number 17 You Can't Sell – You don’t earn their trust

You want to earn their trust before you talk business. When you don’t selling is much harder and less likely to stick. By sticking I mean in terms of retention and repeat business. You’ve probably worked through all the people who know and trust you already. So how do you earn the trust of someone who may be a complete stranger?

Trust begins with the connection. There are several ways you might either have or be able to create a connection. You have a connection with the people that belong to the same groups you do. These people may be complete strangers, but you have the commonality of the group as a tenuous connection point. A deep level of understanding is one of the best ways to make a

connection. This is demonstrated through the communications you use. In your communication you make it very clear exactly what that deep level of understanding is, and how it benefits someone. People you know in common or centers of influence are another source of connection. You also have a connection with people who have similar interests even though they may not be part of a formal group.

You earn their trust by deepening your connection through your value proposition. Whether you realize it or not you have something people want and that’s your knowledge. As you strive to gain trust through the connections you either have or are making you can deepen that connection by sharing your knowledge in a way that people want. People don’t want to read a brochure or flier that’s about you and what you have to offer, but they love to read something that talks about them, and tells them valuable information that they want to know.

Don’t ruin your connection by trying to use your value to get an appointment too soon. Allow those you’re connecting with to have an easy way to learn more and obtain the information they want. When you try to go for the appointment too soon it hurts your sales success because you just don’t have the trust you could have had. As you provide value some people will be just learning about the concept you’re sharing, others will be in the early stages of thinking about it, and some will be ready to take action now.

As you build trust through the value you provide you’re proactively helping your future customers to go through

the different stages of their thought processes. As you earn their trust asking for the appointment becomes their idea. Because you’ve already earned their trust, when you meet the appointment is easy for both of you. You’re coming together to discover the best way for you to help them.

Reason Number 18 You Can’t Sell – You don’t understand the Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction states that you get exactly what you attract to yourself. You aren’t getting sales because you aren’t attracting sales, and you aren’t attracting sales because your focus is on everything but the desired outcome you want.

As you look at the steps you have to go through to even get the opportunity to sell you realize it’s a long drawn out process. First you have to have people to contact or leads, you need to make a connection with those people, you need to secure an appointment with them, and finally you get to hold the appointment and have the opportunity to actually sell them something. This isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds, is it? As you think about all those steps begin to realize that you’re getting what you’re focusing on.

Your first worry is having people to contact. So you focus on identifying and finding people you can reach out to. You’ll find that if you really focus on getting people you can contact that you’ll have people to contact. You may also notice that few if any of these people end up being clients. So you have to stay

focused on more and more lead generation because the ones you’re connecting with so far just aren’t working out like you want and need them to. At some point you begin to realize that if you were able to make a better connection it would be easier for you to secure appointments.

So you place more of your focus on improving your connection. As you do you find it’s easier to secure those appointments yet not very many of those appointments seem likely to turn into a sale in the near future. So you aren’t much closer to selling than you were when you didn’t have anyone to meet with. If you change your focus from the beginning based on the Law of Attraction you’ll attract more sales.

When your focus is on sales from the beginning you still have to do all the things you have to do to get the appointment. But because your focus is on the sale you do a better job of identifying and obtaining leads. It’s easier for you to make a strong connection and secure the appointment. And when you hold that appointment because your focus is on the sale you’re listening for understanding. You’re working with the prospect helping them to realize why your solution is best for them. And because you’re sharing the same information and ideas it’s easy for the prospect to make a “yes” decision.

Reason Number 19 You Can’t Sell – You’re trying to succeed by being someone else

In your sales training you were probably given or mandated to follow a sales system. The problem is you don’t feel comfortable doing a lot of the things you’re required to do as part of the system. Because you don’t feel comfortable doing them you get poor results, and because you get poor results you begin to hate doing them, and the more you hate doing them the worse things get. It’s just one big vicious circle. You feel like a dog chasing its tail, angry and frustrated.

You haven’t had the same experiences and you don’t have the same background as anyone else. Your strengths, talents, and attitudes are unique to you. If you had two children one who seemed to have a natural talent and interest in science and the other seemed to excel at writing would you tell both children that the only way they could succeed, and the only way that would be acceptable for them to succeed, is if they both followed a rigid step-by-step process and that they couldn’t vary from the process that you provided for them? As you can imagine each child would respond very differently to your process and neither child would ever reach their full potential because they would always be limited by the process you provided. Your process would limit each, and keep them from being themselves and finding ways to use their special talents to achieve a higher level of success than your process could provide.

