Do you ever find that your motivation to sell and to just pick up that phone is elusive? Let’s face it. The world of selling is hard. If it were easy, more people would be doing it. There’s a reason that salespeople are some of the highest-paid executives in the business world today. That big reason is just that. It’s not always easy to find that motivation. Most people get really scared to do some of the things that we need to be doing daily.
1. Get clear on why you need to be successful.
Now I have always said that there is no such thing as a professional goal in sales, everything is personal. Everything comes down to why you need to pick up that phone to close that sale, to ultimately pay that bill or send your kid to college or save for a down payment on a house or whatever it is. Everything in sales is personal and the more you can get clear on why you need to be successful, the more successful you’re going to be because it is just a set of small steps and every single step needs to make you feel like you’re getting that much closer to accomplishing whatever it is that you want. Get super crystal clear. When I first began selling, I had to make tons of cold calls every single day, and I didn’t want to do that.
What did I do? I had a vision board of all of the things that I knew that I wanted in my life, whether it was that new house or money for my family or whatever it is. I knew exactly what it was. Every time I picked up that phone, every time I set a new meeting, it was getting me that much is closer to my personal life.
2. Know exactly what you have to sell to achieve your personal goals.
Now notice I didn’t use the word quota or I didn’t use some word like a professional goal, right? What matters is that you need to get exactly specific on really what you need to sell to achieve your personal goals. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that to accomplish your personal goals, you need to make $200,000.
As a salesperson, know exactly what is going to get you to that earnings of $200,000. That means factoring in your compensation plan, or if you have your own company, exactly what you need to sell to personally earn that $200,000. Then once you know, that it all becomes about getting to that number, everything matters when it comes to getting to those personal savings or that personal amount of earnings, whether it’s, let’s say it’s $200,000. So, you know that you need to make $2 million in sales to get to that $200,000, no, that, and live by that number because that’s the only number that matters. It’s not about your quota. It’s not about some number that someone gives you. It’s about you knowing what you need to sell to achieve those personal goals. I think as you can see here, there’s starting to be a pattern that emerges that everything that you’re doing is getting you to that personal goal and make those personal goals powerful, really relevant, not just buy that fancy car, but you know, what are some things that are going to drive you?
That way, when you’re not in the mood, which you’re likely to not be in the mood to pick up that phone, what’s going to give you that kick in the to make that next call, to set that next meeting, to knock on that next door.
3. Break down the activities daily.
I find that so many salespeople can get overwhelmed by how much they need to be doing to accomplish their goals. What happens is that a lot of people get into this pattern where they’ll put off those sales activities for a day or two. Let’s say Monday and Tuesday, they don’t make any calls or they don’t do any of those key prospecting activities that they need to do to hit their numbers. That way, by the time they’re on Wednesday, they’re already behind.
Now they have to do this Herculean effort to get that much closer to their sales goals. What I challenge you to do is break down to a very granular daily basis, know exactly how many calls you need to make. No, exactly how many referrals or introductions you need to ask for to know exactly how many meetings you need to set and how many meetings you have to conduct to hit your goals. The more you can break things down daily into bite-sized chunks, the more manageable achieving your personal goals become. The more likely you are to feel that motivation because it’s, it’s not that there’s some magical feeling of motivation, motivated people aren’t necessarily daily feeling like, oh, gee, I can’t wait to do today. I can’t wait to make those calls.
Now what they’re doing is they’re understanding what they have to do daily. Then they’re just taking action. They’re just following through.
4. Make your activity the most important objective of each day.
This is something that so many salespeople miss the boat on because what they’re focused on is making sure that they’re hitting their sales numbers every week or every month. But really what matters is your sales activity? Just think there are only a couple of factors that go into making sure that you’re hitting your sales number, right? You’ve got to make sure that you’re getting the number of leads that you need and the way you get those leads is by generating activity. Then once you have those leads, you have to make sure that you’re doing the right thing in the sales process to make sure that you are closing those sales effectively, but let’s just control for that.
Let’s just pretend that you’re doing those right things, right. What are you doing on that daily basis to make sure that you’re getting in front of the right number of people? The most important thing that you can be doing daily is ensuring that you are following through with your activity goals, right? You know exactly how many calls you have to make, and you do not leave the office until you’ve made those calls. The better you are at holding yourself accountable for the activities. The more likely you are to hit your sales numbers. It’s not about likelihood, right? It’s if you follow through on those activities, you will hit your sales goals.
All that matters daily is doing that activity by following through on those steps.
