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Occasionally, I receive emails from people who are just starting off in the sales industry.  It is not unusual for these to be people who possibly worked in a different line of work for quite awhile, but now are moving down a path of selling.  Here are tips I offer:

1. Don’t allow yourself to hang around people who are negative thinkers. Do hang around people who are positive. The more discerning you can become early in your career on who is going to boost your sales motivation, the better.  Steer clear of the people who do nothing but drain your sales motivation.

2. Find peers who will hold you accountable. Very few salespeople succeed long-term unless they’re willing to be held accountable and challenged with their performance.

3. Create a plan as to how you will use your time. Each week and each day must be broken up into segments to ensure time is allocated for the truly tough aspects of selling, which for most people is making cold calls. I actually like to call these “cool” calls because you will have already done a bit of pre-work to determine how viable they are.   If you don’t allocate time and be disciplined in sticking with it, you will not follow through and do the tough tasks.

4. Believe in your product and/or service 100%. Believe in what you are asking your customers to invest in.  Failure to believe in your product creates an environment of discounting, which will destroy both your profit and your motivation.

5. Build a list of questions you can ask new prospects which will help you uncover their potential needs. Key with this step is to get the customer to share with you their pain, needs and aspirations. Until the customer shares this information with you, there is no way to know if they’re a prospect or a suspect.  Too many salespeople waste time trying to sell to suspects rather than focusing on prospects.

Sales is one of the greatest professions, and those who are the most successful are the ones who have mastered the above 5 tips.

Copyright 2011, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.

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