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Stop Kidding Yourself About Your Selling

Sales & MarketingLegacy

All salespeople know how to sell. Sometimes, though, they sell themselves on ideas that just aren’t sound. It’s time to stop kidding yourself about your selling.

Sales Truth #1: Know who is and who is not a true prospect.

Start by being honest with yourself about who is and who is not a true prospect for you. Unless you are going to change something about your product, your process, your delivery, or you, you can expect the same results you’ve gotten in the past.

Look at your last ten deals and whether you won or lost each deal; identify criteria to score each account. Consider criteria like location, revenue, profitability, industry, whether it was a referral or not or point of entry. Look at each account for each criterion. Do you start to see trends in the business you’ve won?

You can make predictions about your future business by looking at your past successes. What you have been successful with in the past is who you are most likely to be successful with in the future. From this point forward, be clear about who your best prospects are. You are kidding yourself when you think you will be successful with prospects that are very different from the business you have won in the recent past.

Sales Truth #2: Spend your time on important business.

All accounts are not created equally. Some are more profitable than others. Some are easier to serve. Some have greater strategic value to your business. Do you know which are which? You should.

You should be able to identify your A, B, and C prospects and customers. You do this by defining the criteria and then categorizing what makes an A, B, and C customer. It is impossible for a C account to suddenly become an A account when you know the criteria it must meet. Stop kidding yourself that a C account is more strategic than it really is; spend more time with your A accounts.

Sales Truth #3: Have a reason to meet with a prospect.

Do you really think that stopping by to “touch base” is a sales call? Stop kidding yourself. The only reason to meet with a customer or prospect is to move your sales process forward. Valid reasons to meet are to ask for a referral, ask to be introduced to another key contact, demonstrate a product, ask for a trial, or for other business reasons that relate to your sales process. A non-business reason to meet is not selling--stop kidding yourself.

Profile: Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling, a sales training and sales consulting company. She works with business and sales professionals to increase sales and earn larger profits. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. Maura focuses on sales strategies and tactics that lead to better sales results. Maura is a sales expert for WomenSalesPros. She is part of their group of top sales experts who inspire, educate, and develop salespeople and sales teams.She speaks internationally on influence, selling skills, and strategic selling at trade association and sales meetings, demonstrating how her principles can be applied to get results. She successfully worked for over 20 years in the male-dominated oil industry with two major corporations, beginning at Mobil Oil and ending at Chevron Corp. She was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and was one of Chevron’s top five salespeople in the U.S. having sold over $9 million annually. Maura writes several columns to share her sales philosophies. She's been quoted in the New York Times, Selling Power, and Entrepreneur.