Guest Author: Axel Pineda
Invariably, for all markets and products, with or without crisis, there will always be sellers who close very good deals. These “high performance” salespeople have developed a very specific set of skills and attitudes that have led to their success.
I remember when I was a child I liked to cut lemon and go to the town market to sell it. When I returned from town, I brought good money with me — fruit from sales — my grandfather congratulated me and said: “Well done… I congratulate you” and those were the words that motivated me to cut more lemon to go and sell it at the town market.
As the years went by, I became a salesperson but could not be one of high performance, however in 1995 I was the best salesperson of the year among more than 10,000 salespeople in the World Book Encyclopedia company. Why am I telling you this personal story?
In the years that I have dedicated myself to teaching courses on sales, human behavior, leadership and competitiveness, I have seen many men and women wanting to make sales a profession; But when they realize the degree of difficulty that exists to be successful in sales — they give up — and decide to return to the world of eight-hour paid work.
If you are a salesperson but have not achieved the desired results, but you are one of the people who is determined to strive for dreams, you need to learn to be a “high performance salesperson”.
It is important to understand that salespeople are the fuel for the overall success of any business. Any company that does not invest in training for its sales personnel will surely not conquer the steps of success that it would well achieve if it only invested in its salespeople.
Self-esteem as a pillar of sales
A very important aspect of the personality of the human being that demonstrates the essence of identity and according to this is the ability that the person has to develop in any activity in society; at the same time, according to his self-esteem, he has the ability to control his environment, his emotions and feelings.
Let’s focus our attention on a single definition of self-esteem: “The ability of the person to value, love, appreciate and accept himself.”
In the world of sales, many men and women navigate wishing for success without having taken a look inside themselves and deciphering their quality of self-esteem; since according to this; this is how your success will be.
A salesperson with low self-esteem is not going to feel capable of facing and communicating emotionally with his client to close the sale and usually falls into the negligence of not pursuing his goals.
Sellers with low self-esteem want to achieve their goals but they cannot materialize the struggle with the perseverance necessary to achieve them and they begin to find reasons that justify their negligence.
The salesperson with inflated self-esteem is going to be able to confront his customer — but not communicate emotionally — and end up offending his customer in some way.
It is necessary for the salesperson to have a healthy self-esteem to be effusive, kind, communicative, and to be able to link with the emotional language of his client to close the largest number of sales. The question How to achieve it?
Principles for building your self-esteem
Definitely healthy self-esteem is an action that is sown in the first years of human life. The problem is that if you are a person who did not have the opportunity to count on your parents to help you with healthy development; let me tell you, it is never too late to become a winner — it is never too late to become a high-performance salesperson.
First begin by healing your family relationships, achieve affinity with your parents, with your children, and with your spouse.
Make a list of at least 10 actions that motivate your holistic development daily.
For example:
- You must do exercise all the days
- Do not drink alcohol
- Feed your body properly three times a day
- Read self-help books
- Develop a unique level of faith
Surely you can find other actions that will help you motivate and develop comprehensively every day.
Many times we want to treat people’s self-esteem problems only from an emotional perspective, but we must understand that if our body is malfunctioning, our emotions will suffer deficiencies and our perceptions will not be so acute to understand emotional communication. of customers.
Five principles for building your self-esteem
1. Resilience. This principle consists of the human being’s ability to grow, mature, and develop the logic of life. That is, if the father or mother were or are alcoholics; the son assimilates this situation as that he does not want to live. So he develops emotional defenses to not be the same as his parents, and looks for ways to avoid the situation.
Even if you did not have the best education or the best example in your parents; that doesn’t matter when you determine to be a successful person.
2. Assertiveness: It involves recognizing, naming feelings, expressing them, making decisions, and acting without hurting others. Act consciously that every fact brings a consequence.
The assertive person feels free to communicate their feelings. Non-assertive communication exposes others to psychological control. There are people who know them for their quality of handling and sadly there are many salespeople who, far from being good at persuading their customers; They are good at manipulating customers — sales made with manipulation schemes are those that the same customer cancels in the next 24 hours.
Be assertive in your communication, and you will surely create customers for life in your career as a salesperson.
3. The values: These constitute the structure of thought, character, and personality of people. The professional salesperson is a person steeped in values.
Values strengthen the achievement of specific goals. The seller with values creates a firm commitment to himself, and to the group he belongs to. Be a salesperson where the values and principles are based on customer service, and I guarantee that your customers will be your best friends.
4. A life project: A life project gives a why and a why to human existence. A life project helps the high-performance salesperson to be clear and defined each proposed goal; at the same time it leads him to fight against obstacles to fulfill his proposed goals.
A life project brings security to the seller about the company for which he works. When you do not have a life project, there is regularly bitterness, despair, and insecurity in the salesperson.
Sellers who do not have a defined project are those who, although they are good sellers, are always without cash in their pocket; which leads them to sell out of desperation. When sold out of desperation; It is when it is sold badly, with lies, and with insecurity. For a company, having vendors without a defined life project is almost a crime because they are the ones who sooner or later make the company look bad.
5. Self-acceptance: To be high-performance salespeople, we have to accept ourselves as we are.
Live without feelings of guilt, live without pride, without arrogance, or frustration. “To accept oneself, it is necessary to look at the past, and believe with the heart that none of the suffering, nor the pain was our fault; and that everything that happened to our life; it happened with the sole purpose of growing and being better every day. “
If you want to be a “high performance seller”I invite you to take sales trainings, attend customer service seminars, closing strategies, sales clinics, communication, and read all the books you can on sales and self-help.
I guarantee that if you break through resentments of guilt, shame, fear, properly nourish your body and train on the subject, no matter how many crises the world faces — you will be a high-performance salesperson.
Axel pineda He is a graduate of the University of Los Angeles California in philosophy and holds a master’s degree in marketing from the University of Des Moines, Iowa. He was a salesperson and sales manager for the company World Book Encyclopedia and vice president of expansion for Nutrition For Life based in Houston, Texas . Currently, through the Axel Pineda Foundation, he is dedicated to giving seminars and diplomas on leadership, sales and business competitiveness for the 500 most important companies in the United States.
