You are self-employed in your own individual small business. You are your only job security. If you do your job well and generate sales and profit, you will have a job and a business, if you don’t generate enough sales and profit, you will be out of business looking for another job.
As a business, your highest priority is: making a profit and staying in business. There are only three activities that will ultimately make you money: prospecting, closing and servicing accounts. Those three activities are where most of, if not all of, your prime selling time should be spent. If you can’t pay someone to do the other non-profit-generating activities and thus have to do them yourself, you must do them off-hours, not during prime calling time.
Note: While your highest priority is making a profit and staying in business, this is never done at the expense of taking advantage of another person or doing something that is not in their best interest.
Truth #3: You can’t wing it.
This relates to both your activity during the day and your interaction with prospects and customers. You must have a plan to follow every day. It’s imperative that you know how many calls and contacts you need to make in order to get the prospects and the sales you need.
See also: Don’t fear the phone
When you talk to prospects and customers, you need to know exactly what you’re going to say. Script out everything. This will ensure that you say exactly what you need to say in as few words as possible, while using the most effective words possible. Once you have your scripts, practice, drill and rehearse them until they are second nature and flow naturally. You don’t want to sound canned or unnatural.
Truth #4: You have to work really hard.
You have to be a self-starter and you must be willing to push yourself harder than anyone else will push you. As Zig Ziglar, the famous motivational speaker, once said, “The harder you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you.” Of course the converse is also true. You want to work smart, follow the best practices of the successful agents and not reinvent the wheel. But in the beginning, you simply must work hard until you figure things out and build a successful business.
You must put the hours in and be willing to do whatever it takes. Once you have your daily plan in place and know how many sales you need to make and how many people you need to contact, you have to work hard to carry out that plan and make those numbers a reality. You have to be willing to cold call and do other similar difficult, unpleasant activities if that’s what it takes. By the way, these are the activities that the failures rarely or never do. Your objective is to be known as the hardest working person in the office.
If your sales numbers are dismal, own them, take responsibility for them. See your results as a warning sign that you need to make some changes in your activity and your approach. Don’t make excuses or blame anything outside of yourself, such as the economy, the market you’re in or the people you work with. You are completely responsible for your success or failure.
See also:
10 great opening lines from top producers
3 secrets of multimillion dollar agencies
5 rituals of outstanding salespeople