by Scott Leese
If we just dive into transactional sales without the right mindset, we are more likely to quit. We may doubt the product, our company, our boss, and even ourselves. Then we start to give less effort and perform with less passion. We disassociate ourselves so it doesn’t hurt if we fail. We are slowly quitting, sometimes even before we realize what we’re doing.
My father-in-law once told me, “You can’t have one foot on the boat and one foot on the dock. That’s going to end badly.” And it’s the same in transactional sales. You’ve got to go all in.
To go all in, you first have to figure out why you want to make it happen. Then you can work to develop the right mindset.
Why Make It Happen?
To be successful, you have to want to make it happen more than anything else in the whole world.
Like I said before, transactional sales is often something that people fall into. But no matter where you came from, how do you get yourself to that place where you can make this job a driving force in your life?
When I say, “Make it happen,” you first have to know what “it” is. Is it closing a deal? Is it making six figures? Is it becoming a VP or one day starting your own business? Why do you want to change your financial situation? Why do you want to change careers? Why do you want to change your life?
My reason is freedom—the freedom to do what I want when I want. Your reason has to be just as powerful.
Your “why” should start to consume your thoughts. If you just throw it out there without much thought, or without a plan to get there, the sentiment is hollow. But when your why is meaningful to you, you will fall back on it when things start to get tough and you start to struggle. It won’t abandon you, even when you might want to abandon yourself. You should spend some time thinking about what motivates you—and why you really want to do well.
The why is going to be different for everyone. And it doesn’t matter what your reason is. It just matters that you have one at all times. Once you achieve one of your milestones, it’s time to pick another why that is equally powerful.
Once you know what your big goals are, keep them in front of you. I’ve often read that people who write down their goals and look at them every single day are more likely to achieve them. I know people who tape goals to the dashboards of their cars, or put them underneath their desktop keyboards, or even use one of their goals as their cell phone alarm message. When my alarm goes off, the note says, “No margin for error.”
Do goal-setting exercises at the beginning of the year, and do them someplace where you can be alone with your thoughts and away from your normal routine. Then do a reassessment halfway through the year. Ask yourself, “How am I doing so far? What have I crushed? What have I put off? Why did I miss a goal?”
Cross off your goals as you achieve them throughout the year. That satisfaction reminds you why you are doing this. I love crossing things off my to-do list—even if it’s a list of groceries! It feels like a small win, and it gives me the positive reinforcement I need to keep striving.
The Mindset to Succeed
You don’t want to wait for the right mindset to come to you. You need to seek it out. Success doesn’t give you the right mindset; you work on your mindset, and that brings you the success.
The more you can get to a place where you believe in yourself, the product, and the mission, the more it will help your mindset and your confidence. Successful salespeople need to develop and continue to work on the specific traits that help them believe in themselves.
There are seven critical characteristics of a successful sales mindset: confidence, motivation, tenacity, self-improvement, work ethic, ambition, and courage. When you build each of these parts of your mindset, you set yourself up to do whatever it takes to reach your goals.
Confidence. To build your confidence, put it into practical use in your everyday life. Push back on things you don’t want, and ask for what you do want.
When I used to fly less frequently, I started making it a point to walk through the priority boarding line at the security checkpoint. I thought if I just acted as though I belonged and was confident enough, I could get through. As far as I can recall, I only got stopped twice.
Do something outside your comfort zone that makes you feel good about yourself. Exercise more, if that gives you confidence. Some people get confidence from knowledge, so learn everything there is to know about a topic. The more positive results you get, the more likely you are to keep doing it, because you feel good about how it’s working.
Motivation. How do you keep yourself in the mindset to succeed once you find it? A lot of it comes from internal motivation, and you need to foster that. But you want to surround yourself with external factors that are going to help you as well.
Examine the people you spend time with. Do they increase your motivation or drag you down? You become who you hang out with, so be aware of their influence on your motivation. Seek out a network of friends and family who understand and support your motivation to succeed and who encourage rather than resent you for it.
I have a group of friends who create a safe place to talk about successes and failures—and to trash-talk each other if one of us has lost some motivation. I would be far less motivated without these essential friendships in my life.
Tenacity. In the transactional sales world, tenacity means not letting temporary defeat get the best of you. You have to be assertive and sometimes aggressive. People may question you, or they may tell you no. By answering their questions or being bold enough to ask for what you want, you build tenacity. You become tough enough to get past any gatekeeper and make it to the right decision maker. You’re confident enough to hold firm to the price and bold enough to ask for a shortened time frame for a decision.
