Change your Definition of Winning and Watch your Sales Production Soar!

For most salespeople selling is a zero sum game. In other words, if I get the appointment, I win! Whereas, If I don’t I lose! If I get the sale I win, If I don’t I lose! Winning at sales for many salespeople is far too black and white. The problem with this way of competing is that one is always bound to lose far more than win. And pretty soon after a whole bunch of losses, one’s self talk begins the negative downward spiral. Pretty soon we are calling ourselves “loser!” This sets up all kinds of self imposed fears - fear of rejection, fear of failure. Intimidation and timidity tend to follow and before we know it, full blown “call reluctance” has set in! We lose our sales warrior courage.

A powerful coaching technique for cushioning salespeople who struggle with fear and “call reluctance” is to help them re-define what winning means -by the way this tactic will work for anyone in sales. To provide you with a powerful model of how the sales game should be played, let’s look at the scoring system used in tennis.

It has been said that the scoring system in tennis is one of the fairest and most objective scoring systems in sport. Each game begins at “Love” (zero), and moves upwards, point by point, from fifteen to thirty to forty and then to winning a game. A game will be won unless the other player also reaches forty, in which case one player has to win two consecutive points in order to win the game. The first player to win six games wins the set, provided they have won two more games than their opponent, otherwise the set is decided by a tie-break game. The tennis match is won by the player who wins more than half of the sets played.

Look at the amount of opportunities one has as a tennis player to achieve a win.  Look at all the points of winning along the tennis pathway on the way to winning the match. As sales leaders, we need to create a model like this, where there are multiple opportunities and options along the sales process pathway for the salespeople to celebrate a win.

Now, here’s where you as the sales performance coach can really add your weight in gold.  Here’s where you can really add tremendous value...

Let’s consider what typically happens on an average first sales call.  The salesperson, in most cases, will set some kind of call objective.  If they are being coached/managed then we’ll assume that there is a definite call objective which the salesperson has in mind before making the sales call.

Now again, let’s remember what I said at the very beginning of this article...

“Selling is a zero sum game. Where if they get the appointment, they win, If they don’t they lose; If they get the sale they win, If they don’t they lose! Winning is either black or white!”

If the salesperson only has one objective, there’s a good chance they may fail in their attempt to achieve it. “Loser!!!”

What if they had a choice of options? What if you helped them come up with a FIRST PRIZE option, a SECOND PRIZE option and a THIRD PRIZE option? In other words if they get the appointment ...

That’s GOLD, if they can’t get the appointment they then have a powerful alternative in the waiting. They ask if the prospect will attend the freebie product seminar as a SILVER PRIZE. And a BRONZE PRIZE may be asking for permission to complete some research by speaking to some users and technical people within the prospects organization and then following up in a week.

In his landmark book on influence, called Influence, Dr. Robert Cialdini talks about what he calls a “moment of power!” These are moments when someone is most vulnerable to your influence. One of the moments of power he mentions happens, in fact, directly after someone has said NO!

As an example. Little Johnny asks mum to buy him the latest computer game, mum says NO. What does little Johnny do? He takes advantage of this “power moment “and promptly asks for an ice-cream to which the reply, 9 times out of ten will be, YES! The truth is, in that “moment of power”, little Johnny could probably have asked for a lot more than just an ice-cream. If he was really on the ball and understood about “power moments”, he would have known that that ice-cream would have only represented THIRD PRIZE. He could probably have asked for a soccer ball, a SILVER PRIZE and got it!

This very same logic applies to what our people are doing out there daily in the field. What are the other worthwhile options they should be asking for as a SECOND, THIRD and FOURTH PRIZE?

Your job as Sales performance coach is to help them come up with a variety of powerful options that move the sale progressively forward. The salesperson must know all their options prior to the sales call. This way when/if the prospect/customer says NO to their presentation they have other valuable trump cards up their sleeves, ready to take full advantage of the “power moment” and progress the sale forward.

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