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    The Inside Game; How to Become a Top Performing Sales Person and Enjoy Every Step of the Way
    The Inside Game; How to Become a Top Performing Sales Person and Enjoy Every Step of the Way
    The Inside Game; How to Become a Top Performing Sales Person and Enjoy Every Step of the Way
    Ebook129 pages2 hours

    The Inside Game; How to Become a Top Performing Sales Person and Enjoy Every Step of the Way

    By Mark Shriner

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    About this ebook

    "The Inside Game" was designed to show you how to become a top performing sales person and enjoy every step of the way. It will show you how to immediately move forward on the road to achieving record sales, and how seemingly difficult sales tasks such as cold calling and networking can actually be quite enjoyable.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMark Shriner
    Release dateSep 21, 2010
    ISBN9781310300363
    The Inside Game; How to Become a Top Performing Sales Person and Enjoy Every Step of the Way

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      Book preview

      The Inside Game; How to Become a Top Performing Sales Person and Enjoy Every Step of the Way - Mark Shriner

      The Inside Game

      How to become a top performing salesperson

      and enjoy every step of the way

      Mark Shriner

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © 2010 by Mark Shriner

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      For information regarding print sales contact sales@iperformancetraining.com

      To my family, friends,

      colleagues, and clients

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Introduction

      How to Use This Book

      PART ONE – Internal Behaviors

      The Importance of Attitude

      There Is No Such Thing as Hard or Easy

      From Scarcity to Plenty

      Moving Things Forward

      How the Blame Game Can Stunt Your Growth

      ABC - Always Be Cool

      ABL – Always Be Learning

      Clarity of Purpose

      Be the Person You Want To Be!

      PART TWO – External Activities

      Prospecting – The Need for Leads

      Cold Calling – Finding Hidden Gold

      The Meeting – Now What?

      Building Trust

      Listen!

      Low-Stress Closing

      Your Verbal Toolbox

      Introduction

      Wouldn’t it be great if you were a top-performing salesperson? Wouldn’t it be even greater if you could relax, have fun, and enjoy all aspects of selling? This book can help. It will show you how to become a top-performing salesperson and enjoy every step of the way.

      It is important to link performance and enjoyment together, because most people tend to excel in the things they enjoy and enjoy the things in which they excel. In fact, these two perpetuate each other. The better you do, the more fun you have. And the more fun you have, the better you do.

      The trick is to get some momentum going in the direction of fun and improved performance and then to continuously work towards both of these targets. This can seem like a daunting task for a salesperson faced with demanding sales quotas, challenging market conditions, a dearth of leads, and the need to spend time on seemingly difficult activities such as cold calling and networking. Not only is it difficult to know where to start, it is perhaps equally as hard to imagine work as enjoyable.

      This is exactly why The Inside Game was written. This book will show you how to immediately move forward on the road to achieving record sales and how to make seemingly difficult sales tasks quite enjoyable. These twin goals will be accomplished by breaking down every aspect of sales into two components - internal behaviors and external actions – and showing how to gain mastery of both.

      Internal behaviors are those that take place in our minds, such as our thoughts, feelings, and rationalizations. They have a direct and immediate effect on our attitude, confidence, and subjective well-being. Internal behaviors include negative and positive self-talk, placing blame either on ourselves or on external factors, learning from past mistakes, scenario planning, conducting honest self-evaluations, and creating specific objectives for everything we do. They are also related to and affected by our mindset towards ourselves, our jobs, and the world around us. While these behaviors can’t be externally measured or observed, they are critically important determinants of the level of success and enjoyment we can achieve as salespeople. By being aware of these behaviors and learning how to use them to our advantage, we can be more highly motivated and effective when undertaking the external actions most sales professionals associate with successful sales.

      These external actions include prospecting, cold calling, preparing for and conducting meetings, and generating proposals. These are the mental and physical actions that we undertake during the actual sales process that have a direct effect on our external environment and the likelihood of reaching our goals. They can be measured and observed, and as we will later show, they are also very much intertwined with and affected by our internal behaviors.

      Throughout The Inside Game, we will discuss and link these two components in a manner that will help you improve and refine external skills such as cold calling and conducting a meeting. At the same time, this book will help you develop internal behaviors that will give you the mental and inspirational fuel to perform and enjoy the external activities that many salespeople find difficult.