Don’t allow yourself to be stifled and frustrated by the systems you’ve been shown. Start by identifying the specific parts you want to change and adapt to better fit your personality and strengths. There isn’t one right way to do most things, but there are ways that are more right for you. If you feel uncomfortable doing certain things you feel that way for a reason. Your inner voice is saying this isn’t right or it isn’t right for you, which is it? Don’t sacrifice your personal integrity to follow someone else’s system. Do develop a system that maintains your personal integrity, your dignity, and the dignity of your clients.

Don’t allow your mind to fix on one solution. Use your creativity and imagination to find ways to accomplish the sales you want in a way that builds on the things you love doing. When you love doing something and believe in it your passion and integrity shine loud and clear.

That passion and integrity build credibility. Your passion and integrity makes you more attractive to potential clients. As a result of your uniqueness, and passion that comes from being uniquely you in your approach, you increase your sales and enjoy the process.

Reason Number 20 You Can’t Sell – You don’t work on being the best

If you want to be the best you have to have a plan for being the best and work your plan. The more you invest in yourself and what it takes to be the best the better you’ll become. The better you become the easier sales become because you understand yourself and others.

It takes a commitment to continuous learning to be the best. Develop your area of expertise and know more than the competition about how you can use that knowledge to better serve your customers and prospects. Gain knowledge: outside your area of expertise related to the wants of your prospects, to improve your sales skills, to become a better business person, and anything else you can think of that will make you a more valuable person to yourself and your customers.

You become more valuable to your customers and prospects when you provide more value than just your service. You have to work to become more valuable than anyone else. You do that by knowing more about your customer’s needs and wants than just those related to your service. You do that by helping them to connect to other people who can help them. You do that by earning their trust and becoming a trusted advisor and resource.

Listening is a skill you need to develop to be the best. You can’t learn if you’re doing all the talking. You can’t observe when you’re focused on talking. Become a better listener than anyone else and notice the immediate positive impact on your sales. You’re listening for understanding because through understanding you’ll find the treasure you seek.

To be the best you need to be more understanding than the competition. Through understanding you’re better able to give your customer’s what they want. Through understanding you know how to position yourself and communicate your value. Through understanding you’re able to make better connections that lead to more business. Develop a plan for how you will become the best and take immediate action to improve in the areas that will put you ahead of the rest of the pack.

Action Item 11

Decide on the areas you need to improve and the actions you’ll take to make those improvements. Select a start date and take that action.

Area for improvement Actions you’ll take

Reason Number 21 You Can’t Sell – You want the quick fix instant solution

There is no quick fix instant solution if you want to be a top producing professional. There is a solution that will steadily move you into a top producer spot. Your success won’t be found when you only focus on developing one aspect of the required five key areas for professional success. Sales are very important, but you’ll find it very difficult to sell if you haven’t developed a unique position in the marketplace and a message to market match that enables you to fill your appointment calendar with the right people.

You aren’t selling a one-time product you’re selling a life-time solution. Forget about closing techniques and gimmicky lines intended to advance the prospect. It isn’t like your prospects haven’t heard them before, and it isn’t like they don’t make your prospects angry and defensive. Using these techniques can destroy your opportunity to earn the trust of your prospects/customers for years, if you ever get a chance to recover at all. Using these techniques lowers your retention rate because your customers feel ill used.

If you want long-term success there are five key areas that you need to be proficient in, and there is a definite order of business. The five key areas required for professional success are: marketing, sales, time management, leadership, and strategic planning. You can’t expect to instantly have the skills you need in each area, but you should develop a plan for

improving your potential in your weakest area so you can achieve more in all the other areas.

There is a definite order of business no matter what business you’re in. If you want good customers you have to figure out a way to get the attention of those customers. This is your marketing. Marketing is how you generate qualified leads that enter your sales funnel. When you don’t take the time to learn how to market yourself you have all the time in the world to meet with low value prospects and earn very few sales. Once you have the right people entering your sales funnel you must have the appropriate skills to obtain customers exiting your sales funnel. You want the customers exiting your sales funnel to be raving fans. You earn raving fans by exceeding their expectations. You earn referrals by properly training your raving fans to refer you to people just like them. When you get these things right you have a business. Then you need to be able to manage your time so you can focus on the most important things. All the while it’s your leadership skills that help you to have the self-control required to be a top professional, and that motivate you to take the right actions so you get the results you desire. But in order to get all this working together in the right way and in alignment you need to develop a strategic plan.

Your strategic plan keeps you on track and keeps you tracking the right things. Tracking activities is useless. Tracking the critical results is vital. Through the development of your dashboard in your strategic plan you ensure the achievement of your mission. All five areas help you to steadily grow into the top sales professional you want to become one step and one learning experience at a time.

