So much of sales has to do with attitude and mindset.
Want to grow?
What do you believe about your products and services? How do you perceive your work? Are you selling products or improving lives and companies? Are you offering great value to your customers when you call, or do you fear bothering them?
When it’s time to follow up on a quote or proposal, what are you thinking? Are you expressing interest or taking more of their valuable time?
When you need to inform your customer that there’s a lot more you have to offer them, where’s your head? Are you proud to help or worried about overstepping?
Through my work with clients — who are almost always heads of manufacturers and distributors between $50 million and $500 million in revenue — I’ve identified nine key attitudes that impact revenue growth.
These are ways of thinking and behaving, and, as such, they can be learned. I can teach this and you can adopt it into your daily process.
The following list represents my most recent work and, to date, I’ve only shared it with clients in workshops. It isn’t in my latest book, although it might become my next book! You’re the first to read about this.
Here are the 9 critical attitudes for growing sales:
- Focus on Your Value: When you talk about your products and services, don’t talk about your products and services. Emphasize how your customers are improved. You save them time. You’re dependable, which allows them to sleep at night. You grow their businesses. You help them look good to their customers, which leads to retention and referrals for them. You do this. Talk about it. It’s far more interesting than your product specs.
- Confidence: You aren’t lucky to have your customers’ business; they’re lucky to have you. If you asked them, they’d tell you this. You aren’t lucky they picked up the phone, they’re lucky you decided to call them over 100 others you could be talking to. Be confident in your value. The opposite is uncertainty, doubt and fear, which is the default position for many salespeople. It’s why salespeople quickly agree to lower prices at the customer’s first request: They fear losing the business. Teach them to think confidently and this stops. It’s part of nearly every project I do.
- Boldness: Confidence informs our thinking and boldness dictates our behavior. If we think confidently, we behave boldly. Boldness — the opposite of meekness — leads us to think less and take action more. When we’re bold, we don’t hesitate to pick up the phone, or schedule the meeting, or pivot to the sale, or ask if our customer would like to buy other products we offer. Bold salespeople don’t procrastinate. Bold salespeople ask for the business. Bold salespeople sell more. This can be taught and learned. I teach this.
- Optimism: There are countless studies that show optimistic people are more successful than pessimistic ones. It makes sense, right? If you believe you’ll get the business before you pick up the phone (confidence), you’ll behave accordingly (boldly) and chances are you’re right. If, conversely, you believe you won’t get the business (pessimism), chances are you won’t. Henry Ford said “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Might as well be optimistic and think you can!
- Gratitude: Too many people — starting with our politicians and the media that covers them — believe that the country is broken. The country isn’t broken. America is the greatest country in the world, and, as such, the best country on the planet in which to be in business. Your company isn’t broken; it’s been around so long — often for generations! — for a reason: Because you provide massive value to your customers. Be grateful for where we get to live, where we get to work, and the customers we get to sell to. The opposite of gratitude is cynicism, which is far more common to find in business. Be grateful and you’ll behave accordingly. You’ll sell more.
- Perseverance: As I’ve written previously in this space, we only need one yes. A single yes obliterates 100 no’s that came before it. A no never means no forever. It merely means not now. So give people another opportunity to say yes. In fact, a terrific revenue growth technique, which I have my clients implement, is to go back to everyone who said no in the last year and ask if you can help now that some time has passed.
- Uncommoditization: Focus on your relationship and you’ll be singular. Nobody else has the relationship with their customers that you have. The friendship, the extra effort you put in, the trust, the reliability. That’s yours alone. Focus on it, rather than your products and pricing.
- Proactive Efforts: Strategic growth demands proactivity. Get out of the problem-solving circle: A customer calls with a problem; you work to resolve it. Then another problem comes in and you solve that one. This repeats until it’s 4PM and time to go home. Block out 15 minutes of proactive communication time daily, and call customers and prospects.
- Action: Do stuff. Communicate. Don’t put it off. Don’t procrastinate, which is the core competence of the unsuccessful. Make your core competence action. Your communication doesn’t have to be perfect and it doesn’t have to be 100% ready before you send it out. It only needs to be helpful. So take action.
I repeat: These nine critical growth attitudes can be taught, and they can be learned. If you want to grow your sales, turn these attitudes into culture inside your business.
Alex Goldfayn runs The Revenue Growth Consultancy, a seven-figure consulting practice which grows companies and creates positive cultures by marinating customer-facing staff in the glowing feedback of the customers. Email Alex directly at alex@evangelistmktg.com or visit www.alexgoldfayn.com for more information.
