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by Dave Kahle
“Every profession expects the serious practitioner of that profession to continually seek out the best practices of that profession, and then to roll them into his/her routine with discipline.”
That statement comes out of my mouth in almost every seminar or keynote that I present. Sometimes I follow it up with the ironic observation that there is, apparently, one exception to that rule — and that is the profession of sales, where we don’t expect anyone to improve.
That is, of course, nonsense. The truth is that better salespeople produce better results. The best salespeople produce the best results.
I just got off the phone with one of my clients. We were discussing the miserable state of the market in his industry — down about 35 percent from two years ago. Yet, he observed that four of his 12 salespeople where having record years.
“It’s easy to do well when the market is growing,” he observed. “Most salespeople don’t know what they did to gain business when the market was growing, and they don’t know what to do when the market is shrinking. The good salespeople, though, know how to sell. And that brings them results.”
Good salespeople sell more than mediocre salespeople. That is such a blatantly obvious truth, that I’m embarrassed to even mention it. And the way that salespeople get to be good is just like every other professional becomes good — they practice!
Good doctors practice their craft and continually improve. So do good social workers, teachers, accountants, and lawyers. Ditto for ministers, nurses, airline pilots, chefs and executives. The list goes on and on. No reasonably mature person thinks that after a year on the job they know it all. On the contrary, they expect to learn, grow and improve for the balance of their careers.
According to the Encarta Dictionary, the word practice means:
Here’s how:
It’s just like golf, tennis or any area of human endeavor. If you are going to become good at it, you must practice.
Our success is less about the product and service and company that we represent and more about the actions that we take. And a pattern of action is a sequence of actions that are repeated. That’s it. Good salespeople understand, over time, the most effective actions they can take, they put them together into patterns and repeat them until they cause more effective customer reactions.
Read Also: The Ultimate Guide to Lead Scoring System
Back to my example of asking a series of good questions. When a salesperson has turned that action into a pattern, and by repetition, turned the pattern into a habit, and then by discipline and thoughtfulness continually exercises that habit, that salesperson has become an excellent salesperson. It’s what you do those counts. And, good salespeople practice doing the right things until they get it right. It’s the practice that does it.
About the author
Dave Kahle has trained tens of thousands of B2B salespeople and sales managers to be more effective in the 21st Century economy. He’s authored nine books, and presented in 47 states and seven countries.