Reason Number 22 You Can’t Sell – You forget sales boils down to people liking you because you’re genuine

The first step in the sales process is gaining an introduction and establishing rapport. When you try killer sales lines and gimmicks you spoil your chance to establish rapport. You’re perceived as a fake and untrustworthy. That means your prospect will be very guarded with you and will never let you know what’s really on their mind. They’ll suspect an ulterior motive behind everything you do and say. But it never has to be that way if you just allow them to see the real you.

You got into sales because you like people and you like meeting people. You probably make friends easily and you don’t mind meeting new people. You make friends easily because you’re genuine and warm to the people you meet. So, don’t change those behaviors because you’re in a selling situation. Be friendly first so you have a chance for the rest to follow and lead to sales.

Friends listen to you and try to understand your point of view and that’s exactly what you need to do with a prospect. You don’t have to agree with your prospects point of view, but you do need to understand their point of view. You need to understand what’s important about this purchasing decision to them and why. The more you understand and the more information you gather from your prospect the greater the odds that you’ll both reach the same selling decision. And the more they like you and feel you understand them the more trust they’ll have in what you’re telling them.

You have to be committed to doing your best each and every day to increase your sales success. Your commitment to being the best requires that you pay very close attention to the details involved in the sales process. There are learning opportunities in each detail and the top professionals are always alert for ways to make small improvements that lead to significant results. This attention to detail must focus on both what you’re doing and saying and what the prospect is doing and saying.

Your sales success will improve when you’re willing to do more than you’re paid to do. If you only do what you’re paid to do you’ll only meet expectations. If you only meet expectations you’ll never exceed expectations. If you never exceed expectations you’ll never have exceptional results. Allow the real exceptional you to guide you to increased sales success.

Reason Number 23 You Can’t Sell – You’re thinking about what you need not about what the prospect needs

It’s hard not to do. We’re all hard wired to constantly be thinking about what we need and what we want. The problem is your prospect doesn’t care what you need or what you want, they only care about what they want and what they need. If you’ve ever seen two infants “playing” together you know there is a certain age range where they don’t really “play together” they’re really playing in parallel, and not actually interacting with each

other. When you’re focused on your needs you and your prospect have a parallel conversation rather than an engaging conversation.

Ditch any ideas you have about products or sales, and focus on an engaging conversation. It’s a really bad idea to focus on a product trying to find someone to sell it to from the onset. By focusing on an engaging conversation you’re actually focusing on sales because that’s the type of conversation you’ll have to have to get the sale. So the engaging conversation is just one of the steps you have to have to get to the sales you want.

It takes a great deal of self-control to have an engaging conversation. This isn’t the kind of conversation you have with your best friend where you get to share all the great things that are happening with you, or how you one upped your friend and are the best. An engaging conversation is a conversation that occurs when a prospect is open with you about what they really want and why. It’s a conversation that occurs when both of you are working to the same end result. And that end result is the best solution for the prospect.

To get into an engaging conversation you must learn to control and develop your communication skills. Communication occurs on several levels with the actual words spoken being the least telling form of communication. Through your sales training you understand how important body language and tone of voice are. You must consciously be aware of the communication signals you’re receiving. But to get to that point

you have to put the other person at ease, so they’re willing to have an engaging conversation with you.

Of course, the easiest way to do that is to get them talking about the things that are important to them. Ideally you’re meeting because you’ve made them aware of your ability to provide a good solution for something they want. But your job in the engaging conversation is to determine why what they want is important. You need to know how not having that is impacting them now, and in the future. Plus you have to understand the value of what they want to them. When you were little if you ever had a top or a gyroscope you know that if you spin the top too hard it spins out of control and falls over. When you push the conversation and try to force it down a path you want to go it’s like spinning a top too hard. It takes gentle control to keep your top spinning, and so does an engaging conversation. You gently keep the engaging conversation going by asking questions that deepen understanding rather than moving toward an agenda. When you get to a deep level of understanding you both clearly know if there’s a reason to move forward or not. You’ll know exactly what to recommend and your prospect will trust your recommendations because they know you understand them and their situation better than anyone other than themselves.

Reason Number 24 You Can’t Sell – You don’t give first

You may not immediately see the connection between giving and sales success, but giving is actually a foundation for your success. There are a number of ways and reasons you give. You give to: give yourself permission to grow and achieve more than you are today, make connections that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, help others and provide more value than is expected of you.

