At the start of 09, I expected my own sales performance to increase significantly.  I based this expectation on two sound contributing factors.

1.There would be a greater need for my services.

Companies would have a much greater need for improvement around sales performance than in previous years. If making sales would be harder in 09, mine was a recession solution.

2. I offered a guaranteed result.

I would be offered a ROI payment option, which meant that there, was no risk in investing in my sales programmes - I guaranteed actual sales improvement. This would give me a significant competitive advantage.

My analysis of how I performed vs. my expectation.

I recently undertook an analysis of my personal sales performance for the year to date. While I am satisfied with many of my performance indicators, I am slightly disappointed with my win ratio per meeting with new customers specifically. I expected a nearer 100% hit ratio, I delivered 62%.

While some may be happy with such a return in this environment, my continued sales improvement has always resulting from me not resting on my laurels; and continually seeking out ways in which I can better what I do.

So how do I explain this?

Initially I must admit that I struggled.

While there may be room for improvement around my qualification process, I work very hard to ensure that I am talking to genuine prospects that are in a position to buy. I believe I am talking to the right people and at the right time and I am offering a better product than that of my competitors.

A more convoluted, complex and ever changing decision making process may go some way to explaining my disappointment. However, I don’t think that it is the only factor and even if it is, my payment options should go a long way to overcoming this as an obstacle.

So I asked myself, what I am not considering, what might I have not planned for.

I begin by revisited my stats on paper, I compared what I was doing against best practice, there was very little by way of explanation.

I then begin to consider that my expectation was unreasonable, that I hadn’t given enough weighting to the recession factor. While it might have worked for me on many occasions, perhaps it had also worked against me.

I quickly realised that I was engaging in the type of attitude; I so often have to help overcome in those that I work with. I was engaging in can’t do rather than can do.

I shook myself down and decided to investigate further. I pride myself on good planning, yet here was something I had failed to consider. It had left no apparent trace of itself in my work. It was bloody invisible.

Invisible! Now there’s a thought, what might have been invisible to me at the start of the year? Something I would not normally consider…….. Ah! Gotya.

it’s FEAR!!

I have trained myself to ignore fear; it plays no part in my decisions, my planning or my expectations. This philosophy has always served me well. I realised at an early age what fear can do, how it can control and how it can destroy.

At the start of the year, my intentional ignorance towards fear had allowed me to plan for success, to see abundance, and to plan for opportunity. Sounds great?

I’m afraid only to a point (did you get the joke?).

This same philosophy had blind sighted me, not to my own fears but towards the fears of others; in this case the fear in my prospects. I had failed to consider and to plan for their fears.

I started to recall the conversations where I had failed to win the deal. A comment trend started to appear.

“I know where we need to go, but I am not prepared to do what it takes to get there”

Yes, I had helped them to identify their need.

Yes, I had shown them the solution.

Yes, I had taken away the risk.

Tick, tick, tick…

But No, In a great many cases, I had failed to take away their fear of making the decision. Because I had failed to plan for fear, in doing so I had also failed to plan for how to deal with my prospect’s fear.

The good news, I am now on the case.

Tags: Fear, Recession selling, sales excellence, sales performance, sales planning, sales training

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.