Sharpen Your Selling Skills and Seize Opportunities

The numerous changes we see all around us every day and the rollercoaster economy, has presented us with a few new and interesting challenges. Everything has changed, the markets are not the same, peoples buying habits and demand for products has changed. Innovation is driving new products, services and ways of doing business. Research has shown that a new concept is developed every 30 seconds.

To Thrive you Cannot Remain a Creature of Comfort

The challenge sales people need to overcome to take advantage of all the great new opportunities, which present themselves every day, is that they need to break out of their comfort zones. They can no longer afford to be creatures of comfort. They must reach out to unknown and untapped prospects as this is where the opportunity for huge success lies in the new world.

You need to Shake Things up a Little

If you have ever committed to weight training program and followed a training routine to the letter. At first you make fantastic progress and you see great improvements and results. After a while, although you go to gym for the same length of time every day, you do the same routine, yet the results seem to plateau and progress slows and even stops altogether. At this point, you need to re-evaluate your weight training routine and shake things up a little.

It is much the same for any sales person who wants to remain successful. As you know most sales people target prospects, who fall into their comfort zone. People much like themselves, from a demographic and psychographic standpoint. This is a great strategy at first and they do very well selling to these people to start with.

However once that sphere of influence has been thoroughly explored and exhausted. It is necessary for the sales professional to step outside of their comfort zone. This will allow them to continue to grow their numbers and succeed on a grand scale. To succeed in these ever changing markets, it is crucial that sales people research and sell beyond their comfort zones.

Rejection is a Fallacy

Sales people are like every other person on this planet, in that they will do anything to avoid pain and attract pleasure. Sales people will do anything to avoid the pain of rejection and so they continue to call on their current loyal customers, as this is where they feel more comfortable and have a stronger level of influence. As long as you keep doing what you have always done as a sales person, you will remain trapped where you are.

Dare to break out of your comfort zone and look around you, there are incredible new opportunities opening up every day. Overcome the irrational fear of rejection, as there is in fact no such thing as rejection. Before you approach a prospect with a proposal, you have not made a sale. If they do not accept your proposal, you still have not made a sale. Nothing has changed. Things only change if they accept your proposal and agree to buy from you.

Stop Avoiding Difficult or Uncomfortable Situations

The only way for sales people to break their sales plateau, is to accept that they must break out of their comfort zone and do the uncomfortable. They must stop avoiding situations where there is the potential to fail or make mistakes, as this is the greatest limiting factor of all. If you do not put your neck out, do the uncomfortable and try to succeed, you will remain trapped where you are and have zero chance of success. If you do the difficult and keep doing this every day, the odds are stacked in your favour that you will eventually succeed.

As you keep expanding your comfort zone, you will eventually transform something, which was really uncomfortable into something familiar. This opens up all sorts of new doors, which may have remained closed to you, had you not dared to step outside of your comfort zone. Have an open mind as a sales person and try to identify new trends and possible new markets for your products or services. The more you are willing to look outside of your comfort zone, the more you will increase the possibility of using these ever changing times to your advantage.

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