The Winner's Sales Strategy Blog

Why Far Too Many Salespeople Secretly Hate Selling

In my Dallas sales training business, it never ceases to amaze me how few salespeople I meet who actually love selling, like I do. Worse yet, it appears that a huge number literally hate it - but keep on only because they need a job!

Ask anyone outside the sales profession why they don't like to sell, and they'll tell you, "I hate selling."

There is one reason, and one reason only, why anyone hates selling:

It's because they are inept at it.

They've failed at it.

They can't do it.

This is true in any profession, or any activity in the world, for that matter. People who tell you they hate playing golf - myself included - hate it because they suck at it. 

Want To Be Successful? Love What You Do!

It was Socrates who first said it, and it's been repeated by dozens of authors and success philosophers down the centuries: "The only unsuccessful men are those who have not yet found the work they like best."

It's a plain and simple fact that when one is doing the work one likes best, that person is happy, successful, and prosperous.

Work is no longer work. It becomes a labor of love, a joy, to perform.

When I was asked to give an presentation recently on what the #1 cause of sales turnover is, since sales turnover is EXTREMELY expensive for organizations, I had a research assistant find out, and pages and pages of research and case studies all gave the same answer:

Salespeople quit their jobs when they don't like them.

Going deeper into the research, the #1 reason why salespeople don't like their jobs is cold calling. In fact a surprisingly large majority said they'd rather have a root canal than make 100 cold calls.

Is it any wonder, then, that so many salespeople are failures, when they literally HATE what they're doing for a living? When they'd rather have a freaking ROOT CANAL than go to work?

On the other side of the coin, the report contained numerous surveys of business owners & senior executives. When asked what they dislike most about their work, the answer was consistently the same: Receiving cold calls.

The Shortcut to Sales Success

It's well-known to everyone that, no matter how cliche it may sound, the first requirement of success is a positive mental attitude. And you can never have that in your work if you hate your work!

Simply having that positive attitude, and the upbeat enthusiasm that goes with it, makes you magnetically attractive to prospects. They can't resist wanting to BUY from you.

And knowing that cold calling, above everything else combined, is the #1 reason that makes salespeople hate their jobs and destroys positive attitude, the shortcut to sales success is very plain and simple: STOP COLD CALLING! NOW! TODAY!

How To RULE Your Sales Manager!

I was listening to a discussion about how the Big Three U.S. automakers, who seem to be perpetually in financial trouble, don’t hesitate to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each on television advertising that simply doesn’t work.

As an example, after Ford Motor Company sponsored American Idol and ran their commercials endlessly during one season of that show, 90% of viewers surveyed couldn’t even remember which car company it was running the commercials!

Nevertheless, they continue anyway, thanks to whatever crap they learned in MBA school about “building your brand” and other such rubbish.

What they’re missing is a key rule of business – and one that’s especially applicable to sales. And here it is:

“Nothing speaks like results.”

Instead of focusing on what gets results – and using methods of marketing and advertising where results can be measured in the first place – Ford was doing what they’d been told they’re “supposed” to do.

(Interestingly, I also recently learned that many of the big Madison Avenue advertising agencies go to great lengths to prevent their clients from seeing the results, even when they are measurable.)

And just what do sales managers tell us we’re “supposed” to do?

“Make 100 cold calls a day! Smile and dial! Pound the pavement!”

The good news is that those methods are measurable. The bad news? The return on any type of cold calling techniques are consistently 1% – in other words, they don’t work!

I even had one particular nutjob sales manager who had a big “Wheel of Fortune” style wheel in the office. Everyone got to spin it each morning at the absurdly early 7:30am sales meeting to find out if you’d be telemarketing, canvassing door-to-door, calling a list of old worthless leads who no one else had succeeded with, and so on.

But, as I said earlier:

“Nothing speaks like results.”

When you’re bringing in sales – and sales are all that matters in the end, because that’s how both you and your manager get paid – no one will really care how you’re getting them.

The moron with the “Wheel of Fortune” game every morning started leaving me alone a few months after I was hired, when my sales numbers reached a very high – and very consistent – level. He didn’t care that I wasn’t cold calling, as long as I pretended to play along with his dumb wheel game every day.

Here’s the bottom line:

If you’re bringing in high sales numbers, and doing it consistently, your sales manager WON’T CARE how you’re doing it – as long as you’re doing it!

If you’re NOT doing that now, it means that what you ARE doing isn’t working.

When something isn’t working, the solution isn’t to do more of it. It’s to change your activities and your behavior to something that does work.

And guess what? Cold calling DOES NOT work, not anymore, not in today’s economy!

The solution, therefore, is to STOP cold calling and START doing something that works instead!

