You're in a fierce direct sales battle. How do you keep your confidence soaring?

Selling the solution and not the product is a better way to achieve more results in sales. An example would be selling mattresses, the sales team member can sell comfort, sound sleep, better relaxation for the body rather than selling the mattress itself. This is providing a solution to customer needs and not just offering a product for sale. The solution must be emphasized. Customers buy solutions and not products, customers buy products because they satisfy some needs and provides solutions for them. In sales, it's imperative to be highly skilled in handling objections, having a product knowledge, industry knowledge and competitor knowledge is imperative to handling objections.

Target splits should be split into fragmented bits from yearly targets, to half year, to quarterly to monthly, weekly, and daily targets. Everyday the sales team must know what they need to achieve in volume, the volume they sell drives in monetary value they will achieve. The targets must be realistic in line with the resources on ground, the coverage area, customer buying habits and patterns. There should be praises, recognitions for any achievements, this will motivate the team to do more. Any team member who achieves targets should be celebrated so as to motivate, and ginger other team members who will learn from that successful achievement.

Realize what you are offering might not fit a particular customers needs at this time. Follow up and ask for referrals. No now may be yes later.

Rejection is an opportunity for a more intelligent beginning. There should be intense and robust trainings on selling skills, customer care, first step in sales, professionalism and ethical sales practices. A sales person should be ready to handle rejections, rejections that are properly handled can be converted to buying decisions. Sales teams should endeavour to ascertain why the customer said no, this information is very key for business decisions involving product redesign and process realignment.

Continuous learning is very essential to success in sales because the world is dynamic, customer tastes and preferences change with the world's dynamics. There was a time automatic cars couldn't be sold easily, majority in the whole world used automatic transmission gears. Today manual transmission gears that were once dominant in the market place are no longer dominant because tastes and preferences can change. It's imperative and essential that the sales team are always learning and developing themselves to move with latest trends and activities.

The mindset is a powerful tool that can alter perception. Successful sales people use their mindset to alter the perception of their customers into assuming their product are the best preferred choice they can get. Positive affirmations are great ways to reinforce beliefs but the sales person MUST take action! Affirmations are good but positive actions bring in sales numbers.