Saw this today in a group I belong to:
“Salesman stuck: I have a sales guy who just is struggling to make sales. Does anyone have a pointer to the best resources for the tackling on “selling himself” as I feel like he is struggling as we are quite high priced and he isn’t used to selling something like that.
He can sell low priced options.
P.s I’ve gone with all the zig Ziglar stuff and lots of training”
Most of the advice this guy got was to FIRE the sales guy. I was stunned. Here are a few examples:
-Fire him and hire 3 people more qualified. Make them play salesperson survivor.
-One tip I learned that’s saved me tons of money is, the minute you think you should fire someone, you should.
-Why not leave him in a low end lead producing position and bring in a closer?
Here is my response:
Wow …. I am a bit shocked. A guy wants to help his sales team and the advice he gets is fire him?
Personally I teach sales and persuasion and can tell you that anyone can sell if they have the right tools. If you hire and fire a lot you infect your sales team with fear. They all feel like they can be next at any time.
The truth is that there is no one way that all people sell. Your salesman needs several things.
The mistakes most people make is they they think that is their sales guy is motivated enough then he will sell. They use several ways to attempt this.
-First they try and pump them up and tell them how great they are and the product they are selling. That works for a few minutes but soon they are back to where they were.
-Second they try and threaten them by punishing them for not performing. The result is you end up with scared salesman doing unethical things to make the sale.
-Third they dump a ton of sales books, videos and tapes on them in hopes that something might stick. The result is that they are overwhelmed and never get anywhere.
When all of this does not work they either let him sit and do what he has been doing until he is broke and quits or they fire him.
The fact is that the old selling methods do not work anymore. Everyone has seen them.
In this case what your sales guy needs is personal change not another sales method. He is getting his head kicked in every day and has entered a pattern of learned helplessness. He projects defeat before he starts.
No amount of Zig Ziglar motivation is going to overpower that. You have to make a change in how your brain in functioning. The brain is a prediction machine and your sales guy is constantly predicting failure. Until that changes then nothing will really help.
When I train sales people the first thing I have to do is change their mindset. That has to happen even before teaching sales strategies.
Most sales programs never address getting over the limitations that most sales people have. Those limitations are normal and easily taken care of. Here is a little secret. Most sale people do not feel good about selling.
When you teach them to connect, present and close the sale without the need for high pressure or over amped motivation.
Most of the advice you have gotten here about firing people and restocking over and over until you get good people in there is stupid. That is how you hire vacuum cleaner sales people not build a good sales teach.
Let me give you an idea of a client I have now. They have been selling real estate for 30 years. They were making 75K a year. Not bad but not great. They had problems though. They were always in an adversarial mindset when dealing with client. The end result was that they were not really all that likable. They went to all the real states sales seminars and got all the books and tapes. They had the process and strategies but the mindset was screwed up.
After helping them with a mindset that was not adversarial and teaching them what kind of relationship to develope with the prospect.. they doubled their income last year. This year so far they have made 75K and it is March. They are on track to make 400K this year.
THAT is building a sales team. So you have a choice build a sales team or play the numbers game.
I like the idea that you see potential in this guy.
I had an 18 year old come to one of our seminars. He was scared of everything. After the seminar he got a job at Curry’s in London. It is like Radio Shack. In 2 months he was in the top 10 sales guys in the company. In 4 months he was number one.
Mindset, connection and strategy. Don’t give up in this guy. Ignore those who have said to just fire him. They are clueless.Look folks. Achieving what you want in life is easy if you have just 2 things. You need the right mindset and the right tools. You don’t need pushed punished and pumped up.