After being cooped up in a hospital for so long, I realized that if I needed something, I had to ask for it—and not stop trying until I solved my problem. Learn how to advocate for yourself and be your own best friend. That is tenacity in action.
Self-improvement. You improve yourself through ongoing learning. Just like you want to pay attention to which people you spend your time with; you also want to look at how you spend your time.
Read more. Read about subjects that challenge your thinking—sales, startups, business, motivation, winners—anything that you think will help you be more productive and successful. When choosing between pumping knowledge into your brain or bleeding it dry watching horrible reality-TV reruns, the choice should be obvious if you really want to succeed.
Talk to people who have done what you want to do. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you are or who teach you something. Ask for help when you need it. And always look for new ideas so you never end up settling for the status quo.
Work ethic. In order to get to a place you’ve never been before, you have to be willing to do things you’ve never done before. Don’t keep doing the things that don’t work for you.
To hit bigger goals than ever before, you’ll have to build up your stamina to work harder and longer than ever before. You’ll need to drop the belief systems and the negative labels you’ve given yourself, like “That’s just how I am” or “I’m so ADD.” Bullsh*t. That might be something you’ve struggled with before, or even for most of your life, but it absolutely does not mean that that is who you are and who you will be forever. Put in the work others are unwilling to do.
I was always a night owl, but I realized that was no longer going to work for me because I sold to the East Coast and lived on the West Coast. I adjusted my hours to maximize my productive work time. I still try to make it a point to be the first one in the office in the morning so I miss the traffic, can work quietly, and set a good example.
Ambition. A lot of people get into sales to make money and rise through the ranks. You have to be ambitious to get into this field. You have to want to make more money. And you have to want the recogniti
on as well as the compensation.
Always want a little bit more, because that will push you to do more. I once heard somebody say that the best salespeople are always in a bit of debt or have overspent their budgets. While I don’t recommend that, I can understand the logic behind it. It’s just another little something to spur us on to earn more.
I remember wanting to earn five thousand dollars in one month for the first time. After I did that, my next goal was ten thousand. And I just keep increasing it every time I surpass a goal.
Courage. You’ve got to be brave to sell. You have to have—or develop—thick skin. You are going to fail way more often than you’ll succeed in this field. You need the courage to believe in yourself and your abilities, even when positive reinforcement appears to be absent. The risks are higher because the upside can be much, much bigger. There is a reason sales is one of the highest-paying professions out there: we are willing to do things most people aren’t! And it isn’t easy.
The way I see it, I have already faced the hardest thing I will ever face in my life, so why be afraid? I try to keep pushing myself forward even if something is a bit scary.
From Rock Bottom
Sometimes doing whatever it takes to reach your goals means being willing to do a 180 degree with your life.
In 2008, I gave a job interview to a guy I’ll call John. At the time, he was in his mid-thirties and had already hit his rock bottom. He’d had a substance abuse problem, and he’d been locked up in jail for almost a year. He had just gone through hell and was trying to come back with his first job after incarceration.
John was ready to change his life. He wanted a new path and a new way forward. But at first, he was just happy to have a job and the chance to earn decent money. I could see he wanted something more for himself, but he didn’t quite know how to get there. He was ready to sell, but he had to start with his mindset.
When we first hired him, he thought it would be just another job. Then he found himself in an environment with other people who’d had some difficult challenges, but who also wanted to do something bigger and better with their lives. We pushed him not to accept what life had given him before. And he pushed himself to work on specific changes in the way he thought and viewed the world and in the decisions he made.
I’ve worked with John at three different companies now, and he’s become a good friend of mine. I’ve watched him transform from a raw and undisciplined mess of an entry-level sales rep to one of the top sales representatives in a company, becoming sales manager, then senior sales manager, and then director of sales. He has grown into an extremely valuable and successful sales leader. He understands people and their motivations, and he uses his personal story to his advantage. He is a huge inspiration in the sales office because he believes in himself and has confidence in his ability to sell.
His story just goes to show that if you get your mindset right, and you’re willing to make certain sacrifices and changes, you can turn your life around to become a huge success. Anybody can do it—no matter the obstacles they have to overcome—if they want it enough.
Once you have the mindset to succeed, you are on the path to success. But before you can make a sale, you have to know what you’re selling and what to say. The next chapter teaches you to know your stuff.
Chapter 3
Know Your Stuff
My Own Little World
All salespeople have had moments where they’ve been caught not knowing their stuff. Hell, part of why we ended up in sales is because we know how to wing it and to freestyle our way out of trouble and into a position of strength. Our charm and charisma get us where we need to be.
