Does Your Sales Career Make You Happy?

Are You Happy With Your Sales Career?

Ugh…It’s Monday morning after another pay period of falling short of your sales goal and more embarrassingly, falling short of the company’s minimum quota set the two-week timeframe. Too many more underperformances like this and you’ll be out. Are you happy with your sales career?

Your company laptop is running slower than ever, so you’re late logging onto the conference call for the regional-ra-ra-you-can-do-it-now-here-are-four-new-products-you’re-expected-to-sell meeting that happens at the beginning of every pay period.

You know the budgets are set way too high, you know the company doesn’t care about what’s really going on in the field, and your sales are tanking. You are at the point where you just don’t care.

You are becoming more and more detached and less engaged with your job responsibilities, your customers, and your company. Is this you? Are you happy with your sales career? Well, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

Employee Engagement is at an All-Time Low. Why?

According to a July 2016 Gallup Poll on employee engagement, 32.6% of U.S. employees were “engaged” with their job, 50.7% were “not engaged, ” and 16.7% were “actively disengaged.

The term, “engaged” refers to employees who are enthusiastically involved in their work and who are committed to their company and the customers they serve. How about you? What category best describes your employment engagement?

Before you throw in the towel, know that all sales people have had times when they’ve felt so low that you couldn’t scrape them off the floor with a spatula. I’m speaking from experience so stay with me.

You can get out of this if you take an objective look at why this “stuff” is happening in the first place and learn the real reason that is causing your lack of sales and engagement with your job, company, and customers.

Don’t Sell. Let Them Buy.

Below is The Don’t Sell. Let Them Buy Check-In. It is designed it to help you determine your thinking patterns, attitude, and actions. Check-In to see where you stand.

For the following topic areas and on a scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, how would you rank your response?

The Don’t Sell. Let Them Buy Commitment Check-In

#1 – How you feel about your company?

How would you rank:

• Your company among all others in your industry
• How proud you are to let others know that you work for this company
• The passion you have for this industry
• How much your company appreciates you
• How fulfilling your job is as a career
• The opportunities available for you to make your desired income

#2 – How you feel about the products and services you represent

How would you rank:

• Your products and services among those of your competitors
• Your level of passion when presenting your products and services to your customer

#3 – How you feel about the customers who buy your products and services

How would you rank:

• Your level of passion for the customers that buy your products or services?

If your score is anything less than “10,” you do have a problem. But before you decide to look for employment elsewhere, keep reading.

Is the company you work for that out of whack, the products and services that substandard and the customers that off-putting? Could there be something you’re doing or not doing, that is influencing your attitude and is lowering your level of passion and engagement? Let’s assess the latter first. There’s one more Don’t Sell.  Let Them Buy Commitment Check-In that needs to be done. Take a breath and be honest with yourself.

# 4– How you feel about your efforts as an employee

How would you rank:

• Your effort toward learning all you can about your company, its history, and mission
• Your effort towards becoming a knowledge expert in your company’s products and services
• Your effort towards learning how to educate your customers about your products and services successfully
• Your effort towards over-coming customer concerns and brush-offs
• Your effort to seek advice from the top reps in your company
• Your effort in mastering the fundamental steps of the sale

If your score is “10” on every one of these questions, then do yourself, your company and teammates a favor, quit and go find a career that you love. Make it your intention to serve others every day doing something that gives you joy and purpose.

If your score is less than “10” on every one of these questions, hit yourself upside the head, like I did and get a clue, Sherlock. The issue may not be with your company but with you. Try the following for one month and see what happens.

Don’t Sell. Let Them Buy Nuggets

• Take responsibility for your actions or inactions and the success you create or don’t create.
• To blame is unproductive.
• To learn from making bad choices is priceless.
• Seek out a mentor.
• Ask the two most successful reps to have coffee with you.
• Discover what they do, what makes them successful and what makes them want to engage with the job, the company, and their customers.
• Ask to ride with them so you can see them in action with a customer.
• Hang with the successful people and stay away from the influence of the negative naysayers.
• Do what they do and try it for yourself.
• Commit to yourself and your company.

Remember, every sales rep starts on the bottom rung of the ladder.

The amount of success achieved is directly related to the amount of effort invested into climbing that ladder.

If you are not happy with your sales career and decide it is “you” who needs an adjustment, follow the advice above then retake the Check-In after one month to see how your attitude and company commitment level has changed.

This works. As Wayne Dyer said, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

You must believe that your company is the competition and sets the standard in your industry for the products and services it delivers.

If you don’t, you’ll always be playing the comparison game and become resentful because you see your company as somehow lacking. Your customers will see this which means your paycheck will reflect it.

When you believe in yourself, are “engaged” with your company and have put effort into being prepared with product knowledge and armed with great listening, selling and “serving” skills, you can focus on discovering what your customers really want.

They will see your commitment to your products and services through your passion. This is when customer trust will occur. When this happens, customers will buy from you, your sales will increase, and you help both your customer and yourself have a better way of life. And, isn’t that what we all want?

Post Script: Your computer is running slowly because for over two months now, you have ignored the memo from the IT department asking you to make an appointment so they could do a system update. In fact, that memo warned you this would happen.

I believe this falls under the Don’t Sell. Let Them Buy Nugget #1, Take responsibility for your actions or inactions and the success you create or don’t create. Just sayin….