Sales jobs and focusing on your own game

Sales jobs can be tough, have you ever looked at your market place and suddenly wondered what on earth you doing there trying to compete? So many competitors, and new ones entering the market all the time. You bump into another salesman selling your competitor and he comes across as personable really focused, are your sales about to dive? It's easy to find reasons why your market is a tough place to be and why your sales are about to get worse.

Take a step back and think about it for a minute. You've probably been in this market for a while and achieving good results. Competitors have always been there, lots of them, and many of them with good sales people, yet you have produced good results to date. The chances are that new competitors have been coming and going all the time, but you've simply not noticed it. Sometimes is easy to get so wrapped up in what you can see immediately in front of you that you forget everything else that you can't see, like your own list of loyal customers and the results you've been achieving in the past.

In reality markets are totally fluid with products and competitors coming and going all the time. If you are selling an established brand into an established market, it's unlikely your market position will change dramatically overnight due to the odd change in the commercial landscape, established business is usually more robust than that. In addition to this, changes in the market and competitors and your market are external factors over which you have little influence, so although they should be noted, it's nothing to get eat up over, you need to focus on your own game plan and ways of improving your performance. If I had to choose between selling an established brand or a new one, it's a 10 second decision.

The biggest risk selling any product is in the early days when it's new to the market. Customers will be more cautious whilst there is still speculation regarding the strength of the product. Your competitor salesman will have his work cut out finding early adopters.

When people in sales jobs start to panic in this way there are two common responses

a) The rabbit looking into the headlights....freeze, don't react or change anything and get squahsed1

b) Start changing so many things that you don't know which way is up. You may end up loosing a lot of what was making you successful.

If you have been suffering some negative thoughts with concerns regarding your ability to compete, here's a challenge for you. Sit down and do a little analysis of your own approach to selling your product. Consider you planning, your pitch to customers, what type of customers you see and who you seem to get the most business out of, and as many things as possible that define your role. Then list changes you think you could try to improve your performance. Then implement changes only at a rate of 1 per week, no more, everything else stays the same. If you market is changing, notice this and build it into your planning, but don't be overly concerned. At the end of each week, analyse your week and assess the impact of the one change. Is it positive, and does it stay? Is it negative and do we ditch it?

You should remember to review all the things you could change every couple of weeks, but remember to only select one per week to actually change. This process ensures you are constantly analysing your approach and adapting, but in proportions which will not be damaging and so avoiding responses a) and b) above.

Do this consistently and see what happens, you'll like the results.

Good luck.