“Consistency is a critical key to your success in sales. Whether you are making telephone calls, visiting clients, or direct marketing you have to hit your numbers everyday. A consistent sales work ethic will make you more successful than the sporadic, every third day, over-achiever hands down."
The problem with most salespeople is a lack of respect for the difficulties associated with commitment, dedication, discipline and consistency. These characteristics aren’t natural, they must be learned and practiced in order to apply them in such a way that will conquer and free yourself of natural tendencies. It will be difficult, but not impossible and most assuredly worth it. In a meeting of his sales people, Walter LeMar Talbot, President of the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company said,
"Gentlemen, after all, this business of selling narrows down to one thing - just one thing ... seeing the people! Show me any man of ordinary ability who will go out and earnestly tell his story to four or five people every day and I will show you a man who just can’t help making good!"
The advice given by both Dennis R. Kyle and Walter LaMar Talbot, if applied, will make the job of selling both easier and more successful. The difficulty associated with selling is found in not doing those things that have proven to be successful. You don’t do them because they are not natural to you and you would prefer doing what you have done in the past, or at least a version of it. Don’t fight against proven techniques, but rather embrace them. In Albert Gray’s famous treatise on the common denominator of success, he said that unsuccessful salespeople are not willing to do the things that cause successful salespeople to be great. It is not that they don’t know what to do, but rather, knowingly choose not to do them. Why don’t they do what successful salespeople do? I’m confident it has something to do with commitment, dedication, desire, hard work, persistence, discipline or consistency.
There is a pattern to sales success, similar to successful patterns of performance in any discipline or career. Don’t feel as though you need to reinvent the wheel, do what successful people have done before you. Benjamin Franklin adopted this process in his personal quest for self-improvement. He identified the traits he admired in other people and then applied them to himself. Over a period of time these traits became his and he became the better self. What caused Benjamin Franklin to do those things? Could it possibly have involved commitment, dedication, desire, hard work, persistence, discipline or consistency?
I challenge you to take the difficulty out of selling and enjoy the sweet success that can only be found in doing the things successful people do. Follow proven patterns of success in your sales activities. Heed the words of both Walter Talbot and Dennis Kyle. Selling is difficult until you commit to doing what successful salespeople do. Only then, will you discover the simplicity that makes selling the most rewarding career in the world.
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