1. You Have a Professional Mindset
You treat the sales component of your job like professional athletes approach their sport, like professional chefs approach their food, or professional welders approach their craft. You are striving for 100% from the 3 point line. You are striving for a pie with the perfect flavor and consistency. You are striving for a weld that is perfectly symmetrical and solid.
You are striving for an irresistible invitation. You perfecting your ability to listen and discern the needs and wants of your prospective customers. You are striving. You are perfecting.
2. You Track Your Progress
Just like Michael Phelps knows how many seconds it takes him to swim 100 meters, you know the number of people who rent from you as a percentage of the people who call. You review your work. You listen to your recorded phone calls. You ask others to critique your work. Because you are in tune with the results you are getting, you know when something isn’t working like it should and you adjust. You experiment with new approaches until you find something that is more effective and feels good to you.
3. You Practice
You grew up practicing all kinds of skills. As a kid you practiced penmanship. If you played sports, you practiced before game-day. How did you memorize your times tables? By practicing. If you are are a religious person, you “practice” your religion because you have yet to be successful at fully living up to the values and perfections you aspire to.
So why not practice an essential job skill?
Some people have told me that they don’t want to practice phone calls because it’s not real. Some people think your best shot at improvement is to hear yourself interacting with real customers by listening to your recorded phone calls.
That is half true.
Listening to yourself will help you identify where you are powerful and where you are deficient. However, listening to yourself will not help you say things better next time.
Take swimming for example. Pointing out to your child that he doesn’t move his arms and legs effectively enough in the water to keep his head above the surface is not sufficient to keep him from drowning if he jumps into a deep pool of water. Having the child watch himself on video won’t do the trick either.
There is a gap between knowing and doing. The gap is filled by practicing. The wannabe swimmer practices in a safe environment until his/her skills are sufficient to be safe.
You have to practice only a little if your goal is to just keep your head above water. True professionals like Michael Jordan or Yo-Yo Ma practice more (alot more).
When you are a professional you practice like one.
