Often salespeople. This module is entitled, the attributes of the optimal salesperson and it's the foundation of the entire program. Each one of these attributes is expounded upon in various modules throughout the program. Okay, let me start first by talking about the number one attribute you have to have and that is written personal goals. Now, these are personal goals, not the company goal, right, you'll do more to achieve your own personal goal and you will just to achieve some number handed down to you from the company, and they need to be written down. Okay, on the left hand side of the chart, you'll notice that we are four attributes which we call the incentive to succeed.

Now, instead of the succeed is made up of four things. The first one being desire, desire is a passion to achieve the goals that you've set. It they have to be really, really important to you. It can't just be Oh, that would be nice to get get to that goal. Alright, see ya. To be really important to you have to really, really want to get there.

Now, desire without commitment is just wishful thinking. So the second attribute is commitment and commitment means you're willing to do whatever it takes to get there not anything that's unethical or immoral or illegal, physically unsafe or violates company policy or government regulation. But just because it's uncomfortable for me to execute a sales technique does not mean that I don't do it or just because it's uncomfortable for me to ask a question is, does not mean that I don't do it. So desire and commitment are the opposite sides of what I call the motivation coin, right? You need both of them to be, quote, motivated. But another attribute of that affects motivation is the thing we call outlook and outlook is just a is the attitude you have about the way things are.

So we want we want the optimal sales versus an optimistic attitude about the way things are, in other words, an optimistic attitude about the possibility of achieving those goals that they're saying You know, the world's a bad place and nothing ever good ever happens? Well, you know, that's just going that attitude will, you know, permeate your, your being and will come out and all throughout the sales process and you'll be much, much less effective. The fourth element of the incentives to succeed is the thing we call responsibility. Responsibility just means this, it's that you're willing to take responsibility for lack of results. In other words, you don't make excuses. If you're the type of person that says, well, the economy's bad, and our prices are too high and I don't get much support from management in the competition, fold the deal.

Well, you know, you don't really have to get to get any better. You just have to wait for the world to change and then your sales will go up. So you have to be the person, the type of person that was willing to accept responsibility. Okay, now that we have personal goals, and we have we're incentivized to get there we have enough motivation. You know, we there are some challenges between where we are where we want to be? First thing is we need tools.

The first tool we need is a sales activity plan and a sales activity plan is just it's a, it's a statement of what we have to do on a day to day basis, the number of calls, we have to make the number of proposals, I mean, the number of qualified opportunities, we have to turn up in the number of proposals, we submit the number of deals we close. So what we have to do on a day to day basis to achieve those goals, and we go into great detail of that in other modules. The second thing we need is a sales process. The sales process is a sequence of steps that take somebody from a name and a book to a paying customer. Think of it as gates you have to get through and we go into great detail about the sales process we're using a process called baseline selling developed by a friend of mine by the name of Dave curl.

Now, the next thing we need is interpersonal skills, interpersonal skills are think of them as tools to help you move through those gates in the sales process. And these are things like the ability To close the ability to develop on a report quickly the ability to ask good questions, the ability to uncover the budget, those kinds of things and the more of those skills that you have, the more effective you will be of executing your sales process. And then the fourth thing we need fourth tool we need is a prospecting program. So our sales activity plan says I need to add so many prospects to my to my pipeline every week, and I have to make so many calls every week well, where are these prospects coming from? Right are they coming from cold call? Are they coming from referrals or what have you, so I need a methodology to generate prospects and you know, optimal salespeople will have a whole system have to generate introductions to the right person at the right time and in the right way.

And you'll you'll find, you'll find a module in here on getting the first bass bite introduction. So now you We have written personal goals, we have enough motivation to get there with desire, commitment outlook, and we don't make excuses. We have a lot of tools at our disposal to help us hit our goals. And now here's the crux of this module. It turns out that success in sales has more to do with your belief systems than it does with anything else I've mentioned so far. Now, let me explain what I mean by a belief a belief is a firmly held conviction about the way things are, if I have this belief, there is no doubt in my mind, I have data I have proof I have evidence I have experience.

And if you don't share my belief, then you just don't get okay. So here's how this affects the entire your your effectiveness as a salesperson. Let me illustrate by using a common belief that salespeople have and one of the common self limiting beliefs is that people buy based on price. So let's say I have a salesperson who has this belief that people buy based on price and I put them been training for two days and I teach them five time tested and proven sales techniques to to overcome this, this belief and self value over price. At the end of the second day, my salesperson has these down call. In fact, I have video evidence of him executing the sales techniques flawlessly.

But what I didn't do in two days is I did not change this belief, he comes out with the same belief he went in with, namely that people buy based on price. Now, on the third day, he gets in front of a prospect. And any he says so Mr. prospect, how are you going to make your buying decision, the prospects as well you know, I think we're going to go with low price. Now what happens to the sales techniques that I taught my newly minted salesperson. Now when I use that new group, most of the time people say they're out the window, and that and that's trying to stare out the window they don't get used to the salesperson says makes sense to me. That's what I would do.

