A few years back, there were a lot of salespeople who realized they weren’t salespeople.
There were a lot of companies that realized they didn’t have a sales team.
In both cases, what they realized is they were merely order takers, and the success they had was merely due to answering the phone and responding to email inquiries.
In case you forgot, about 5-6 years ago the economy went into a downward spin. Sorry, I’m not going to use the word that starts with the letter “r” to describe it.
What happened during that time is a lot of “sales” simply failed to materialize. They failed to materialize because there were never “sales” to begin with; there were merely “orders” being taken.
Times were good for so long that salespeople simply stopped selling. They didn’t have to sell, because business beat a path to their door.
Then overnight, business stopped knocking, and salespeople and companies were quick to realize their ability to truly sell was lousy.
Fast-forward to today and a lot of companies are experiencing significant growth, business is good and guess what? The same dynamic is happening! Salespeople are forgetting how to sell, because business is once again knocking at the door.
I’m all in favor of a great economy, but we’re setting ourselves up for another big fall by failing to keep our selling ability sharp.
The other thing we’re doing by failing to keep our selling ability sharp is not growing the business to its fullest extent. We’re allowing ourselves to become complacent in getting what comes to us easily.
We have to be continually asking ourselves, “What % of our business is coming to us and what % are we having to go get?” Think about that for a moment.
I’m seeing far too many businesses and salespeople having 90% or more of their business merely come to them. If your number is above 50%, stop and ask yourself what you need to change in how you sell.
Also, ask yourself how much more income you would be making if you continued to get all of the business that comes to you and added another 50% by selling.
Let’s make sure we learn from the past and not allow ourselves to become glorified order takers.
Copyright 2014, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price.
