Sales Producers: Why they Fail to Produce!
Why is it that even so called top producers find themselves stuck in neutral? What is it that they are doing, or failing to do that has them spinning their wheels and yours? How has their mindset changed and how does this change in mindset impact overall performance?
Over the course of the past few years even many top producers have lost their edge.
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Why? First let's examine some of the characteristics of top performers in the world of sales. The one factor found in all producers is consistent sales production, regardless of the time of the year or economic conditions.
What Makes a Top Sales Performer?
If you took a group of top sales performers and put them into a room, what would you find? You would see salespeople with different personalities, levels of aggression, temperaments and styles of selling. Some would be aggressive closers while others are more consultative. Some would be highly educated, while others are not. So what makes a top performer sell more consistently than others? And most importantly what makes a top performer consistently perform regardless of external factors such as the lagging economy, shrinking budgets and skeptical buyers?Attitude is a key factor in high sales performance. Regardless of the number of years spent selling, or level of understanding one has in regards to sales techniques or strategies, without a strong conviction in oneself, the prospect's conviction in moving forward will not be there.
Why Sales People Often Go From “Wanting to Move a Mountain” to “Hoping to Meet Quota”! A depletion in self esteem. Self esteem is a component of attitude! Sales professionals and business owners tell us all the time that they are rejection proof when in fact we as human beings are not rejection proof.
As a human beings we are emotionally responsive. That means we respond emotionally to stimuli; in this case the stimulus are lies, excuses and many reasons for not buying that cause the feeling of rejection. Eventually this rejection depletes their self esteem. This depletion in turn creates a downward spiral. Is your company experiencing attitudinal problems such as complacency, being more reactive than proactive, making excuses or simply buying into the excuses given by prospect followed by selling these excuses back to management?
The Downward Spiral. Once self esteem begins to deplete, an individuals level of expectation begins to erode. Sales people begin a new position with an attitude of “I’m going to move a mountain” followed by “I hope I can just meet quota”. When the level of expectation depletes inevitably this breaks down their level of performance. For example, they stop making the calls, they stop challenging excuses, they stop getting appointments and they START to go to work for the buyer. This is evident when they begin selling you the excuses they bought from the buyer. Boss, they have no time or they have no money!
This isn’t the problem. The problem is, are you buying the excuses? Once performance breaks down productivity breaks down and here you are, reading another tip from Peak Performance hoping that something will change. Nothing will change until and unless you change the playing field and the environment that you have either developed or have allowed to take hold. Take back control of your company.
This negative economy unfortunately has created an increase in the amount of negativity and personal rejection sales people experience. This negativity in turn depletes self-esteem, which in turn reduces the sales person's "level of expectation" for success. Many sales people these days only expect to sell enough to keep their jobs. This reduced level of expectation reduces their performance level, which finally reduces the level of sales.
Can attitudes change? Improve? Yes, however removing the obstacles and mindset that lead to the less than positive attitude is essential. You can now see the progression of how self esteem, when decreased, creates a snowball effect that eventually lowers the sales person's levels of performance. Paranoia seems to have been replaced with hopelessness and a viewpoint that everything will turn around when the economy improves. This hopeless viewpoint is what we call externalization. Unfortunately, instead of implementing "change" to get a change in their bottom line, many sales people have decided to use this economy as their reason for poor production.