Late last week, we learned that my brand new book, Pick Up The Phone & Sell, hit the WSJ bestseller list list in its first week of publication. This is tremendous news, and I very much appreciate your support in making this happen. Thank you! To commemorate this honor, the book got a sexy new gold banner at the top, which you can see here.
As thanks, here is the complete text of the final chapter of the book, a call to arms of sorts for salespeople everywhere: focus on what you can control, help your customers, and take proactive action. If you do these things, how can your sales possibly not grow?
Let me know what you think — I may turn this into a standalone download.
Let’s Focus on What We Can Control
As salespeople, we cannot control if the customer will buy.
Whether they say yes or no is not within our control.
We can try to influence their answer.
We can do everything right, ask all the right questions, and present our value in a compelling – and the customer may still say no.
In sales, nearly everything is outside of our control.
We can’t control if the customer will pick up the phone or not.
We can’t control if our customer is having a good day or a bad day when we call.
Did they have an argument with their spouse or significant other?
Did their boss treat them unfairly today, right before our call?
What about budgets? Have they been cut?
Sometimes the customer simply disappears for weeks and months, only to return, oddly, as if nothing happened.
Lots of people can tell us no all the time, but very few people can tell us yes, and only sometimes.
And all of this is nearly entirely outside of our control.
We can’t control much in the sales profession, but we can control our effort.
We can control how frequently our customers hear from us when nothing is wrong.
We can control expressing that we are interested, that we are present, and that we care.
And because our family relies on our success in this work over which we have almost no control . . .
And because our company relies on us to generate sales in this job in which we have so little control . . .
We should do everything we can to implement the behaviors we can control.
Behavior follows mindset – what we do is totally determined by what we think. So we should get our mind right.
We should be clear that the worst that can happen is not so bad.
We should understand the incredible value we bring to our customers and prospects.
We should move from fear to confidence, and from avoidance to enthusiasm and gratitude.
We can decide to think this way and work on making sure we think this way.
We should be bold, and then we should behave accordingly.
We can control picking up the phone and offering to help our customers more.
We can control telling our customers we’d like to help
them and asking them what else they have coming up that we can help with.
Because if we do this, the rest will take care of itself.
We will maximize our chances for success.
Our opportunities will grow exponentially.
Our pipeline will fill.
You can’t get hits unless you swing the bat.
Each proactive call is a swing – at helping your customers more.
More swings always – always – turn into more hits.
Your proactive calls tell your customers that you care.
Your proactive calls tell them you want to help.
We owe our customers this effort.
We owe this effort to our company.
We owe this effort to our family.
We owe this effort to ourselves.
We are in total control of this effort.
What a blessing!
Control what you can control.
And everything else will take care of itself.
This is an excerpt of the final chapter of Pick Up The Phone and Sell. Buy it on Amazon here.
