Have you ever considered as to why copier reps fall short of achieving their goals? In fact, it is estimated that 67% of sales professionals fail to hit individual quota. (Source: The TAS Group)
Cognitive Dissonance could be the answer as to why you are not achieving your copier sales goals.
Cognitive Dissonance is the mental stress we cause ourselves by holding two conflicting beliefs simultaneously. Subconsciously, this causes us to act towards maintaining both beliefs, often resulting in self-sabotage.
For example, let’s say that your goal is to lose weight. Despite trying diet after diet, you just cannot seem to get the weight off. The belief system of someone looking to lose weight very often looks like this:
Belief #1: I am committed to follow my diet plan and will lose 20 lbs by December 31, 2017.
Belief #2: Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been overweight. I love food too much. This is who I am.
Deep down, the inner belief that someone who wants to lose weight has about themselves is being challenged by a new one. This cognitive dissonance causes the person to act towards maintaining both beliefs, resulting in sugar cravings and quitting prematurely on the diet.
Let’s look at another example. Money!
Belief #1: This year I will earn a salary of $100,000.
Belief #2: Money is hard to obtain. We didn’t have a lot growing up and my parents always told me that, “money doesn’t grow on trees.”
Almost everyone in the world wants to earn more money. Yet why is it that some find it easy to make money, while others struggle to get ahead?
Cognitive Dissonance theorizes that it is our internal beliefs distilled in us at a young age that cause us to self sabotage. Even when we start earning a higher salary, we subconsciously act towards fulfilling the original belief by spending money on materialistic items, gambling and unnecessary entertainment. This might explain why 70% of lottery winners end up broke within a few years!
Of course, Cognitive Dissonance is just a theory. However, let’s apply it to our performance as copier reps.
Belief #1: I am a quota-smashing rep. This year, I will hit 125% of plan and earn $80,000 by closing 1 deal per week and maintaining a 5% higher profit margin in every deal.
Belief #2:
- Copier sales is too hard
- There are not enough opportunities
- Paper is going away. Print volumes are decreasing
- People no longer need to print. Everything is going digital
- Most offices want A4 instead of A3
- I don’t have enough base accounts
- My territory is too small
- The equipment margins are too thin
- There is too much competition
Copier reps hold so many negative beliefs about our industry that no matter what your goals are or what new belief system you try to create, you are already pre-programmed to fail.
“The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”
People have been predicting the end of paper since the 1980’s when the personal computer came out. 37 years later and there are still thousands of employed copier reps around the world selling boxes every day.
There are opportunities in abundance if we view things with a fresh, positive gaze.
- More dealer acquisitions have happened in the past two years than any year previous
- Ricoh and Xerox have sold off their SMB accounts to a select group of dealers / sales agents
- Samsung has sold off their entire copier division to HP
- Epson is planning to disrupt the industry through inkjet A3 technology
- Managed Print Services is evolving through Managed Services offerings and Seat-Based Billing
Personally, I see now as one of the most exciting times for copier reps to steal market share and drive value to their customers. You can choose to live your career as two different viewpoints: Either you see opportunity within this industry or you do not.
If you do not see the opportunity and want to remain fixed in your negative ways, you might as well leave the industry now. You are only proving to yourself and others that you are working in your “job” for the paycheque. (“J.o.b.” by the way stands for just over broke.)
But if you see the opportunities within this industry like I do, you need to make a paradigm shift to break away from the Paper Poverty Mindset.
Continue reading this post at The Business Engagement Process Blog.
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