I told that charismatic Oh, he was crazy. And he has another data point to reinforce the belief system that he went in with, it turns out that you can only execute the sales techniques that your belief systems will let you execute, I can check back with that salesperson in six months. And his beliefs are still in the still in pristine condition. They're in a plastic wrapper they came in, they've never been used. Now, self limiting beliefs are just one of five major, what we call hidden obstacles or sometimes hidden weaknesses. that affect selling.

There are lots of lots of them, but these are the five major ones. The reason we call them hidden obstacles, because if I interview my salesperson, I can tell that that he looks good, he sounds good. He has a good resume. He's smart, he's intelligent, he can speak the English language properly. I can tell a lot of things about him but what is very difficult, if not impossible, to find out what kind of beliefs They have, okay, other hidden weaknesses, the next one is need for approval need for approval just means that it's more important to me that my prospect likes me then that he does business with me. Now if I'm more worried about whether my prospect likes me, then that they do business, I am not likely to execute any technique which I perceive to be aggressive.

Because it's too risky. Right? I, you know, I, I'd rather have him like me, or half his approval, then have his money. Now, no salesperson I have ever met, as was ever willing to admit that. However, that's how they act, they'll come back with all kinds of excuses about why they couldn't ask that particular question. But the real fact of the matter is that they were just they had this need for approval.

Now, which techniques to the salesperson perceived to be aggressive? The ones that violate their belief system, so if you believe it's not okay to If you believe that you have to call on purchasing purchasing agents, and not on the end user of the product, then you know if I suggest that you avoid the purchasing agent calling the end user, you're going to proceed as aggressive as an aggressive sales technique and there are lots of them like that. Okay, the third hidden obstacle is what we call money, weakness, money. Weakness just means it's money. weakness is just a discomfort discussing money. It shows up in about 65% of the people that we test.

It's not hard to figure out why. If you know if I say there's Mary, she's nine years old, she's at Thanksgiving dinner, and she says so and March, how much money did you make last year? What happens to Mary? Right? Well, nowadays, she's subjected to immediately subjected to intense coaching about what is and is not appropriate questions that you can ask and she grows up thinking that it's not okay to talk about money, and she carries out with her when she gets a sales job. So the fourth one is the thing we call control.

Emotions controlling emotions is not what it seems to be it really doesn't have anything to do with crying on sales calls. It's not being overly emotional on a sales call. What it means is when a when a prospect throws you a curveball or does something you're not expecting, if your immediate instinct is to go internal and start thinking, oh boy, I knew I shouldn't have said that. I knew I shouldn't have asked that question. I wonder what he meant by that. And you start to strategize on what you're going to say or do or figuring out why he could have possibly said that what you're doing, what you're not doing is listening to the prospect.

And so you You're, you're prone then to miss the clues that the prospect is giving you that will allow you to follow up and ask questions and uncover other information that'd be vital to closing this deal. That was very difficult to get rid of. The fourth one, I'm sorry, the fifth one is the thing we call the buy cycle now. Your buy cycle is the process you go through when you make a major purchase if you're about to spend four or $5,000 of your own money on something and your first instinct is to go do research, and you You look a lot of stuff up on the internet or you go buy a copy of Consumer Reports, you know, you study that then you go out and you you find five or six places that are selling what you're looking to buy and then you comparison shop you, you compare features and benefits and prices and maybe you draw a little graph to try to mentally find out when the minimum what the minimum cost is going to be.

So you know if that's how you make your buying decision, we call this a non supportive buying cycle or a bad buy cycle. Because the research shows that if that's how you buy you will be vulnerable to people who want to put you through that same process, right and you will be powerless to to avoid it because it looks Seems to logical to you because that's what you do. Okay, in quick summary here, the attributes of the optimal salesperson are as follows. They have written personal goals, they have an intense desire or passion to achieve those goals. They have, they are committed to do whatever it takes to get to those goals, they they have a positive outlook at all times, no matter what else is going on around them. They don't make excuses even if what even if one seems like in some rational that they could take advantage of the excuse, they take personal responsibility for the lack of results.

They have an arsenal of tools, the first one being a sales activity plan, which they know exactly how many calls they have to make on a day to day basis in order to achieve those goals. They have a sales process which is effective and which they used on each and every sales call that they go on. They have a multitude of sales skills or interpersonal skills to help them you to help them execute the sales process in a timely and efficient manner. They have a prospecting program, then that you keeps their that keeps their pipeline full of qualified prospects, then they they don't have too many self limiting beliefs. They don't have a need for approval, they don't they get their approval in the appropriate places. They don't have a discomfort talking about money, they're willing to talk about money early in the process and anytime it needs to be talked about, they have total control of their emotions.

So they stay in the moment with the prospect without being in their own head. And they have a buy cycle which supports them when they are when they are trying to close their own prospect. So you know, there are no perfect salespeople out there. There are there are no perfect people out there. So, you know, you'll you'll we'll go through each and every one of these and other modules in your work. You do your best to overcome the hidden weaknesses and acquire the skills and you will be able to have a quantum leap in your sales ability.