Weekly Sales Tips: Become a Master of Sales
How important is it to master your sales presentation? What does mastery look like when it comes to your sales presentation?
How do you master anything, piano, or tennis, or nuclear fusion? Well, it all begins with an important step that sounds obvious, but in reality, can be quite challenging. To begin, you gotta wanna.
It takes desire. It all begins with the desire to master your craft. I don’t care what field you’re talking about, athletics, sciences, music, or sales, it all begins with the desire to be the best you can be. Every top performer, in every field, has shared that characteristic. They were motivated by their passion, by their desire, by their need to be the very best. That desire carries with it the willingness to work hard, to deal with frustration, and defeat, and even failure, but the desire carries you through. This is one of the reasons that achievement drive is so critical for top-performing sales professionals.
Top Performers Have to Win. To win, they have to be their very best. Do you have the desire to master your craft? Actions speak louder than words here.
The second thing you need is solid technique. You cannot have a perfect presentation with imperfect technique. You need to make sure you’re doing the right things, right.
How much do you challenge your own technique? Is your way really the best way? How much of your presentation is based on tradition? You’ve probably heard the phrase, “we’ve always done it that way.” and is a sure red flag that it might be time to rethink things.
In my 35 years of training and coaching, I have met too few salespeople who really challenged what they have learned and how they perform, but the best are constantly putting their techniques on trial. And by the way, if you’re looking for great techniques and you’re not on Sales365 yet, get over there.
Now the third piece of the mastery puzzle is repetition. It’s an absolute must. There is no mastery without repetition. The hallmark of mastery is unconscious perfection, and that is only attainable through repetition. You need to be able to do it perfectly without thinking about it. You need to have that muscle memory in place to perform without it being a conscious act.
This means you can demonstrate your skill without having to think about the skill. “Wait, Jeff, you’re telling me not to think about my sales presentation?” Well, yeah, I am. Do you know what I want you thinking about? I want you thinking about the person standing in front of you. I want you to focus on the customer.
That’s the great benefit of mastering your sales presentation. You don’t have to think about all of the fine points because you’ve practiced those so much. When you have that down, you can focus on what really matters, what the customer wants to tell you.
One last thing to keep in mind here, mastery is really, really fun. It’s a rush. There’s nothing quite like the perfectly delivered question or how you ask for the sale without it being weird, or contrived, or uncomfortable.
It’s time, my friends, to lean into mastery. It’s time to learn more and earn more!
