Incongruent Beliefs and Poor Sales Results: A Love Story

There are some things about sales that are difficult to explain. Sometimes, even though there may be no way to prove that something is true, the results are every bit as consistent as gravity.

This is one: If you despise your company while professing that other’s should love your company and select it above all others, your sales results will reflect your detestation.

This is true even when the salesperson’s activity remains high, and even when they have the very same skills and abilities that they had when they were succeeding and in love with their company.

Ooh-ooh That Smell

When a salesperson no longer believes in their company, when they no longer believe that their company is special and should be chosen above all others, they produce poor results—if they produce any results at all. They may still make sales calls. They may still make presentations. They may go through all of the motions, and there may be no external clues that indicate that they are no longer passionate about their company and it’s special place in the world. But their true feelings somehow bleed through.

Even though it defies explanation, a salesperson’s dream clients can sense, even feel, that there is some incongruity between what the salesperson says and what they really believe. It isn’t something that they can put their finger on, and they may not even be conscious of what they are experiencing. But clearly, they can smell it on the salesperson, and it prevents them from buying.

How Can I Love You If Even You Don’t Love You?

It is impossible to believe in your heart of hearts that others should love your company when you don’t love your company.

If you don’t believe that the world would be a dismal, cold, dark, and horrible Hell-on-earth without your company and the special value that it alone can create, why would you expect others to feel that way?

Why would anyone choose you and your company over another salesperson who believes with every fiber of their being that their company occupies a special place high above all of their competitors, and that to accept anything less than what they create is a sin and a crime?

Hyperbole? I am afraid not.

Passionate engagement sells. Dispassion and disengagement revolts. People can smell a fraud.

Where Is The Love?

Is your company not perfect? Of course it isn’t. If you have been around for any time at all, you will have gained enough experience to know that no company is perfect. Most companies are, thankfully, more critical of their own performance then their clients are. And many companies are full of people that are hell bent on improvement and working to obtain the improvements they need to succeed and to succeed for their clients.

If you don’t love your company, don’t pretend that some other company is going to be perfect and that isn’t going to have it’s own set of challenges and issues. Instead, work on making your company the company that you want it to be.

I have written about selling inside on a number of occasions (here, here, here, and here), but I am more impassioned than ever to insist that you do what is necessary to help make your company all that you believe it can and should be.

You are your company. You are your company. YOU are YOUR company.

What if every employee were to decide that instead of digging in and making the improvements that they needed to make their company worthy of their love—and everyone else’s—that they secretly despised their company and produced poor results?

What if instead, you, as an impassioned sales professional, used all of your skills and attributes to lead the charge in a sales initiative to sell everyone and anyone who would listen on helping you to make the changes that you believe need to be made.

If you would love your company, then love your company. Do it even if you have no formal power or authority. If you love your company enough, and if you act on that love, I promise that others will love it with you. And so will your dream clients.

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