Just be a little bit better

One of the biggest mistakes we see in the financial services and insurance industries are companies trying to improve sales performance with a quick fix. They somehow believe that if their people just take that one, special sales course, they'll never have to do anything again, and they'll sell like superstars for the rest of their career.

Unfortunately, when this approach is taken, ultimately it's the clients that lose out. The sales person goes on the course and improves their techniques a little. As a result, their clients start getting a professional experience that helps them uncover needs they didn't know they had, or had yet to get around to dealing with. Life is good. But then there is no follow up, the sales person doesn't focus on keeping their skills sharp, meets with some rejection, starts cutting some corners, and before long they are back to the same old habits they had before they took the course. Or worse, they think because their sales are back to pre-course levels the sales training was a waste of time and they vow not to ever attend anything like that again saying, "I've done that before – it didn't work". The client is now doomed to deal with someone that is content doing things the same way they have for their entire career. Too bad the client's expectations are constantly rising or that might be acceptable.

Habits

Habits are interesting beasts and they drive much of our day to day behaviours - especially our sales behaviours. Habits get started innocently enough. They are like a cable: we weave a thread of it each day, until the behaviour becomes so ingrained it is almost impossible to break. Neurologically, it takes about 25 repetitions of doing something before your body takes over and starts to do it automatically without any real conscious thought. The good news is that the same neurological mechanisms our body used to establish the bad habit can be used to establish a new one.

One of the bad sales habits we see in financial services and insurance is order taking. In some cases, people have been order taking for their entire careers. It's naive to think that by practicing good selling skills 25 times they will kick the old habit and miraculously turn into a superstar salesperson. It's a good place to start, but without a consistent effort to adopt the new skills, and focus on the activity they want to have happen, it's far too easy to slip back into old behaviour. This repetition of the new skill can take a year or more before it truly becomes the default behaviour. That may sound like a long time, but if you consider how long the old behaviour was in place, it really isn't.

Here are seven quick tips on getting new sales behaviours to stick:

1.  After sales training, review the material with your coach or manager. Show them the questions and phrases you came up with. Work with them to make the ideas you developed sound more natural and confident. If your coach isn't that involved with you, review the exercises on your own and ask yourself, "Would I actually say that to a client?" If the answer is no, change it up until you are comfortable. Unless you make it your own, chances are you won't use what you learned.

2. Replace the habit, don't try to break it. The experts will tell you that you can't break habits. Stopping an activity is difficult to do. The secret is to replace the poor behaviour with a better activity.

3. Practice. In every successful sales culture I have had the privilege of being involved with there was one constant: the sales people practiced on each other. They were always asking each other how to say things differently to the clients. Sometimes that was just a chat at lunch, other times they would role-play a situation they were having difficulty with. Try some of the techniques out on your coworkers to get comfortable before you try it out on your clients.

4. Just do it. There comes a point where you just have to take a leap of faith and blurt that question out of your mouth. Try a new sales skill out at least 25 times to give yourself the best shot at developing that new habit. You need the experience that comes from actually trying a technique many times over with a client before it starts to sound natural and you start to meet with success.

5. Get feedback. Urge your coach or manager to listen in on your sales conversations. You'll never know if there is a better way unless you get that third party observation.

6. Set goals for yourself. Og Mandino said it best: "In order to be a success in an endeavour you only need to do a small measurable amount more than the average individual, because most people are content with mediocrity".

Don't try to hit the home run right away. Success will come to those who set small, achievable goals and stick with it. Get good at the fundamental skills before you move on. Your new skills are a way of life, not a program you do for awhile.

7. Take a long term approach to your development. Don't go crazy for a week or two trying everything you have learned and then crash and burn and go back to old habits. Adopt the strategy that suggests you will focus on one thing at a time, getting a little bit better every day, every week, every month. There's no such thing as an overnight sensation. "Remarkable achievement is always preceded by unremarkable effort and hard work".

* Do you want to have above average sales skills?

* Do you want to have above average results?

* Do you want an above average income?

*** What are you going to do today that is above average?

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Copyright © 2008 by Fusion Performance Group Inc.
Copyright © 2012 by Fusion Performance Group Inc. If you share this, print it out, or reproduce it in any way, please retain this copyright statement.