Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. –Henry Ward Beecher
Friends have you come across a situation when you honestly worked very hard yet the customer did not give you the order? What did you do in that situation? Who did you hold responsible for this? Did you say that the company did it not give you a good price so you lost the order? Or did you say that the competitor’s product was far better than yours? Or did you say that the prospect himself was stupid?
I don’t know about you, but I have worked with lots of sales people and I have found that they generally give the replies as mentioned above.
They don’t do any kind of introspection and they do not ask a question that how can they handle the situation better next time? What is the preparation they need to do better next time?
Whereas a champion salesperson will always do a thorough analysis of the situation and find out that what could be done better so that the order loss could be avoided.
He or she would take the full responsibility onto themselves, and learn from the situation and be better prepared for the next call.
Yes friends, the basic difference between the average sales people and the champion salespeople is their one personality trait of taking full responsibility. The champion sales people always hold themselves responsible for results or no results! They do not excuse themselves by saying that they worked very hard but because of x y z reasons they could not get the order. Remember friends, failure is the first step to success. And people who do not own their failure, never get an opportunity to taste success.
As a salesperson, whether you are working for some company or you are working for yourself, in your own business; in both the cases you are self-employed. Sales is one profession where your results are your responsibility! The champion sales people understand this very well and they keep on building their circle of influence everyday so that they take full control of the situation.
The amount of responsibility taken by you for your actions and performance directly reflects on how much you love and respect yourself. And the more you like and respect yourself the more powerful and positive you become for the future. The more powerful and positive you become the more creative and solution oriented you act. So ultimately, your creativity and solution orientation becomes your power and you start getting the control on various difficulties and situations. Practicing this, will eventually make you feel Unstoppable and you start working as a force of nature. THIS IS THE CIRCLE OF POWER!
The organizations get paid for the results and not for the activities only. Activities are important to produce the results. But the customer pays you only when he gets a product in his hand i.e. when you give him the result.
So is true for an individual. As an individual sales person you are going to get paid only and only when you sell your product or your services and you produce results.
So, the Sales Champions always feel responsible and they take control of their results as a sales person if you want to make more money then you will have to make more money.
To become responsible for the results I recommend that you follow the following principles.
1. Act like a self-employed individual: Whether you are working for an organization or you are working for yourself as a sales person you must act as if you are self-employed. This means that you take end to end responsibility of producing results. You take care of production, delivery dispatches, collection, marketing, selling and everything else wherever your process can potentially get stuck! You have to take every business activity as if the buck stops with you. This means that you are going to be responsible for resolving all the obstacles which you experience on the way. You are the president of your business. You can take support from where you think is appropriate but ultimately the solution has to be found by you and only you. You cannot afford to pass the responsibility to somebody else. You have to take it as- “if it is to be, it is up to me”. Which means that you take control and if the things are to be done then they are to be done through you only. You take the complete responsibility and give no excuses to yourself. If you are not able to get through one door, you knock another door.
2. Be your own Boss: Following the principle of being self-employed, you are your own Boss. That means that you create your own goals your action plan. You find your own ways, give direction to yourself and also take control of your activities. You report to none other than yourself and you are the reviewer of your performance. The way you might expect from your boss that time to time he should coach you and give you direction, as your own boss, you take the responsibility of your coaching as well as learning. Being your own boss is a big responsibility. You take your own initiatives, and you enable yourself to follow the decided action Plan and produce results. If you are not able to produce result because your strategy has failed and it is your strategy that needs correction. As your own boss you immediately get into action and device a new strategy and then again command and deliver execution as per the new strategy. Don’t wait for anyone to come forward and support you, rather if you need support from someone then you go to that person and seek support.
3. Set your goals and achievement plan: The foundation of a healthy personality is to complete acceptance of the responsibility of your life. And as they say that the best way to become lucky is to create your own. One can always become lucky by setting the best goals and also creating the best achievement plan for the same. By following the above two principles of being self-employed and being your own boss
you can follow through the achievement plan and gradually you will also achieve your goals. The champion salespeople always create a vision board and keep visualizing their success. They set an automatic feedback system and keep learning from their mistakes. And by this process they keep modifying their work plan wherever it is necessary. Nobody is able to create a hundred percent fool proof plan right in the first go but still you have to start from somewhere and create and implement the best plan you can design!
4. Be the person of integrity: Integrity is another basic fundamental of successful people. They do what they say. They ensure that they follow through their commitment. Whether the commitment is to someone else or to oneself. The champion salespeople do everything with a high level of integrity. Whether they are dealing with customers, colleagues or any other person around them. They are extremely responsible and cautious of words while making a commitment, and once made, they ensure that they follow through their words. They understand the power of words very well and they take their words as the law. Sales people with high level of integrity are respected, by their colleagues as well as by their customers, and the prospects always want to do business with them.
So friends if you follow the above principles of responsibility you will be able to change your character and your personality. Soon people will start appreciating you as a person of your words and ethics. And you will be able to continuously enlarge your circle of influence and thereby the circle of control. And you will start producing results which
are needed to grow in business.
Friends, my mission is to support more than 1 lakh salespeople and business owners during coming 3 years, by providing them quality and affordable business growth and sales tools so that they can grow their business as much they want.
You can also become a part of this campaign by circulating this article to all your business friends.
Thank you very much and happy selling!
