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    Don’t Talk Yourself Out Of It

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    People have an amazing ability to convince themselves of almost anything. This is great when they are facing a challenge and they reach inside and not only conceive a means of addressing the challenge, but taking extraordinary action and successfully hitting it head on and overcoming it.

    Of course the opposite is also true and more common, when people see a challenge, a big challenge in their eyes; so big and seemingly overwhelming, that when they look inside, all they find is the rational for giving up and a list of “why nots”.

    Stop Talking To Yourself

    Ask any good sales manager or sincere buyer, and they can share numerous examples of sales people who have talked themselves out of a sale. By this I don’t mean the more common example of a sales person who doesn’t shut up long enough to allow the buyer to place the order. This is more about specific instances where the sales person, faced with some difficult options, convinces themselves of “the inevitable negative outcome”, and as a result stops trying to do anything to change the situation in their favour, and settle for the deal being lost.

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    Let Your Process Do The Talking

    One of the best things about having a process is that it takes a lot of the subjectivity out of execution.
    Tibor Shanto

    To avoid this, and be able to overcome more hurdles you face in selling, you need to turn to something many sales people find boring, and fail to see as a strategic advantage, their sales process. This assumes they or their company has a defined and viable sales process that continues to evolve with the market and buyers. If the have one of those, the other factor is the rep’s propensity to follow it to succeed. Many pretend, or cherry pick, “I like this, I’ll do it; skip that, don’t like it”. If the process is in fact a good one, you need follow it as it is, not your interpretation based on likes, dislikes. If you don’t follow the parts you don’t like, you will not only lose sales, but more importantly, not improve in ways that help you leverage the process and win sales.

    Objectivity Rules

    One of the best things about having a process is that it takes a lot of the subjectivity out of execution. Rather than your execution reflecting your mood on any given day, the process allows you to perform the right activities, for the right reason, and the right tools at critical stages of the sale. Even in difficult sales or scenario, taking the emotion out of it, and focusing on specific activities, allows you to execute, examine results, adjust and execute again. The same time and energy that went into the emotional side of things, is now applied to specific actions and impacts.

    This is why a key component of a viable and evolving process is metrics. The process drives the activity, the measurement allows you to evaluate and set out the next set of actions, measure again, and repeat. Sure you will lose deals, but you will have tried, and understand why you lost after the fact, not because you talked yourself out of things in advance.

    Article originally published July 14th 2016 on
    Renbor Sales Solution's Blog
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    Tibor Shanto
    Published December 4, 2016
    By Tibor Shanto

    Tibor Shanto is a 25-year veteran of B2B sales, Tibor has developed an insider’s hands on perspective of successful sales execution. Called a brilliant sales tactician Tibor shows organizations and sales professionals how to leverage their sales process to shorten sales cycles, increase close ratios, and create double digit growth through execution and using the right combination strategy, tools, metrics, tactical execution of the sales process.

    Find out more about Tibor Shanto on LinkedIn