One of my favorite tenets of sales is following your footsteps backwards through the snow. This goes back to my childhood when my best friend Amy and I would make a full day of dancing through unmarked snow. We would make fresh prints, then walk backwards through the snow so it looked like our prints just ended mid-path and the maker of the prints just disappeared.
For me, it’s a terrific visualization to think about walking backwards through the snow. So often as salespeople, we focus on the mistakes we make. I can recant for your instantly the blown sales calls I’ve had through my career, recalling verbatim the stupid things I said and the resulting failure. Ask me to remember a success and it’s more challenging.
That’s where I want to challenge YOU! Recall a time when you where on. You had intensely prepared for a client, anticipated his questions, asked him all the right questions to uncover his needs, demonstrated how your product satisfied those needs by focusing on your product’s benefits, overcame each of his objections and asked for his business. His “yes” began a long term client relationship. Whew! You know you have just the sale to remember.
Now walk backwards through the call. Remember yourself preparing, remember your probing questions, remember how you anticipated and answered each objective. Remember asking for the business? Remember yourself following the sales process in the RIGHT way!
The challenge I throw out to you is to remember yourself in your glory. I promise if you focus on your successes and those times when you follow the sales process and utilize your sales skills to your fullest, you’ll repeat it again and again. Learn from your mistakes but don’t focus on them. Focus on your successes!