<H1 BIG>TEN COMMON ENEMIES (8)</H1>

By Hank Trisler

A major enemy of any salesperson is:

A LACK OF WELL DEFINED GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve arrived?

So much has already been promulgated about the necessity of writing down your annual goals that it would be a waste of your time and mine to further discuss it here. What has not been overly discussed is a method of assuring you will never again lose on a sales call.

The old folks used to say, "Have a good positive attitude and go out there just knowing they’re going to buy." The problem with this is that most people don’t buy. Sales is a business of hearing lots of "nos," until you hear a "yes." Your unconscious mind is not so easy to con and will know that you’re going to fail more than you succeed. If you try to delude yourself that you will make every sale, you’ll soon become disillusioned and depressed.

To battle this, I bring you a concept known as "The retention of a positive mental attitude through the assumption of a negative result." We realize that we will not make all our sales, so our expectations are congruent with reality. We build in additional opportunities for success in every sale.

Many top sales professionals make a list of objectives for each call, descending in order of importance. They might look like this:

• Sell a particular product/service (or home, or car, or policy, etc.) Yes, write down what you want to sell on the appointment. I've had wonderful sales interviews which ended with no order because I got so busy selling I forgot to ask for the order. Will I always get the deal? Not in the real world, so my fall-back position is:

• Sell another product/service.O.K., you don't want to buy what I want to sell you, how 'bout buying something else? Long as I'm in the neighborhood, you might as well buy something. Oh, can't find a way to buy anything at all? Well, let's
  

• Get another appointment. Let me get some more information, or answers to problems, or whatever and let's get together again at a specific date and time? Oh, you don't think you want to make an appointment today? (Does this sound like any customers you've ever had?)
  

• Get permission to drop by again.I'll just pop in when I'm next in town. Oh, you'd rather I just mail my picture?
  

• Get permission to call on the telephone. Surely they'll let you call them back. But not all of them will. We're not dead yet.
  

• Get more information about the customer’s needs.We're going to switch this over from a sales interview to a fact-finding session. Any time we're getting information about the customer is time well-spent.

• Fish for a referral.Even if she doesn't want to buy today, she may well know of someone else who would be a better prospect. She might just fink them out to get rid of you.
  

• Make a friend. If all else fails, be sure you left with a better relationship than you had going in.
  

Rather than facing a win or a loss on every call, we now can win on nearly every call. Sometimes big and sometimes smaller, but always a win. If you know you will never again lose on a sales call, doesn't that make going out there a bit easier? You're welcome.

Let me know what you do to be sure you stay on track.