Inner child knows best

Think back to your selling ability when you were a kid.

That statement no doubt brought a big smile to your face. The toy you wanted. The place you wanted to go. The candy bar you wanted in the checkout aisle of the grocery store. The TV show you wanted to watch. The movie you wanted to go to. The friend you wanted to hang out with. Even staying up later than your bedtime.

All sales. And a high percentage of positive outcomes.

Whatever it was you wanted, you most often made the sale.

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Fast-forward to the time that you got your business card printed. And you got a job selling whatever. And you got training. Training about your product. Training about the history of your company. A little sales training about probing, overcoming objections and closing the sale. You were given sales tools like a CRM and a laptop. And finally you were given some kind of a sales plan. A quota that you had to meet or get fired.

And then, all of a sudden, sales became a struggle. Ever ask yourself why? Why sales were so easy when you were 5 years old, and became so difficult when you were 25 years old?

The simple answer is lack of emotional engagement with the prospect, lack of dedicated determination and drive and lack of emotional attachment to the outcome. All of which you had, and had employed, when you were 5 years old.

So I’m issuing you a challenge to go back to the days when you were 5 years old, and made 100 percent of your sales.

No you can’t turn back the clock, but you can recall the elements that made your ability to sell and get your way so amazingly successful.

Now while I don’t expect you to go into your next sales call stomping around, crying and demanding to get your way, I do expect you to add more emotion to your process. I do expect you to know your customer better. I do expect you to become more emotionally engaged. I do expect you to take more than a few rebuffs or objections, and hang in there until you make the sale. I do expect you to continue to figure out new ways to get to “yes,” rather than taking the first “no.”

And I do expect you to have more emotional attachment to the outcome.

Oh yeah, and I do expect you to have more fun at it. You had way more fun at sales when you were a kid. •

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