And just what are those things? The answers are endless. Not long ago, I sat down to brainstorm ideas with another sales author, and within 30 seconds we had come up with over two dozen methods to effectively get leads without cold calling. In my Dallas sales training business, we teach sales teams everything from how to use Facebook and LinkedIn to generate a massive business network and endless supply of hot, qualified leads, to good old-fashioned stuff that still works today, such as effective in-person networking. In between there's everything from social media to lead-generation websites to free public speaking to become an authority in your community.

No matter what methods you choose, nothing will change the reality that cold calling consistently has the lowest percentage of sales call success, so stop cold calling immediately!

Be OFFENSIVE to Get More Sales!

That's right. If you want more sales, be offensive.

No, I don't mean being a jerk, or being profane, or anything like that.

I mean going on the OFFENSE.

Everyone knows that in any situation, negotiation, or sales transaction, you never, never want to be on the defense. Once you're on the defense, your opponent is in control. And once that happens, you're screwed.

Just watch a boxing match. As soon as one boxer is backed into a corner and his opponent is hammering him with a flurry of punches, it's pretty much all over for him.

Offense and Defense in Selling

For some bizarre reason, few salespeople are taught the principles of negotiating. This is a sad fact, since negotiation is the very essence of selling. Every - and I mean every - sales interaction is a negotiation.

I'm not necessarily talking about price negotiation, either. Even if you mail out an introductory letter or send a "cold" direct message on LinkedIn, you're negotiating, because you're asking for something from the prospect - an appointment, or a call back, a web conference, a referral - and as long as you're trying to get something, you're negotiating, whether you realize it or not.

The winner and the loser in every negotiation are determined by a very simple formula: The person with the power wins. The person without the power loses. End of story.

Power in Selling

Who has the power in selling - or in any negotiation, for that matter?

The person with the power is the one on the offensive, the one who can say either "yes" or "no."

The person without the power - the loser in the end - is the one who is on the defensive, who wants or needs something, and has given the other person the ability to say either "yes" or "no."

Why Most Salespeople are Losers

It's sad but true that most salespeople are losers at this game. I remember being told that 20-25% is a good (?) closing rate. It wasn't until I was closing upwards of 80% of my prospects that I realized just how foolish a statement that is!

Here's how salespeople give up their power, each and every time: They make it very clear that they want or need something - a sale - and then the prospect automatically has the power to say "yes" or "no."

The salesperson is instantly put on the defensive, and has no way out. 

And the best way of all to get backed into a corner with no way out is to start a sales process with a cold call. Nothing says "I need a sale," or even, "I'm desperate for a sale," more than cold calling!

It's a guaranteed way to NEVER, EVER have power in selling, to always be on the defensive, and to have a miserable closing rate in sales.

And don't even get me started on the basic third-grade math of cold calling: Since the usual result of a cold call is nothing, then making 50 or 100 of them won't help either! I learned in third grade that 100 X 0 still equals ... ZERO! Nothing! Nada!

So forget about cold calling, for good, unless you want to be powerless, on the defensive, and get dismal sales results day in and day out. 

Are you afraid of trying something new? Remember, the worst that can happen is nothing. Since nothing is the usual result of a cold call anyway, you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. So get out there and try something new and different. Besides, doing something different is fun. And that alone will make your job a lot easier!

To Make More Sales, Stop Focusing on "Results"

I was reading a book by Dan Kennedy yesterday and he quoted another author on the topic of achieving what you want. I don’t remember the other author’s name, or even the quote exactly, but it was something like this:

“To win, forget results. Focus on process.”

As an example, he explained that if you want to improve your golf score, you don’t focus on hitting hole-in-ones. You focus on fundamentals like your grip and your swing, and the results will naturally follow.

Likewise, in negotiating, he explained that there’s no way to force someone to give in to your demands, unless of course you’re in the Mafia – as The Godfather put it, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse!”

The same is true in sales. You cannot control the outcome of a sale. There are too many variables – the prospect’s ability to pay, their real need or desire for the product, whether the prospect can even make the buying decision or if it must go to committee, and so on.

However, there is one thing you CAN control in sales. One and only one thing. And those are our sales activities.

Control Sales Activities To Get More Sales

I’ve said many times that in sales, you’re paid ONLY for completed sales. You’re not paid for going to appointments, for time spent driving in your car, for cold calling, for going to sales meetings & mandatory training, and so on. The ONLY thing you get paid a commission for is a completed sale.

No exceptions.

But far too many salespeople, and especially sales managers, don’t seem to understand this. Remember my article about the myth that “if X number of sales equals X number of appointments and X percentage of appointments turns into a sale and each sale is worth X, then each cold call puts X dollars in your pocket!”