5. Delegate non-sales activity to others.
Now, this is the flip side of the previous idea, which is that what matters is doing sales activity. Many salespeople get bogged down in these non-sales activities. Now I understand that some people’s jobs aren’t 100% sales, but even so, the more time you can dedicate to true sales activity, the more money you’re going to be making. That means to take all of the non-sales activity off of your plate, get rid of it, move it away, give it to someone else they can take care of. What you want to focus on is what’s going to make you money, which is sales activity. So think about what activities that you’re doing during the day that are not sales-related.
Maybe it’s operational issues. Maybe it’s putting out fires here and there, maybe it’s customer complaints, whatever it is, the more you can give that to someone else, the more money you’re going to make. More importantly, the more money you are going to be worth to your company. You will become a complete necessity to any company. If you can focus the majority of your time on that sales activity, get rid of everything else that is not sales-related.
6. Using a selling system that works success reinforces motivation.
There is nothing more discouraging that I see than people who are going out and doing things, but because they’re not using the right approaches, all of that effort is wasted. This happens in learning any skill. Let’s say you were going to learn guitar, right? You are self-taught and you just are learning guitar, but you have the guitar upside down.
I know someone who learned to play guitar essentially upside down. The problem was that it takes so much longer to learn to play the guitar upside-down selling is not entirely different, right? If we’re learning to sell in a way that’s not as effective as it could be, then we’re less likely to feel motivated because we’re not having success. Let’s take a cold call for example, which you may or may not be doing, but cold calls on average are going to have between a 0.5% and a 1.5% likelihood of actually generating a meeting. Now that being the case, if you are ineffective with prospecting calls, that means you might have to be making 200 cold calls to just generate one meeting. Versus if you’re more effective, you could be generating a meeting every 75 or so calls that you’re making.
That’s a huge difference. The person who is generating more meetings from the same amount of activity is going to feel a lot more motivation just because they’re feeling that success, the more you’re putting yourself in the position of actually being successful, the more reinforcing and more motivating that feels. Make sure that when you’re selling that you’re using a system that is working.
7. Think of all selling as a sport. Sales is a sport, it’s not personal.
It’s not about getting your feelings hurt. It’s truly a sport. The more you can start to think of it that way, the more successful you’ll be. For example, I just had a salesperson who recently reached out to me on my forum and said, Hey, you know what?
I made a call to this prospect, then what happened is they blocked my number. So the next time I called, they went straight to voicemail and I’ve noticed that my calls have been just immediately getting redirected to voicemail. He was so curious that he called from his cell phone just to test. He determined that yes, he was blocked by that prospect. The salesperson was upset about this. He was deeply hurt by the fact that someone would block his call and he said, how am I supposed to deal with this? And I said, “the first thing you need to do is make sure that you don’t take any of this stuff personally.” It is a sport, just like anything else, whether it’s football or tennis or golf, right? When you have a setback, you don’t get mad or throw your club and get upset.
Although I know some people do that. I have a friend who throws his clubs every time he makes a bad shot. He’s taking it personally, as opposed to just thinking of it as the sport that it is. The more comfortable yet really seeing sales as a sport, the less likely we are to take those little setbacks as personal. The more likely we are to reframe a bad rejection as you know what, Hey, that one didn’t work out. I’m going to move on to the next, because you know what, it’s just a sport. It doesn’t matter.
8. Celebrate even your small successes.
If you’re watching this video and you’re feeling down, you’re feeling like you don’t want to, I’m just not sure if I’m going to make it, you know, we’ve all been there. One thing that I find is that sometimes when we get to the bottom of the curve of motivation, when we’re feeling demotivated, and we’re just not feeling it anymore, we start to even those little successes to start to overlook those and focus more on what’s not working.
What I challenge you to do is again, reframe what success means. I want you to start to recognize even a small success like a meeting scheduled, or even just getting a call through for the next minute, right? If you can keep a prospect on for a minute on the phone, that means that you are much more likely to ultimately get that meeting. Let’s just say that you get five prospects to stay on the phone for a minute. Chances are out of those five prospects. One of them is going to turn into a meeting. So even just the act of getting a prospect to stay on the phone with you for over a minute is a success. Celebrate those small successes. I don’t mean celebrate by going and, you know, taking the whole family out to a steakhouse. But I mean, just give yourself the credit, you know what, Hey, that went well.
Or if a prospect responds to an email that went well, celebrate that success in your head, of course, don’t then say, okay, well, I’m going to take the day off, no recognize that it’s a small success and then move on and feel that momentum as a result of that little success.