In my first-ever sales job, I was selling online lead-generation tools for real estate agents. We had tall cubicles, so I couldn’t see anybody around me. I was in my own little world. It was extremely isolating. I either knew what to do or I didn’t; those were my only options. I was not going to receive any support.
When I had been working there a couple of weeks, I was on the phone with a prospect who asked me a question I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know my stuff, and I panicked. It was so important to me to make that sale, and I could see it slipping away before my eyes.
I put the phone on mute and wedged it against my shoulder. Then I leaned my chair way back and craned my neck, frantically trying to make eye contact with someone in any direction who could give me the answer.
The person on the phone was still talking, and I wasn’t listening at all. By the time my neighbor told me what to say and I unmuted the phone, I was chiming in with the answer to a question that was two minutes old. I had completely ignored everything that had been said in the meantime.
In the end, I didn’t make the sale. But I learned my lesson. There’s nothing wrong with not having an answer one time. The real stupidity would be doing nothing about it. So I thought of every possible scenario that might trip me up. I wrote up the best possible response for each. Then I set out to memorize the list . . . right after I crossed off that day’s question.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
Know Your Stuff
When I couldn’t answer the question I was asked, it was completely my fault. I could’ve blamed it on a lack of training or a lack of coaching from my manager, but at the end of the day, I didn’t know my stuff.
Knowing your stuff means that you know what you’re selling and how it needs to be sold, and you know what you’re talking about. That may seem really obvious, but the better you understand the product you’re trying to sell, the better you’ll be able to handle questions and objections. And if you combine your charm and wittiness with knowing what to say, rather than winging it, you’re going to close more deals. So why do so many salespeople settle for only the most basic grasp of their product?
When you cut corners or try to fake it, trusting your talent over training, you don’t learn the material very well, and it messes up the rest of the Process. In essence, you are teaching yourself bad habits that will not benefit you in the long run. Someone is going to find out. You may be able to get away with it a few times, but people are going to realize that you are bullsh*tting them.
On the other hand, when you are well prepared, you can have fun and move faster toward your goals. You can pay closer attention to what the prospect is saying and feeling. You can anticipate where the call is headed next. So why not know everything important?
There are two aspects to knowing your stuff. First, you have to know your product. Then you have to know your script.
Know Your Product
You don’t have to love your product, but it does help. You will be more motivated to understand it and all its benefits for your customers. But whether you love it or not, you have to develop a thorough understanding of the product before you can sell it. You can’t sell it if you don’t know what it is.
To know your product, you need to know how it works, what pain points it solves, and what value it provides. You also want to know why this particular product or solution is a “must have” instead of a “nice to have.” Why is this an urgent purchase for the customer? Take the time to learn everything the product offers that will matter to your customer.
If you have multiple products, educate yourself on all of them as much as you can. Otherwise, you miss out on opportunities because you don’t know how to speak to the whole suite of products. If you sell only one product in the suite because you don’t know the rest, you may only be able to sell to one type of prospect. That’s like fishing with a small hook instead of a big net. When you expand your knowledge, you naturally expand your success.
There are several things you can do to really know your product. First, read the manual, pay attention during the training, and take notes. Ask the product people how it works on the back end. Use the product if you are able. Play around with it as if you were the customer. Know how to naviga
te it, and spend time finding its best aspects—the things you can feel passionate and fired up to talk about. Spend time talking with people who use the product. Completely familiarize yourself with it, and keep up to date with new packages or details.
A word of caution: knowing everything about the product does not mean you have to cover everything about it with prospects. It is possible to overwhelm them with information, which slows down the sales cycle and can ultimately result in overselling your way out of a deal.
That’s why you need to learn the right way to talk about the product and know your script.
Know Your Script
You know your product. Now you need to know what to say about it—and how and when to say it. Trying to just wing it and see what happens is not a good idea. It’s better to have a game plan you can execute and refer back to as needed.
Depending on your employer or career stage, you will either write your own script or take what somebody else has done and master it—only then trying to improve on it.
To build your script from scratch, you need to start pitching. Pitch to yourself, the mirror, your significant other, and anyone else willing to let you practice. Start with a “perfect” pitch, one where a prospect doesn’t push back at all and things go perfectly all the way to a close. This will become the basis for your visualization of how calls should go.
As you try to sell the product, play around with what works. When something feels as if it’s starting to work and you’re making some progress, write it down. I like to type out a whole simulated conversation. Test it, listen to your pitch, and improve on it until it works in a practice environment. Then test it on real prospects.