The triad of death of a salesman

There is in Bolivia, a road that connects La Paz with Corioco in this country, has an extension of approximately 65 kilometers and is considered the most dangerous road in the world, getting this title by the number of deaths it generates per year and the type of boulders or boulders that has and that are lethal for those who fall on it.?

This road becomes dangerous because its road is irregular and the driver must have the cunning and expertise to avoid the most pronounced obstacles and boulders, knowing that a mistake can be fatal for him and for those who travel with him.?So now let's ask ourselves the following question

?How is the seller's road a long, smooth highway, or a road with sharp curves, sharp bends and a lot of obstacles?        

The road of death has 3 characteristics that make it unique:?

• 1. the lane width is only 3 square meters.?
• 2. It has a null option of handrails.?
• 3. the cliffs are more than 600 meters long.??

Precisely many of those who start the sales career when they come across this panorama tend to get off or say the hackneyed phrase "Sales is not my thing", because precisely sales have that great disadvantage we do not have a wide path when we trace the route, probably on the way we will not find a place to lean on and especially in a wrong decision we can fall into the cliff and never get out of there.?

But this is not a horror story, on the contrary, it is just a warning to the 3 big mistakes that we as salespeople tend to make - myself included - and that can lead us to a literal professional death, and that over the years have made one see the death of many good professionals.?

"If you're offered a seat on a rocket, don't ask which seat. Just get on." -Sheryl Sandberg

The first mistake a salesperson makes is .... STOP LEARNING, I had a boss Francisco Javier Montesinos A. who told me a phrase that I still apply to this day?

"You have to learn how to learn."

This omission makes one fall into the option of "I KNOW HOW TO SELL", "THERE IS NOT MORE YOU CAN TEACH ME", and this is a very big lie because it means that we are at a point where we already touch the clouds with our hands, the real problem is that with this thinking you run the risk of a reality check being given at any time. We must have the ability to learn new things every day, resilience must be a constant for the seller every day because we are in an era where we find new and revolutionary things every day. Today we talk about metaverses, super apps, emotional AI and this makes us face new educational and adaptation challenges.?

Knowledge gives us the opportunity to be able to manage increasingly broader conversation environments with our customers, and these in turn will help us to strengthen personal relationships because you are promoting an image of a connoisseur, someone who is highly versatile and adaptable to any situation.?

"Learning how to sell a product is only the minimum foundation that every salesperson should have."?

Today we must learn to speak the language of the client's business, know how the industry it belongs to is advancing, understand how political decisions affect it and how I can give value to the organization, these topics can only be learned by going the extra mile because this preparation is not only for my clients, it is for my life.?

2. The second mistake a salesperson makes is to go into "Lone Ranger" mode.?

This style of salesperson is known today as the "Soyla" or "All-man-company", styles that refer to salespeople having control of everything from pre-sales, sales, post-sales, administration, logistics, implementation, customer success, renewal manager, etc., they assume all the positions in the company despite having a whole team around them.??

Do you know any lone ranger in your office??

In my experience, the contribution of the people around me was to blame for 95% of my greatest successes in sales, and this was solely and exclusively because I took the time to get to know them from a non-professional point of view, and began to see what their strengths were, and how I could put them to work in order to generate better projects.?

Part of understanding this is to listen to the contributions that they can offer as a team in order to generate a valuable business. I remember here how a former colleague and great friend Maria Esther was a great ally, but she was one of those who always questioned some of the crazy ideas that came to my mind, but many of the contributions she gave became vital for the projects to culminate successfully. And here I could talk about countless people over time, but the lesson is very clear.

As vendors, we must have the ability to form a team around us that together will help us achieve the best possible results.

My success does not lie in all my potential, it lies in the fact that as the orchestrator of a business I must take all the advantages that my work team offers me to be able to give my client the best possible value in one way or another.?

The all-rounders, those erudite people that exist in all the branches have a very marked weakness and it is that they know all the basics but never to a real depth to be able to do everything, this type of salesman is no longer functional in the organizations because the contribution of all is necessary for the success of all.?The strength of an organization is proportional to the strength of its weakest link, so teamwork, communication and effective internal management make this a 180° turn and become a strong organization, and one as a seller has the responsibility to help the organization to meet these challenges and turn them into strengths.?

3. The last serious mistake of a salesperson that can make him fall off a cliff: OFFER THE IMPOSSIBLE.

"Credibility is hard won, but easily lost." anonymous

The most valuable asset that every salesperson must have is credibility, the etymology of this word comes from the Latin credibilis and means "quality that can be believed". Its lexical components are: credere (to believe), -ible (indicates possibility), plus the suffix -dad (quality). Why is it the most important asset? Because the most common mistake in sales and the one that hurts organizations the most is to have offered something that we are not going to be able to provide.?

This mistake of offering the impossible has a chain of internal affectations that if we were able to quantify them would put numbers over 6 digits, starting with the customer's anger, followed by the losses around the business, adding also an issue that is sometimes underestimated and is the impact of the error on the image of the company in front of the customer.?Statistics on the Internet indicate that 96.7% of customers have had problems with false expectations after a purchase, and of that percentage, 88.97% indicated that they did not buy again from that supplier.?

Now as vendors we must take care of our credibility, and this is built in each year that we remain in the industry, and yes, there are vendors who have terrible credibility and that makes it more difficult for them to generate business, they will require triple the effort compared to someone who has been able to overcome difficult situations.?

Credibility does not go hand in hand with the company you work for, it goes hand in hand with how YOU as a salesperson form in the client the correct expectations of a business, and that each promised letter is delivered and over delivered, because this will transcend beyond where you work.??Credibility follows you and will open doors for you, but it is up to you which doors you want to open.?

Now, let's go back to point 1 of this newsletter, learning about multiple topics, trends, business verticals, technologies will give us the necessary credibility with our customers, because credibility goes hand in hand with the trust that we generate, but if we do not trust ourselves, what makes you think that others trust you??

"If people like you, they will listen to you, but if they trust you, they will do business with you. "Zig Ziglar

In summary, we could say that the three big mistakes that bury a vendor are not learning every day, not leaning on others and giving air to customers, this triad of the death of a vendor is the result of seeing dead people on the road, people around you who have let them ram them and destroy their careers.?

How vital it is for a Salesman to recognize his mistakes, his weaknesses, his frailties, but more important is that these points of improvement are daily improved, enlarged, trained. Let us remember that we are all salespeople, regardless of the position we hold in the organizations, and as such we must understand how our environment changes and how we must adapt to these changes.?

Let's get into the habit of reading a book, a magazine every day, let's open the door to listen to that feedback that will give us a starting point towards a better tomorrow, but let's not stop evolving, innovating towards our best version, because the day we do it is because we are already on the cliff without much to do.