“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
Jim Rohn
Question for all those in sales...
"Whose responsibility is it to ensure you have the skills, knowledge, behavior and tools needed to engage in meaningful conversations?"
Do you know more about what you sell than your clients or prospects? I would sure hope so!
Do they believe you do? Do they see you as an advisor?
Are you sharing with them you know what's going on in their marketplace?
Are you sharing valuable insights and bits of education? Imagine them saying,
"Maybe I should listen to this person."
Personal accountability and self-education, it's the foundation of sales success. How much of your success would you say is up to you? The choices you make, your actions and your behaviors will all make you or break you in sales.
If you want to live a successful sales life, you must take your own education and learning into your own hands.
Here's the deal, before you start self-educating yourself, you need to convince your mind that why is it so important for sales success?
SELF-EDUCATION STARTS WITH SELF-ENABLEMENT
Self-enablement is about the skills and resources professionals develop for themselves, in order to make sure they rock those business conversations when they get a seat at the table.
“If salespeople can’t articulate their value, their story, or hold a business conversation; then they’re dead in the water.”
Learning is at the core of self-enablement. It's about dedicating the time to increase your knowledge about your clients, your prospects or your industry. It's about developing a new skill or enhancing the tactics you already use. When you do this, you are upping your chances of sales success.
You might be asking yourself... where do I start? How do I become self-enabled?
Self-enablement starts with you knowing more than your clients and prospects know about your company's products, solutions or services.
Do your clients get smarter after they speak with you?
One of your most precious assets is your clients. I encourage you to spend quality time with your clients. No, this doesn't mean the dreaded stop by to say hello. I mean dig in deep. Learn something new about their business, their issues, their challenges, goals and initiatives.
Sales professionals become a student of their clients' businesses, are you?
EDUCATE YOURSELF OR BECOME IRRELEVANT
The most valuable skill you can learn in sales is how to learn. This one skill will help you flourish as your industry evolves.
Imagine being forced to explore new opportunities in a rapidly changing work environment.
Let's all think about what is going on right now. In these challenging and uncertain times, what new skill have you learned? How many books have you read? What have you learned about your clients? Starting to get it?
You must seek constant opportunities to learn and grow if you want to thrive, survive and remain employable. While that may sound cumbersome and frightening, it’s the old hard truth.
As former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki once said,
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
To stay competitive, you must stay sharp. You must always be learning. The next time the economy shifts and your company’s leadership looks to make cuts, they’re going to evaluate which employers have the tenacity and motivation to keep up with the company’s changing needs and which ones have been complacent.
If you want to get ahead in life, you must take personal responsibility. You must hold yourself accountable to YOU! It’s no one else’s responsibility to help you get to where you need to be; it’s yours and yours alone.
This means that if you had a sub-par month and failed to meet your plan, it’s not your manager’s fault, your customers’ fault, or your prospects’ fault—it’s your fault! You have to suck it up, self-reflect, buckle down, and get to work. Look at yourself in the mirror and commit to getting better.
SELF-EDUCATION IS THE KEY TO YOUR SALES SUCCESS
Sales professionals have a deep burning desire to learn. It means having a real love for discovery and self-development. It's about being curious and open to learning from failure.
How willing are you to dig in and get messy with learning? Become responsible for your own education. Hold yourself accountable. Do the things to make learning appealing, relevant, useful, and rewarding.
Sales professionals commit to lifelong learning while sales reps find excuses why they can't
Self-education means to stop accepting who you already are and start living in a way that embodies who you want to become. Think about this and how this applies to your sales career.
- Do your clients feel confident in you after they speak with you?
- Do your clients believe you are the go-to-sales professional in your marketplace?
“There are two primary choices in life: To accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”
Dr. Denis Waitley
I will leave you all with this...
When's the last time you had a conversation with a client or a prospect and heard ...
“Wow, this was one of the best conversations I’ve ever had!”
I understand, I get where you all are coming from. Every day, I walk in your shoes. I am fully committed to helping your sales team integrate social aspects and heartfelt strategies into your current sales process to grow new business. I want you to get results. This is why I am passionate about doing this the right way, the genuine way, the authentic way! It's about understanding value before visibility.
Selling From the Heart is making a difference! I poured my heart into every page of this book and I think you're going to love it. You can find it on Amazon in paperback, kindle and in audio. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.
You can find more material inside Selling From The Heart.
In a world full of empty suits, I'm passionate about helping sales reps succeed by getting valuable before they get visible. I help sales teams understand the true value they bring to the market.
I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my stories. Integrating the use of social and sharing my story on LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive office technology world. With great pride I transform, challenge, coach and inspire sales teams to grow new business by helping them share their story and how they communicate it out by integrating the use of social inside the sales process. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.
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