When you are working with customers, prospecting, presenting, closing and following up…. do you sell like a bird? …. you know… Winging it?
OR do you have a system of scripts and processes that you follow for every step of your process? How closely do you follow it? How consistently? Be Honest!
Many people start their sales career because they enjoy the thrill of the hunt and the kill, maybe you started hustling when you were young, selling anything you could get your hands on, or maybe you got into high pressure sales like car sales or wireless. The thing is many people just seem to be “natural born salespeople” they are smooth, polished, sound good, look good, and dang it, they close sales like it’s nothing.
The best part of being a natural born salesperson is when you hit a winning streak, you win big, and have fun doing it. The bad part is when you inevitably hit a run of bad luck, it usually hits hard. And if you’ve been relying on your guts, your looks, your talent, and your “gifts”…. well you probably don’t know exactly why you went from winning to losing so suddenly and you’re struggling to get back on top.
The thing is if you’re selling like a bird and winging it, I takes it hard to figure out the most important thing…. what changed? You’re the same person, have the same skills, have the same customer base, selling the same thing… but your results changed. Now you rely on what made you a star in the first place, aggressiveness and your ability to smooth talk or even push to get what you want. You work harder, put in more hours, make more calls and the strangest thing happens… YOUR RESULTS GET WORSE!!!!
Contrast this to a salesperson who follows a system of scripts, closes, objections handling, lead nurturing, and follow up. If the results start to change, we can experiment with each step, track the results of each step and change we make and see which changes improve or hurt results. Systems don’t replace your talent, they accentuate it.
Think about sales systems in terms of a football team. Does the team with the most talent win every game? Or does the team with the best coaching and system tend to win more games? Think about the great dynasties of college and pro football, they were coached by legends, Nick Saban, Jim Tressel, Joe Paterno, Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, Bill Parcells, Bill Bellechic….. As a matter of fact, a great coach tends to be able to coach multiple teams and win. I’m an Ohio guy so I’ll bring up Jim Tressel, Woody Hayes, Urban Meyer…. These are coaching legends that have been able to produce successful teams even when they’ve changed colleges. And even at the pro level, teams have invested insane amounts of money in paying winning coaches, and hiring top assistants from the teams that have winning systems.
The point is Systems beat talent over time. Talent can get lucky, and even win on merit for a while… but eventually talent can have an off day. Talent can be game planned for, prepared to be competed with, out practiced, out prepared, outplayed. But even a bad system can be tested, and improved… or even discarded for a better one.
The simple fact is in over 20 years of sales and working with the top salespeople in the world every one of the TOP dogs had a plan going in, had scripts, tracked their efforts and results, modified them when they needed updated. They track their numbers, track the objections they hear, track the results… get coached and know what’s changed when they hit a slump, don’t make excuses and get out of their slumps quickly.
John P. Kaufman is a Sales Trainer and Luxury Realtor in Cleveland Ohio – Author of the book “The Recruiter’s Secret”, and nationally recognized thought leader within the sales and recruiting industries. SalesCoachingLab.com – Sales Training and Coaching
