What do you do when your most carefully laid plans strategies and efforts are dashed on the rocks of despair? When you have expended untold hours on proposals, action plans, quotations, numerous visits and building relationships? When you have invested scores - or even hundreds - of hours into a sale or sales only to have something occur that can totally derail the entire situation?
If you haven't had this occur to you yet you are either lucky or haven't been in sales very long. Perhaps you are one of those salespeople whose product, service or customer base doesn't demand this sort of complex selling strategy. However, if you are in a sales position that requires a relatively long sales cycle spiced with several relationships and the potential for losing the entire thing in a single heartbeat, this advice might be of value to you.
Perhaps the most essential component to dealing with this type of situation is to go into it with a mindset that simply goes like this: I will invest sufficient time into this account to justify the right to earn it. However, I will never (a) invest my own emotional well-being into it, (b) count on it before it occurs, or (c) stop investing time into prospecting and developing relationships with other prospects while working on this account.
As simple as this mindset might appear it is far more difficult to implement than it is to understand. Let's take a look at each component.
- "I will invest sufficient time into this account to justify the right to earn it" simply means that high value profitable accounts are not going to sell themselves. You need to invest time into research, presentations, building-depth, developing relationships, forging support and creating value before you can even hope to be considered as the best option. There are no shortcuts. You need to invest the time necessary for an easily justified sale to be made.
- "I will not invest my emotional well-being into the account" means it is sometimes easy to invest so much into something that you start to view the future success of that effort as they measure you as a person. What does that mean? Because you spend so much time, effort, energy and emotion in the development of the account that you start to feel that any reputation or rejection of your proposal is really a repudiation of you personally. Needless to say, that is a real mistake. Avoid it at all costs. Plus, it is just plain poor logic.
- "Not counting on anything until it occurs" is really Sales 101 in a nutshell. And it goes like this...a sale is never a sale until the check is cashed. Purchase orders can be revoked, orders cancelled, verbal commitments reversed and sales lost - all within an instant. And the truth is that the more complex it is, the more likelihood there is that it will occur. Don't spend the money - even psychologically!
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"Don't stop prospecting" should be pretty obvious. However, this is, the most difficult one to learn. Perhaps the old adage I learned from my mother is appropriate here. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is what she told me. However, how many salespeople do you know who tend to do this very thing, only to see their one basket empty quickly and subsequently be left with no prospects, time or energy to develop new ones.
The real truth is that in today's marketplace there are very few sales opportunities that are not complex. Economic fluctuations, corporate downsizing, reorganization, tighter budgets, consolidation and literally scores of other realities have dictated that even simple sales have gotten more complicated. How about you? Are you prepared to deal with the new economy? You better be. Because if you're not, I guarantee someone else will be. Perhaps it is your competition. My guess is that you would much rather have yourself positioned for success than your competition. However, that is a decision for you to make. But remember, it is 90% mental. So control your mindset. Better yet, forge it.
