What’s The Silver Bullet To Increasing Sales?
It seems sometimes many think there is a silver bullet to getting new sales. I get asked all the time about how to increase sales. And while here at Superior we focus on the process to save our clients time and money, our print supply chain technology and promotional product management systems will also increase sales.
But today, I’d like to talk about personal selling success. And I believe it’s as true these days as it was in those “good old” days: successful selling is less about the act of selling and more about building relationships, offering solutions to make your clients lives less complicated and doing the hard work people don’t see.
Often, as we see those around us having success in increasing sales, we fall for the “iceberg” illusion in the attached image. We see those people who get lots of sales as “natural born salespeople” who successfully increase sales through some secret sauce that is beyond our reach.
Not True!
Obviously that’s a pretty self-defeating attitude. But it’s also a bit of a cop-out. If there really was a secret sauce, then it wouldn’t matter how hard we worked. But I know for a fact that every sales person who has success (in any industry) deals with everything in that iceberg image that “really happens”. The “real stuff” is where the sales pros learn, refine, practice their craft and get up and go after the next opportunity.
Great sales pros increase sales as a result of their sacrifices, risks taken, and hard work put in at every turn. They think about things through their clients’ eyes. They offer helpful advice even when it doesn’t relate directly to a sale, but increases the value of the relationship. Those habits don’t always generate success, but even when they don’t, they provide valuable feedback on how to do something better or differently the next time. So they don’t just “wait” for a different result, they make it happen.
Success…a Four Letter Word?
Is success a four letter word? No, but it comes from one: work. A famous quote, and one of y favorites, attributed to several prominent people is more or less this: the harder I work, the luckier I get. Bottom line is this, at the end of the day, we all have the secret sauce – we just have to get the jar off the shelf and use it more aggressively.
I’d appreciate your thoughts on this topic. You may have a secret you’d be willing to share that could come in handy for today’s sales warriors, or a lesson in how working extra hard or extra smart really paid off for you. If so, please feel free to leave a comment below or give me a call. Meanwhile, watch out for icebergs – you can learn a lot about how to increase sales from them.
