Achieve Sales Success by Breaking the Rules

You are in charge of your destiny.

Be happy that you have critics, as it means you have success to be envied. Critics don't pick on the weak; they don't have anything to gain in doing so.

In Australia, this is called the "Tall Poppy Syndrome." When one poppy grows taller than the other poppies, the others begin to squeeze and smother the tall poppy to keep it from growing taller than the rest. This way, all the poppies stay the same height. That's exactly what will happen to you if you let it. Don't be a poppy.

Allow yourself to grow despite the squeezing and smothering you may experience.

I am not telling you to be a troublemaker, or to break rules for the sake of breaking rules. I am not telling you to purposely be a thorn in your managers' side. However, I am telling you that to be successful in anything, you have to make tough decisions and follow a path that may not always be popular, and will most certainly often be Contrarian.

During my time as general manager of the automobile dealership, I held a meeting one day and asked my sales team, "What if we started doing everything differently? What if we did the exact opposite in everything we currently do? What if our meeting and greeting of our customers was opposite of what it is now? What if our customer qualifying process was opposite? What if our presentation process was opposite? What if our negotiation process was opposite? What if our marketing was opposite?"

Several of the salespeople asked me why I was asking this.

I told them that I felt that the industry was stale. I believed that we had been selling cars the same way for over fifty years. I told them that I thought our customers were becoming more educated and they were changing, and that we and the rest of the business would have to change with them. I said that customers would simply not put up with the nonsense that they had experienced in the past when they shopped for and bought vehicles. I told our sales team that we could either be leading this change, or we could fall behind. I said that although we were currently number one in sales in our marketplace, that stagnation would eventually lead to trouble for us.

The same principle applies to your sales success.

Here is the truth - much of what you've learned is wrong.

Most of what sales trainers are pushing is useless. You may have sat for hours in training sessions writing down everything that you hear because you're hoping that one of these gurus has the "magic button." You are looking for the one line that's going to miraculously overcome objections and close every sale easy as one, two, and three.