Sales is one of the most stressful careers in any company because it’s our job to encourage people to make decisions.
With everything going on in people’s lives, convincing them to prioritize the decision to consider what you’re selling is tough, and it’s why sales experience some of the highest turnovers of any job field.
The reason many salespeople choose not to make sales a career is that many think they can’t control their success. While it’s true we can’t control a prospect or client’s decision, if we focus on the things that we are in control of, it can have massive effects on how prospects and clients respond to us.
To learn how to maintain (or regain) control of a sales career, we sat down with Susie Mathieson, a sales trainer and coach. She walked us through a simple sales system that has less to do with our prospects and more to do with our mindsets.
Since we’re trimming hope from our sales strategy, we’ll use the acronym TRIM to guide us through creating a system with a trigger, ensuring it’s repeatable, building in ways to improve it, and of course, ensuring it’s measurable and getting us results.
T – Trigger: Susie says the trigger for maintaining control in a sales career begins every morning.
To regain or maintain control throughout your sales process, Susie recommends first paying attention to your language as a salesperson. This is the self-talk you give yourself: Are you finding reasons you might fail or reviewing the reasons you could succeed?
I can’t …
I have to …
I won’t be able to …
Those are all phrases to pay attention to, as it indicates giving away control of your success as a salesperson.
R – Repeatable: To make maintaining control a repeatable process, Susie recommends taking time after every call to not ask what went wrong, but instead to focus on what went well.
Did the prospect pick up the phone? That’s a win.
Did you explain why you were calling and get your prospect asking questions? That’s another win.
Once you capture what went well, decide what ‘wins’ you’d like to repeat in the future. You’ll likely discover some things that went well that weren’t planned – ensure those are captured and repeated!
I – Improvable: To improve the way we’re maintaining control of our own success; Susie recommends examining where in your sales day you have control and asking where you could easily do better. It might be making one or two more calls, or being more assertive and bolder when in conversations, or doing better at mapping your call blocks and schedule. Anywhere you can exert control, no matter how small, adds up to increase the control you’ll have in your sales career.
M – Measurable: To measure a system that places you in control of as much as possible over your sales career, Susie says to measure something most salespeople don’t spend much time considering – how they feel. While it may go against the ‘go get them!’ mentality salespeople have, Susie, says that if we’re blaming less and appreciating the areas of control we do have more, we’ll be more excited about conducting outreach, having better conversations, and getting more purchase orders out the door.