TREADMILL

One of the best sales persons ever, said:

I was hired by a person who knew nothing about selling. He only told me that “sales is a number game; all you have to do is talk to enough people and eventually someone would buy”. He called it “mud against the wall technique of selling” – If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it will stick”.

Then one day, he was told by someone else that more than a numbers game, sales are a “rejection game”. More rejections, you accumulate, more sales you would ultimately generate. The salesman in our example, woke up at five or six in the morning and kept meeting people till nine or ten at night, collecting rejections in the hope of getting some acceptances in between.

Then he learned that beyond numbers game and accumulating rejections, selling is a game of asking smart questions! Understanding the prospect’s needs and helping him in the best possible manner. Most customers know almost everything about what they intend to buy; it is the last one percent which they want to learn more about! The salesperson who can complete this last one percent better and faster through intelligent, imaginative and interactive question/answer sessions walks away with the orders and becomes multimillionaire in terms of dollars. For these intelligent questions and answers sessions, you need to train yourself; learn, practice and find out the best-in-class salespeople; read their books, attend their seminars etc.; benchmark against them and through practicing what you learn become the best yourself one day!

The most common machine for exercise is a treadmill. It is only as good as you use it. Use your ever-increasing dosage of self-improvements. You will keep engineers at toes, industry working at full throttle to satisfy the ever evolving and growing customer needs. Without a brilliant sales person, the wheel of industry will come to a grinding halt. The world would be a less exciting place to live.