9. Examine your setbacks.
Now, this can be taken the wrong way. Just, just the same way. The previous idea can also be taken the wrong way. We’ve got to remember that just because we have a setback. It’s not something to be about. Instead, what we want to do is we want to learn from those setbacks. You know, some people might call it a failure. I genuinely do not believe that you can fail in sales. The only way you fail in sales is if you quit, right, if you decide, you know what, I’m going into operations, and I’m going to make half as much money as I know that I can make in sales, then you have failed.
But until you do that, you have not failed. You’re only experiencing setbacks. Anytime you have a setback, it’s a learning opportunity. It’s an opportunity to analyze what happened. Why did that prospect respond in such a negative way? Or why did that sale? That seemed like it was on track and suddenly fall off track. Now we don’t want to necessarily over-examine what went wrong or what went right? But the more we’re using the system, the more likely we are to be able to effectively examine those individual setbacks, right? You may get to a sale. Then suddenly you determined that you know what, I wasn’t talking to the right decision-maker. Now you understand that the next time you’re in that situation, you’re going to be tough on the decision-making process. You want to understand, or maybe you have to dig into the budget more or whatever it is, examine those setbacks.
Don’t think of them as to how do I necessarily get this sale back on track, although you can do that as well, it’s also, how can I take away something that I can then use into my next situation, examine those setbacks, take lessons from what, whatever it is that you’ve gotten out of it and then apply it moving forward.
10. Focus on small steps consistently.
You know, this is true of success on any level, whether it’s a kid getting through school or an adult just working on developing their career or sales, we tend to think in terms of big chunks, right? Take the example of a kid wanting to get into college, right by the time they’re a junior in high school. The battle has already been won or lost. It’s already been determined. Really? What matters in terms of getting into a, let’s say an elite college is what were they doing along the way in the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th grade, that then put them in place to effectively get into whatever school it is is they want.
- It’s those small baby steps, right?
- Did they finish their homework?
- Did they put in that extra effort on that assignment?
It’s little steps in aggregate that lead to ultimate success. That’s the same thing in sales, right?
When it comes to selling it’s those little steps…
- Did you make your 40 calls each day?
- So what we need, think about is did you make those 40 calls today?
- Did you make your 1600 calls this past month?
- Did you make your 40 calls today or did you set your eight meetings this week?
If you’re not setting your eight meetings, then you’re not going to be successful in the long run. We need to focus on the small steps. So that means today. I need to ensure that I’m setting two meetings as a result of the efforts that I’m putting in.
The more you can break things down into small, tiny bite-sized chunks, the more likely you’re going to be successful in the long run, because any success is just a combination of small baby steps put together and then an aggregate. It turns into something really powerful.
11. Take risks and scrape your knees.
So many salespeople are so afraid of making mistakes when they’re in selling situations. Of course, if you’re a newbie, that’s unequivocally going to happen, but the more you can start to recognize that, you know what? If you mess up an opportunity, it’s not a big deal. The more likely you are to be successful. I want to see you taking more risks. I want to see you falling on your face. I want to see you off that prospect. I want to see you do things because you took calculated risks that are going to turn into something.
That doesn’t mean that just because a prospect doesn’t respond the way you want and you get angry and huffy. What I mean is let’s say a prospect is behaving in a way that doesn’t make sense. Be willing to take a risk and say, you know what, George, based on what you’re telling me, I’m getting the sense that this isn’t a fit, is that fair. And let them see like, whoa, I didn’t expect that. Right. That’s a risk because it’s within the system it’s calculated. It’s likely to generate an effective response on the part of the prospect. Be willing to take those risks and you know what? Yeah, you are going to scrape your knees. I remember some of the early risks that I took when I started selling with a system with an effective approach. I got kicked out of people’s offices, I was walked out of people’s homes… I faced it all!
I got yelled at on the phone, but you know what? I also made sales. Do we want to be making every single person that we get in front of angry? No, of course not. But what we do want to do is make these consistent, calculated risks that are going to ultimately pay off. By the way, you’re never going to understand what’s the edge. So, how far can I go? You’ll never know how far you can go until you take those risks. Be willing to take those risks and yeah, you’re going to scrape a couple of needs, whatever.
There they are… 11 sales, motivation ideas to get you to make that next call. I would love to hear from you what your challenges are and or any feedback on these.
Cheers- Alex
Reach out anytime to discuss: [email protected]
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