      By following the ideas and practices outlined in The Inside Game, you will be putting yourself on the fast track to becoming a top-performing salesperson while enjoying every step of the way.

      How to Use This Book

      "A salesman, like the storage battery in your car, is constantly discharging energy. Unless he is recharged at frequent intervals, he soon runs dry. This is one of the greatest responsibilities of sales leadership." - R.H. Grant

      The premise of The Inside Game is this: what goes on inside our brains in terms of our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes is of equal or even greater importance and relevance to our success in sales than our actions in our day-to-day work lives. In fact, the fuel for such actions and their ultimate effectiveness is provided and determined by our internal behaviors.

      Hence, it is important to get a firm grasp of these internal behaviors and understand how they can help and/or hurt us. The first half of the book provides insight into key internal activities and should be read in its entirety before you move on to the second half. Your goal when reading the first part of The Inside Game should simply be to gain awareness of the different games our minds can play and contemplate how we can use those games to our advantage.

      After reading a chapter, try to think of relevant examples in your day-to-day life to strengthen your awareness. The practice activities at the end of each chapter are designed to further reinforce that awareness and help with the practical daily application of what you have learned. Remember, though, that awareness is the first and most important step in controlling our internal behaviors.The second half of the book discusses specific external actions and activities such as prospecting, making cold calls, and conducting meetings, and provides ideas and tips on how to do each of these tasks effectively. Rather than merely discuss the mechanics of these activities, this part of the book also links each external activity with internal behaviors that are important in determining whether the said activity will be a positive and rewarding experience.

      Most of the chapters in the second half of The Inside Game also include practice exercises. These are more external in nature than the activities suggested in the first part of the book; they are designed to help you improve on a specific aspect of sales such as speaking to clients or running a meeting. These exercises include role plays, creating lists of questions and answers, and speaking with colleagues.

      Once you have read the entire book, you can use it as a reference to help you with specific aspects of your job. For example, if you are feeling apprehensive about cold calling, you can review the chapters There's No Such Thing as Hard and Easy, or From Scarcity to Plenty, which will allow to better understand the cause of your apprehension and provide you with some ideas on how to work around it. If you simply need some ideas on what to say when you call, or strategies for calling, you can review the specific chapter on cold calling and the chapter Your Verbal Tool Box, both of which provide tips for making successful cold calls.

      PART ONE – INTERNAL BEHAVIORS

      The Importance of Attitude

      "Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect." - W. Clement Stone

      If I had to name a single thing that can determine a person’s chances of success and happiness, it would be attitude. Attitude determines our actions and affects our vitality. It can make mountains out of molehills and turn problems into opportunities.

      To illustrate the importance of attitude, I'm going to tell you a true story about two former colleagues, renamed for our purposes as Up and Down.

      One day Up and Down received invitations to a networking event at the local chamber of commerce. Up reacted positively: she immediately RSVP'd, entered the event on her calendar, and started to think about her strategy for meeting key prospects at the event. Down considered networking to be a waste of time, shared his thoughts with Up , and even though he didn't have anything else planned for that day, decided not to attend the event.

      When Up told her manager about the event and asked for his advice, the manager reacted positively and gave her some tips on how to meet key prospects. When the manager found out that Down wasn't going to attend the event, he invited Down for a short meeting and asked him to explain why. Down didn't like being put on the spot by his manager, so he grudgingly agreed to go to the networking event with Up.

      At the event, Up walked in with confidence, a warm smile and a game plan. She talked with several potential clients, including key ones that she originally planned to meet, and even managed to schedule a couple of follow-up meetings. As she was leaving, Up thanked the event organizer and received an invitation to a similar event to be held the following month.

      Down, on the other hand, showed up late and without a plan. He only had one conversation and that was with a former colleague who was now working for a competitor. They talked about how hard the market was and how networking events were usually a waste of time. Down didn’t meet any new prospects. He didn’t meet the event organizer and therefore didn’t receive an invitation to the next event.

      "Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right." Henry Ford

      So who had the right attitude? The answer is both Up and Down did. That is because there is no right or wrong when it comes to attitude. There is simply a choice of which attitude we choose to adopt, and labeling that choice as right or wrong is meaningless.

      But between Up and Down, who had the most effective attitude? Well, if the goal is to improve sales opportunities and have an enjoyable experience, we would have to say that Up had a more effective attitude, because Down allowed his negativity to turn the event

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