Recently I’ve been working with a sales organization that has been selling the same suite of services as one of my businesses for a long long time, then a few months ago they decided to introduce a new one.
I was initially excited to work with them – because THEY were extremely excited about selling this new service to both their existing clients, as well as new ones. In fact they thought that leading with this new service would make it easier to prospect for new business.
And so off they all went, out into the field, to make a proverbial killing selling the new gizmo and getting prospects all lined up to buy it.
Except for one minor, tenny-weenie detail…
It didn’t happen!
"Your Excuses Are Your Own." -Alec Baldwin as Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross
You see, there are many successful – very successful – salespeople in this organization, and despite that, I heard them all gripe about how hard it is to sell this service or that one, and that prospects are inundated with cold calls, direct mail, and email from competitors all selling the same service. (Which was not true at all – I went out and did some selling on my own, to really understand what they were facing.)
In fact, this new service turned out to be MUCH more difficult to sell than what they were already selling!
And even though their existing suite of services turned out to be very EASY to sell – something I quickly learned when I went out and did it myself for a couple of days – they continued on with their whining and excuses about how “hard” it is to get a prospect to even listen, let alone buy.
The strange part of this is that when I tried selling it, prospects were practically throwing money at me because they wanted it so badly – at least the way I presented it, anyway.
AND – instead of being willing to drop the idea that their new service would be so easy to sell (it wasn’t – I tried selling that one too), they chose to sit around and gripe all day and make EXCUSES instead of learning how to PROPERLY sell in the first place!
If YOU think your product or service is difficult to sell, really think hard about why you feel that way. Dig deep. Is it REALLY that difficult? Or are you just not going about it properly?
"Is your product really difficult to sell? Or are you just making excuses?"
Are you only approaching, or better yet, getting them to approach you, qualified prospects who have a clearly identified need for your product or service and are ready, willing, and able to buy right now?
Because that’s how I was able to sell this firm’s “old” product like gangbusters – only working with qualified prospects, and then going in – up front – with an analysis of how much money the service would bring into their business.
Meanwhile, the rest of the sales force – who found the service “hard” to sell – were approaching people at random, saying, “This is what we do and can do you for you, are you interested?” And then they wondered why they barely sold enough to make a living!
"Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." -Henry Ford
Listen up: Your job in selling is only as difficult as you think it is. Change your thinking and your sales results will change with it.
New York Times best-selling author Frank Rumbauskas is the author of the Never Cold Call Again® System and has won numerous accolades, such as Readers Choice for Business Book of the Year from 800-CEO-READ, and has been named one of Fast Company’s top 30 most influential people. To learn more, and to download a free 37-page PDF "sneak peek" into his Never Cold Call Again lead-generation system, visit NeverColdCall.com
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