Give yourself permission to do what you need to do to have greater sales success than you do today. No matter how good you are you always have more potential for greatness than you have now. Sometimes when you’re successful, and things come pretty easy to you, your ego gets in the way and prevents you from growing further because you won’t ask anyone else for help. Recognize that there’s something to be learned from everyone, and that sometimes the best help will actually come from outside your specific industry because you get the same mind-set regurgitated to you and no one ever challenges anyone at the top about their thinking or their approach.

Giving is the easiest way to make a connection and open a door. Giving can be one of the easiest and fastest ways to fill your appointment book with ideal prospects. The better you understand the people you want to work with the easier it will be for you to identify what they want, and give them something that they would value. I’m not taking about a monetary gift but rather a gift of knowledge or perhaps a gift of your time or talents.

If you aren’t willing to provide more value than you’re expected to provide you can expect mediocrity. It really comes down to your level of sales ambition. If you only want to do what everyone else does, and you aren’t willing to creatively find ways to do more you can’t really expect much more than average results. If you want above average results you’ll have to give more of yourself and provide more value than is expected.

Giving is the greatest gift you can give yourself. Because when you give your adding value to both yourself and those around you. These gifts are what you’ll leave behind for others someday, your legacy. What gifts will you be remembered for?

Reason Number 25 You Can’t Sell – You don’t understand you need to aim small miss small and fail forward fast

You need to aim small miss small and fail forward to succeed fast. Why do 97% of the people entering the industry fail within 5 years? Because they have no clue how to aim small miss small and fail forward fast. Aim small miss small and fail forward fast is a philosophy about how to effectively market yourself so you have qualified prospects entering your sales funnel.

One of the biggest industry myths is that you just have to get in front of more people. Getting in front of more people doesn’t equate to increased sales. Getting in front of the right

people for the right reason directly equates to more sales. But that’s nearly impossible to do when you don’t have an effective way to market yourself.

There isn’t just one way to market yourself, there are many. And you never want to solely rely on just one way to market yourself because if something outside your control makes that way unworkable you’re back to square one. So what exactly is aiming small missing small and failing forward fast?

Aiming small missing small and failing forward fast is the philosophy you want to follow when you’re developing your marketing plan. You never want to develop a marketing plan that requires you to do things on a grand and expensive scale. When those marketing initiatives don’t pan out you end up with no new prospects, an empty pocketbook, and sometimes worse off than if you had done nothing at all because your marketing effectively alienated the people you reached out to. Your marketing plan should consist of several marketing activities that you develop a system for. Each system should be targeted to a small number of people so you can track your numbers and determine what works, and you can follow-up on your marketing activities to generate sales. When you decide to send 5,000 post cards to invite people to your upcoming seminar you don’t know enough about the people you’re sending the post cards to, and you couldn’t possibly make 5,000 phone calls to follow-up with these people. Thus the entire effort is a bust. You get less than a quarter of a percent response rate, and the ones that do show up are low value prospects.

Failing forward fast means you quickly learn what doesn’t work so you can learn what does work. Because you’re focusing on small scale efforts when something is a bust it didn’t cost you much and you can learn a lot about why it was a bust. Because you understand what didn’t work you can make adaptations until you figure out what does work, or until you figure out what works even better. Then and only then do you ramp up your efforts to generate a consistent and predictable number of new leads for your sales funnel.

Summary

At this point you understand where you’re opportunities for improvement are and why they exist. You realize that if you want to fill your appointment calendar with qualified prospects you have to first market yourself in a way that attracts their attention and interest. At that point you have your first real opportunity to help someone to make a buying decision. And that you have to stop wasting your time and energy on suspects because you’ll be better served spending that time on effective marketing. Once you earn a customer you have to exceed their expectations and deepen the relationship so they’ll eagerly refer you to others, and help you to make connections that would be difficult for you to make on your own.

If you’ve taken the action steps found in the action items you’ve started to gain clarity about how to do the things you now realize you need to do. And you also realize that these action items are only hitting the surface of the actions you

need to take. But you’ve identified your opportunities for improvement so you can take the actions you need to take to make those improvements.

Some of you have no marketing at this point and some of you have purchased complete marketing systems only to discover they aren’t producing the predicted results. In either case you’re sick and tired of struggling to get appointments. You’re frustrated and exhausted from trying to chase down suspects to convert into buyers. And you just don’t know what to do to effectively market yourself. The good news is there is help for you.

With your free 2 months membership in the 5 Star Achieving Excellence Members you’ll get the tools and help you need to make consistent and steady progress. Watch your inbox for delivery of your upcoming member benefits. And welcome aboard!

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