Sales Killer #4 – Belief

Develop the belief in yourself, your product, and your customer or you will never believe in the sale!

This is Part 4 of a 5-part series on the Five Sales Killers. See previous articles at:

Belief is a tough one to put our finger on. We can go to the dictionary for the meaning of belief (acceptance that something is true). We can pull from our childhood religion classes for a further explanation that belief is accepting something as truth that you maybe can’t see or prove. Take all those ideas and figure out what you believe about three key areas of your role as a salesperson:

3 Belief’s every salesperson needs

Belief in yourself
Belief in your product
Belief in your customer

But wait, there’s more. The final belief is to then roll all that up into the most important belief of all:

“Belief in the Sale”

What is the belief in the sale? It is the belief that you bring the best solution to solve your customer’s problem. The belief that you bring better products than your competitor does to this customer.

If you don’t believe that to be true, then find someone who can help you get there. Often, when beginning our sales career, we don’t have past experience to rely on for the belief in ourselves. Maybe you haven’t sold anything yet. Maybe you haven’t had a major setback in your territory or lost a key account. Maybe, your company is going through a merger and the new sales structure will require you to call on a different customer base. Any of these will require you to do something you haven’t done before. You will need to run on confidence and the faith in yourself that you can do it.

Early in my selling career, I spent eight hours at a feed dealer’s open house trying to switch dog food customers from Iams and Eukanuba to my premium dog food, with absolutely zero success. I left the dealership with the belief that I couldn’t sell. Commiserating with my sales manager the next Monday, he brought me out of my slump by assuring me this wasn’t a reflection of my selling skills. I had to run on his belief in me for several weeks until I signed my next dealer and sales began to take off.

Belief in yourself: This is first and foremost. I’m not talking about the pump-me-up rhetoric of, “You can do it!”. That only lasts until the first customer shuts you down with an objection. Your ego is riddled and there goes your belief in yourself. The belief I’m talking about is getting strong on the technical side of your business so you can be confident in your ability to solve customer problems. Beyond technical competence, there’s a whole world of soft skills in selling you need to develop in order to feel that you can handle any situation. Become a continuous learner and earn your belief in yourself. That way, you are not shaken in your beliefs when a customer challenges you with a price objection. Again, if you are lacking in your confidence, seek out a mentor, coach or more experienced peer to help bolster yourself.
Belief in your products/service: This is an absolute must. You must believe in them enough that you use them yourself. This may not be completely practical. For example, if you sell passenger airplanes, most likely, you can’t own one yourself. If so, then you have to believe in them enough that you would use them if you were in your customer’s shoes. A word of caution here. Marketing departments and sales manager’s like myself are very excited and confident about our products. Sometimes, we think our products are the only ones in the market that will work. We think customers would be crazy to buy anything but our products. That over-exuberance is admirable, but here’s the word of caution to you as a salesperson. Be cautious of how you portray your confidence in your products. If you portray the image that all of your competitor’s products are inferior, you will run into a wall of resistance that’s unnecessary. Most likely, your competitor has products that will grow a crop, keep an animal alive, plow fields, provide Ag lending, or hedge their risk, etc. And your prospect is using their products and doing just fine. Giving him the impression that he is doing something wrong by buying from your competition will result in resentment from your prospect. Instead, you need to transfer your belief that, your product, with your advice, will take that prospect from the Good place they are now to an even Better place.
Belief in your customer: Occasionally I run across a salesperson who dislikes their customers or has a very negative opinion of their business skills. They say things like, “All of them are price buyers.” or “None of them can figure out how to ….” And sometimes, their comments are much worse. Maybe the sales person just had a bad day or she’s burnt out and needs a vacation. Either way, these salespeople are typically justifying their failure by blaming the customer. They didn’t do the hard work it takes to sell an account. See last week’s article on the Mundane of Selling. This causes their prospect to use price resistance to get rid of them. This causes the salesperson to become negative towards the prospect. The lack of pre-call planning, the lack of asking good questions, the lack of positioning the best product based off those questions, the lack of following up with prospects to complete the sale. All these lead to resistance from our customer. That turns into frustration for our salesperson, who then turns that into negativity towards their customers. In my experience, there’s a few things you can try. However, it might be a sign that you need a career reinvention. A subject for another blog all together. But, if you hate or are constantly frustrated by your primary customer base, get some help. Again, seek out a mentor that can help you through this. If your customer base is truly going bankrupt, or following bad business practices, then look for another customer base. Some niche businesses go strong for awhile and then fade out of profitability. In feed, there were plenty of these – the ostrich, elk, deer, pot belly pigs, wildlife, etc. While not primary markets, they came on strong and then faded as profitability went away.
Belief in the sale: Now that you have a solid belief in yourself, your product and your customer, you will arrive at the greatest belief you can have as a salesperson:

The belief in the sale

Belief in the sale is when you have done all the hard work of finding the best solution for this particular customer and you know it will improve their business. When you believe this, you won’t want your customer to go another day without your solution. It will make the focus of your sales call very clear. Closing on the sale will not feel “salesy” at all. You truly want to help this customer. Your solution is the answer.