Your Personal Sales Trainer

YOU can decide not to fail.

This week, I want you to think about success and failure. Managing the key elements of any business has a huge impact on its success or failure. As direct sales professionals, we are in the business of managing ourselves.

What does it mean to avoid failure?

It means having self-discipline.
It means prospecting constantly.
It means handling rejection professionally.

Disciplining ourselves
The selling profession offers a great deal of freedom, and that is what attracts many people to it. However, freedom has its cost, and the price is self-discipline. We can be much more effective at managing ourselves when we set goals, ask for feedback, and orient ourselves toward accomplishment. We must do “first things first,” commit to our goals, have a daily plan, monitor our progress, and make sure every minute counts.

Prospecting
Prospecting—consistently having NEW people to see—is the very lifeblood of our ability to succeed. Regardless of how well we know our product/service or how great our people skills, if we don’t have someone to talk to, none of that matters. Keep focused on varied, new, and effective ways to develop relationships with people. Network, conduct seminars, and obtain referrals. Professional and effecting prospecting is the key to future sales.

Handling rejection
Successful sales professionals learn early about the role of rejection. Many people take rejection personally, allow it to stop them for an hour, then a day, then a week, then… Develop a healthy, positive attitude toward rejection because it WILL be a part of any sales effort. You are being paid to handle problems, including the initial rejection that many people feel toward your product/service until they hear your presentation. It has been said for years that the person who handles the most rejection makes the most sales.

Remember what others have said about failure:

Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.

Malcolm Forbes

Life’s real failure is when you don’t realize how close you were to success when you gave up.

Unknown