Thomas Edison wrote, "The three great essentials to
achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second,
stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense." How do you do with the
"stick-to-it-iveness"?
Well what I have found that keeps you
sticking to the task at hand is, not allowing yourself to loose your
composure. The worst thing you can do when prospecting is loose it. If
you do, it gives the opposite outcome to what you want. You have to
understand, potential customers have been so bombarded by sales calls
sometimes they want to hit back at their time being wasted. Don't bite
with these people. Just smile, be courteous and move on.
When my
son was 12 he liked to answer the phone and if it was a sales call he
would make out that he was me. So he would lower his voice and speak
really serious and slow. He told me sometimes he could keep them on the
phone for ages. Some people would even go through their whole sales
pitch. Now that may be fun for a 12 year old playing a practical joke,
but I am sure the sales person wasn't laughing with him. Remember no
one can make you feel angry, inferior or frustrated except you.
The
word enthusiasm is defined as a feeling of energetic interest in a
particular subject or activity and an eagerness to be involved in it.
If you are not energetically interested in your product or service, how
do you expect someone else to be? Without enthusiasm you are never
going to make it through to the person you need to talk to. Do you
think the person on the other end of the phone who is screening the
call for importance will put you through to the appropriate person if
you don't sound eager and energetically interested in your product or
service? Very rarely!
To keep enthusiastic, smile, use your hands
raise your eyebrows. Be yourself and enjoy the call! The debate is
still out on whether smiling or frowning uses more muscles; however the
researchers do agree that smiling takes less effort than frowning.
Winston Churchill said, "Success consists of going from failure to
failure without loss of enthusiasm".
So how can I stay
continually enthusiastic? I'm glad you asked! Experts say that the
definition of success is "The Progressive Realization of a Worthy Goal
or Ideal. It is true to stay if you are progressively realizing your
hopes and dreams on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, you are a success. It
also keeps you enthusiastic about what your working on.
Over the
past 20 years within the sales industry, I have not found any
consistent salespeople who stay focused without a long term goal. Don't
take my word for it, look for your self. There has been numerous
studies done on the subject and the flip side is, that those people
with written goals are more likely to enjoy achieving and be a success
than those without.
If achievement is not on your agenda, you are looking at the wrong industry and should seriously consider changing careers.
