Entrepreneur Magazine, Article 3, Sales Techniques

This week we look at sales techniques. This is not just about selling product. As a leader or team member you need to sell your ideas, your vision, your voice. Everyone needs to learn sales.

Your most critical sale will always be to the little voice between your ears

July 24, 2008, Business Report, The Star, By Barry Mitchell

Three key skills that a business owner must develop to build a successful enterprise are the ability to sell, to build a championship team and to teach.

But the number one skill in business is sales. And the hardest sale of all - as well as the most important - is the sale that you make to yourself.

When it comes to you, there is no such thing as a no-sales call; a sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell yourself on a reason why you will take action, or you sell yourself on a reason why not.

Either way, a sale is made; the only question is, which of you is going to win - the winner or the loser?

Blair Singer, a renowned facilitator of personal and organizational behavioral change, says the challenge we face is how to develop a psychology that creates sales.

Sales is about both the inside and outside. The outside is typically understood to be all the things that most people believe are the key ingredients to being successful in sales.

Outside elements include the physical things: sales tools, presentations, product offering, brand, product knowledge, technique. However, to become great at sales, the first area to master is the inside.

The battle to win in sales is not measured in calls and conversion; rather, it is fought in the little voice between each sales professional's ears.

Mastery of that little voice is getting your brain set up to attract sales and long-term customers. Do that well, and the other things follow.

Have you ever been a legend in your own mind? Have you ever had a day when everything worked, people agreed with you, you made your sales targets and you did well?

How do you get those days happening one after the other?

You do it by keeping your energy high and getting yourself into a mind-set that attracts business rather than drives it away.

You want to be successful, build a sustainable business, create great sales and give good service to your customers.

In reality, sometimes what happens subconsciously is that you drive it away harder than you attract it.

You allow your little voice to dictate the outcome based on your past experiences.

We all have a little voice in our head. Yes, the one that just said: "What little voice?"

Take the words "sales rep": what image immediately comes to your mind? What were the three words that came to your mind? Were they negative or positive? Have you ever asked yourself where those images and perceptions come from?

If, as motivational speaker Robert Kiyosaki says, "your number one skill in business and life is the ability to sell", then what is it costing you to have the associations for being a sales rep?

The point is, if you have a negative association for sales - pest, pushy, sleazy, dishonest - you will project that in your presentation, in your approach, in driving around in your car, in the fear of looking like what you perceive.

This is about something going on in your brain.

Where did those thoughts come from: your parents, your friends, your relatives? Those are the thoughts that need to be reprogrammed in your brain - because, to be successful in sales, you first need to own a positive association with sales.

The little voice can be positive or negative - and there is almost always more than one voice. For example, each of us has the winner or the loser, the coward or the hero living inside us. How many of you have ever been amazed by your own courage, only at other times to be shocked by your own fear?

Unfortunately, we tend to remember the negative more than the positive.

Can you sell yourself to you? Have you ever found yourself driving around, planning on doing calls, not achieving anything, finding other things to do, and making excuses? Are you losing the battle in your own brain and robbing your family of the abundant wealthy future you could have? The reason we often don't sell is fear.

If sales is your number one skill in business and in life, then the "little voice" mastery is the key to unlocking your power to sell.

Barry Mitchell is the operations director at SalesPartners South Africa

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