Of course that old line is a lie and a sham, because if it were true, companies would pay salespeople per cold call, not per completed sale!

The truth is that no one really cares how or where you get your leads. All they care about is that you bring in completed sales. That’s why we have sales quotas. Only the dumbest and most mismanaged of companies have activity quotas. (But, sadly, some actually do.)

To Get More Sales, Forget About Sales Results

Unfortunately, to go back to the golf analogy, most salespeople shoot for the hole-in-one. They don’t focus on the fundamentals.

That’s also why most salespeople fail.

The truth of the matter is that, unless you’re The Godfather, you can’t force people to buy. All you can do is take them through a natural, logical sales process that induces them to buy.

In the few books Napoleon Hill wrote on sales – he spent part of his early career as a sales trainer – he explained that a good salesperson never has to use “closes.” A good salesperson takes the prospect through a natural process that induces them to simply and willingly BUY in the end.

A Sales Process That Works – and One That Doesn’t

If you’re going to expect sales success, you must begin each and every sales interaction correctly, right from the start – remember, focus on the process, not the result!

The absolute worst way to begin a sales transaction is with a cold call. For starters, 80% of decision makers simply don’t take them anymore (source: University of North Carolina’s Business School), so you’re restricted to dealing with the 20% of the market that is bombarded with salespeople, and has extremely high sales resistance as a result.

You also put yourself in a position of weakness. A basic law of negotiation is that the person who displays, up-front, that they have a need is in the weak position, and by making a cold call, you communicate that you need a sale.

The key to sales success, and a correct sales process that DOES result in sales is, therefore, to stop cold calling. Forever.

And let’s face it – there’s really no sense in continuing to cold call when even university studies have concluded that 4 out of 5 people will never respond. That’s pretty bad odds. And in terms of actual sales results, it’s even worse than that.

If you want more sales, first of all, stop focusing on sales results, and go back to the fundamentals, just as the best golfers do. And in that process, be sure to eliminate wasteful and unproductive activites like cold calling, and focus on what really works in our new 21st Century economy.

"The Best Sales Call."

I belong to a Master Mind group here in Dallas consisting of a few other business owners. We meet once a month for a full half-day, and in the true Master Mind format as introduced to the world by Napoleon Hill, we each describe our current greatest challenge, and the other members discuss it and provide input and suggestions.

The results are frequently astounding.

At yesterday’s monthly meeting, one business owner explained that she was having a tremendous problem with keeping her sales reps motivated.

And that’s when someone came up with a BRILLIANT solution to the problem, one that he’s used with great success in his own business.

“The Ultimate Sales Call”

We all know that the absolute best time to go out and sell is immediately after you close a big sale and are on that natural high that follows! That’s how salespeople “get on a roll” – they ride the emotional high of closing a large sale, or difficult sale, or one they’ve been after for a long time.

I’m sure you’ve experienced this yourself!

The suggestion given to that particular business owner’s problem was simple:

Record all of your sales calls (meaning appointments).

When you have one of those REALLY great ones, hang onto that recording, save it to your computer, put it on your iPad or on a CD in the car, etc.

Then, each and every morning before going out to sell for the day, LISTEN TO IT!

Even if your best sales call ever happened months or even years ago, listening to it in the morning, before going to work, will create the effect of being back on that emotional high you experienced after closing that sale!

The Psychology of Sales Success

I’ve explained “rolls” and “ruts” before. You “get on a roll” after experiencing a great success, as I’ve just described.

The emotions carry over, and your body language, vocal intonation, and other sub-communication transmit your enthusiasm and confidence to the prospect, and it makes them want to BUY from you. No hard selling required!

On the other hand, when you get into a “rut,” you may have noticed how difficult it is to get out of, and you seem to get deeper and deeper into it.

I discovered the reason why while studying the science of social dynamics.

Most people seem to believe that repeated failure and rejection will “steel you against it” to where you eventually become immune to it.

But, the reality is different. The truth is that repeated rejection beats you down subconsciously until your enthusiasm is destroyed. This comes across to prospects via your sub-communication, and it repels them. It makes them not want to buy from you. Or even be around you, for that matter.

The biggest culprit of all when it comes to this problem is cold calling.

When you’re rejected 98 out of every 100 times, your subconscious mind gets beaten down fast. So if you want to EXPLODE your sales – FAST – then follow these two steps:

1. Record your sales calls until you find that “best” sales call. Then listen to it every morning before you begin your selling day!

2. Stop cold calling immediately. As the science of social dynamics explains, the repeated rejection of cold calling will put you into a sales rut, one that’s nearly impossible to get out of.

Take those two steps, and watch your attitude - and sales - explode!