By Drewbie Wilson
How many managers have you had who always wanted to tell you how to do your job, even though they had never been in your role? If you are in sales, I know you have definitely been through this situation a time or two.
One of the most difficult things in sales is navigating the job itself.
You spend your days in sales making calls, following up with prospects, responding to emails, handling management…you know what I’m talking about.
When you first get started, you take advice from anyone and everyone who might be on a level higher than you, and assume they will point you in the right direction—and for the most part, they do. It’s not until you’ve failed enough times using that advice that you start figuring out how to properly do the job. On-the-job experience gives you a much better understanding of how things actually work in your industry.
This is why most jobs require a certain number of years of experience to even qualify to do that job.
You can read the books, watch the webinar, and listen to the training tapes, but none of it matters until you put that training to work and figure out how to properly do your job. You have to have several hundred conversations to understand tonality and objection handling. Sending emails and text messages requires a much deeper understanding of human psychology and literacy than you would ever know—until you’ve lost enough deals to lose sleep over.
It’s imperative that you continue educating yourself with real-world experience no matter how long you’ve held your sales position. Yes, after a few years in business, you will start getting a feel for the subtle nuances, for the proper way to handle any situation. Still, keep learning.
Because at some point, you will still hit a wall.
The best producers in any industry inevitably plateau for one reason or another. It could be due to mindset issues, lead generation challenges, glass ceilings, or any number of struggles we all go through. When you’re in the top 5-10% of your industry, there are only so many people that you can continue to learn from. When you reach this point, you should consider a mentor or business coach.
That’s how you know it’s time to connect with and learn from people who have reached levels of success far above where you currently sit.
You’ll want to find folks like yourself who have done the hard work, grinding out the long days, and clawing their way to the top of their market. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn from these top producers, even when they come from a totally different industry. That’s because there is a special mindset carried by those who always strive to be better. They have the drive to work harder and achieve more.
If you’d like to be surrounded by winners, and by a group of high-level individuals whose mission in life is matching their reality to the most elite version of themselves they know exists, you need to be in Apex. Click the link to submit your application: www.jointheapex.com
