Becoming a great professional salesperson requires the same commitment to training that other professionals require.
Doctors, athletes and firefighters who are tops in their fields pay a price to be there. It's called conditioning.
Conditioning is a way of life. It's a set of rules, sometimes philosophical, but practical. Follow the rules, and you will be conditioned to make the best use of the system.
One method of conditioning is to stay on the right side of the trouble line.
Salespeople have a choice to make every day. They can either be on "pay time" or "no-pay time." Trouble occurs, however, when you spend too much time on the no-pay time side of the line. If a quarterback studies the film and playbook all week, but does not run the drill over and over against all the defenses, he will find himself in trouble when the real defense is coming.
Pay time activities would be done during that special time of day when your prospects are inclined to see or hear from you. These activities include setting appointments, calling on your referrals and servicing your clients.
No-pay time is important, too, but it's set aside for planning, conditioning, learning more about your product or service, and attending meetings. No-pay time usually occurs after 5 p.m. and before 9 a.m.
When you perform no-pay time activities during pay time hours, you create a worse problem than simply hurting your sales performance. If you're supposed to be doing one thing - and you know it - but you do something else, two negatives occur:
1. You feel guilty because you're violating your conditioning.
2. You're less productive because you're doing the wrong thing.
Do you see how that leads to trouble?
It's easier for a salaried salesperson to violate this conditioning because they don't have the urgency of commissioned salespeople. This will eventually catch up with the salesperson when the inconsistency of his pay time behaviors exposes him.
Another trick to help you use pay time productively is to set goals. I'm not talking about annual goals and five-year plans. They have their place, but I'm talking about setting daily goals.
If an archer shooting a bow doesn't have a target, how will he know if he hits it? Top sales performers condition themselves by beginning every day with goals. "Today, I want to accomplish ... ," and they either record their goals on paper, or they verbally say them to an accountability partner in a daily huddle.
It's easy to identify the salesperson who is struggling to stay on the right side of the trouble line. He scrambles around at the last minute, schedules back-to-back appointments on the last day and is in a panic because he didn't do the pay time behaviors consistently every day up to that point.
If you are striving to go to another level in your professional sales career, stay on the right side of the trouble line, and do your pay time activities during pay time.
Brett Baker is a managing partner for TrustPoint Management Group in Springfield. He can be reached at brett@trustpointllc.com.
