Why is it when a bunch of sales people get together, you always hears them moaning and blaming everything and everyone for their failures. It really annoys me because a lot of the things you hear aren’t actually true. It’s only the best sales people out there who are able to take full responsibility for their actions.
One of the most common complaints you here from moaning sales people is that nobody is buying! Well who is to blame for the fact that nobody is buying? The sales person is of course. If nobody is buying do something to change the situation. People continue to buy, even when the economy is bad. They may make fewer purchases, but they will still spend their money. People don’t buy because they haven’t been sold correctly. They also don’t buy when they don’t feel they are getting enough value. If the sales person isn’t able to communicate value, people won’t buy. I actually believe that the number one reason why sales people go through bad patches is because they lack confidence in their ability and they aren’t able to control their emotions.
Another thing you hear frequently from sales people is that their company’s prices are too high. They see that a customer buys from a competitor who is cheaper and suddenly convince themselves that price is always the reason for losing a sale. From my personal experience, price is rarely the reason why customers decide not to buy. In fact, most customers are happy to pay more, if they know they are getting really good value.
Sales people tend to blame external factors because they are unwilling to face their own fears, and one of the biggest fears that sales people experience, is the fear of closing the sale. In fact, sales people will look for a thousand excuses in their mind to avoid closing the sale. They do all this preparatory work beforehand and there’s just this niggling in the back of their mind that they could lose it all just by asking at the wrong moment. Okay, maybe you don’t try and close the sale before you’ve given your presentation, but in reality, closing starts long before the final close.
I could go on and on when it comes to sales people blaming everything except their own mistakes but I think from these few examples we can begin to see the problem. If we change our mind set in sales, we can literally transform our levels of success and move up into the next tier of success. I know that we all start out as sales people blaming other factors. The key here is to grow with experience and move towards controlling our own sales career, rather than waiting for something to change by itself
