Playing to win: Being a top-producer is about winning the game, not just playing

By Karl Graf

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Winning athletes win games and winning sales professionals close business. In the games Michael Jordan scored the most points his team lost. Are you shooting but not winning? Do you have too many leads in the pipeline and no way to gauge how to close them? Like athletes sales people have to win to be considered successful, and in order to achieve the success we desire we have to hone our skills daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly. The difference between being a top-producing sales professional and a sales person just getting by is the effort they put into the game. If you are not getting better at your craft then you run the risk of having someone with more innovative techniques come along and take your position. The bottom line is if a sales person can not close the deal then they can’t stay in the game. 

The biggest problems sales professionals face in closing business are: a fear of rejection; too much emotional involvement; tough time selling product/service value; being unable to talk about money; and excuse making. If sales people can learn to tackle these issues they can become top-producing sales professionals and won’t need to be concerned about being cut from the team.

I’ve been in this business over two decades and I’ve spent the last five years training sales professionals, sales managers, and CEO’s on achieving results. In all of these years I’ve never seen a company let go of a top performing salesperson. I’ve also never seen top performing sales professionals that aren’t constantly perfecting their technique, improving their attitude, and developing new behaviors. Unless you go outside of your comfort zone you will never grow.

Technique
Perfecting your technique involves learning new ways to achieve better results. You should constantly be pushing yourself to exceed goals and expectations. The only way to exceed goals is to practice. Write new cold-calling sales scripts and rehearse them with a recorder, role-play with your manager or co-workers. You should map out scenarios so that when someone gives you an excuse you have your rebuttal. Long gone are the days where you can get back to a prospect in a few days with an answer to their question. The time it takes you to figure it out someone else will come along and snatch the sale. The marketplace is cluttered and no one dominates anymore, you have to be better, smarter and more efficient than the competition. 

Attitude
Improving your attitude is about the way you view your company and your position within the company. If you don’t have a positive attitude towards your company then why do you still work there? How much more would your commission check be if you worked for a company where you believed in the products/services you were pushing? And even more important how much happier would you be?

Behavior
Changing your behaviors starts with having a plan – a map for your life. You should build your plan, track your results and fine tune as you go along. Everyone wants to win at work, in relationships, and in life but few sit down and map out where they want to go and how they want to get there. Living day to day without a plan is wondering around aimlessly. What team goes into the championship game without a playbook? Everyday we are playing in a championship and we need a plan before we step foot on the court.

Once you have your plan, you need to set goals, both long-term and short-term. We should all be setting 90-day goals every 90 days and yearly goals every year. When you know that you must achieve a certain goal by a certain time frame you can focus on what you need to do, settle down and do it. When you truly focus on your goals your behaviors will change to mimic the results you desire. We are not talking about saying you want to do something or thinking about it, I mean actually writing down what you want to achieve in the long-term and short-term and putting them in a place where you will be reminded daily of the goals you set for yourself.

Goals provide your why. Why are you doing what you’re doing, all of your actions should have a purpose. Goals provide your motivation. If you know that you want to own a certain home in a certain neighborhood by a certain time you will be motivated to succeed. Goals provide your energy. To be successful you need to be energized and the adrenaline you need to finish the game will come when you see that you are almost at your goal. Then when you reach your goal, it’s time to set a new one. 

In the process of improving yourself through techniques, attitudes and behavior you must ask yourself key questions:

• Am I mentally and emotionally tough?

• Is my self-esteem bullet-proof?

• What causes my comfort zone?

• Do I continuously challenge myself?

• What are my fears?

• What doubts do I have in myself?

• What destructive self-talk do I have?

• What limiting beliefs do I have?

We all want to win, but many of us don’t know how to get there. I see professionals every day who tell me they aren’t seeing results; they have a ton of prospects but aren’t closing business. I tell them they aren’t perfecting their technique, improving their attitude, and developing new behaviors. And without fail when they decide they want to get better and work on their technique, attitude and behavior they always see results

Karl Graf is CEO of TrustPoint Management Group (TPMG).  TPMG helps companies, individuals, and organizations who are committed to growing their businesses to the next level through training, coaching, and process development in sales and sales management. Visit www.trustpointtx.com or www.trustpointmo.com for more information.

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