With tough times looming, landing your next career sale may be tougher than it otherwise would have been. After all, you’re in a down economy and it seems like no one’s job is safe.
You probably thought you’d received the toughest challenge with your efforts to land your next career sale, but the truth is that it isn’t the toughest challenge you will have to take on. Among your challenges in landing a career, the sale is a frequent No Brainer, and that is, whatever skills you’ve developed or acquired over the past few years.
Here is what I mean by No Brainer Skills:
• No Brainer Drive Method- writing sales letters, walking into customers, managing sales, and a whole lot more.
• No Brainer Teaching Skills-the ability to encourage, discipline, passionate, inspire, motivate, or instruct people to bring their best.
• No Brainer Ideas of Selling-and so, so how can you sell and what does a salesperson sell?
• No Brainer Time Management-the ability to ask all the right questions, interpret data and know when to walk away.
• No Brainer Bidding-to what degree do you bid, do you waste time biding, or do you respect the effort, time, and cost factors for your purpose?
• No Brainer Coaxing the Sales Process-to what degree are you persistent, persistent, persistent?
If you’re selling, performing other tasks, or needs in a non-sales role, you never thought you would develop these skills to a high degree, which you did, for the simple reason that they aren’t used. If I had to guess, I would estimate that a maximum of one of every three high-level skills developed by people can be determined to be a key skill for selling.
Let’s take a look at some things you are doing (or not doing) that could be affecting your ability to sell more. Some of these skills, or habits, seem like No Brainer Skills. But, these habits and actions are truly abdominal muscles for your sales success. They clog up your blood flow and perplex your mind. You are spewing out empty calories when you are busy at work, at home, on vacation, or even just standing still.
Here’s another shortcut to prevent the No Brainer upon yourself. Regardless of whether you attend business networking events, go to a networking breakfast, are on Facebook, or follow up with the people you met at an event, try to catch at least a couple of these habits for yourself first. Then, focus on them only. When you come across as busy, where do you lose control of the conversation? So, my recommendation is: to be productive when you are at work, but not so busy that you lose control of your thinking at work. You want to get things accomplished and if you deal with a sales prospect or someone who is in a buying mode, this skill is a must, add to your unique value.
When you focus on the executives you’ve met with (executive networking events), you will be honing your No Brainer capturing skills. You will be meeting these executives, getting the conversation going, and can then watch the conversations flow. With that perspective, follow up on the No Brainer skills you’d picked up, and improve daily. Ideally, you can increase your ability to influence people to buy more, and begin to increase your business network by more effectively using No Brainer Skills. Use both these techniques at home, in your sales prospecting, and at other events if then. When you do, you’ll find a direct line to sales success.