Sales Ninja Killer Newsletter

Been selling for 10, 20, 30 years? That’s great. Or was it 1 years experience repeated 10 times? In Sales Ninja world: Experience ≠ Results. Experience gives you a higher confident level because you are familiar with the product or the process. The key question here is, are you producing more sales and making more money every single year? If yes, i congratulate you, keep practicing what you are doing because results matter. If your performance is not going UP, then here are 2 suggestions for you:

1 >> Keep pushing yourself. Remember when you got started? How blazing your fire was? How much time you spend hitting the floors and punching the numbers on the phone to get appointments? The more years you are in selling, the more it turns you into an order-taker, mostly doing visitings and servicings and taking orders from your customers. That’s not selling.

I have a public listed client who dominates the market with more than 50% market share. With over 20 years in the business the relationship with the clients are solidly strong. The CEO launched a new product and wants the team to sell it to the clients. The results were miserable. Experience field reps with strong relationships with their existing customers unable to cross sell other products. Why? Very experienced sales people, but they forgot how to sell, they were servicing. Which leads me to point number 2…

2 >> Go back to the basics. Selling is all about mastering all the basics and practicing all the basics. It does not matter how experienced you are, you must use the basic skills of selling at all times. The more i conduct sales trainings in Malaysia or for that matter any other countries across the world, the more i realize how important mastering the basics are. Most sales people know the basics, but they have not mastered all of them. They just do a few of this and a few of that. That’s not Sales Best Practices. It’s called Sales Best Practices because it must always be… Practiced!

No skilled athlete or fighter is going to say, i’ve swinged a few times, i’m the master, i don’t need to swing anymore, let’s do something else. Michael Jordan is famous for a story of him shooting 1000 baskets in his practices before he stops. That’s practicing the basics. A fighter before a battle practices straight punches, the most basic of all punches, but he/she keeps practicing that, why?? Because that’s Best Practices – it must always be practiced!

My view is this, it does not matter what you know or how much you know or how long you’ve been selling. It’s results – period!

Unconventionally,
HANZO NG
Sales Ninja Grandmaster

© 2009 onwards Sales Ninja Training. All Rights Reserved.

Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their sales people into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation and leadership trainings, visit http://www.SalesNinja.com

   Click here to subscribe to Sales Ninja Killer Newsletter

RinnnnnGGGggG! The sound we are all familiar with – the wake up call in the morning. I think there are 4 types of people in regards to alarm sounds:

> First type immediately wakes up when they hear the alarm.
> Second type hears the alarm, snoozes it, and then wakes up at the next alarm.
> Third type hears the alarm, snoozes it, next alarm goes off, they snoozes it again, goes on for a few rounds, until it’s too late.
> Fourth type continues sleeping despite the alarm.

If you think of this as business, as sales, or as your life, how much does it relate to us?

Something is not going well in our business, or sales or life. Do we:

> Immediately ‘wake up’ and respond to it?
> Know something is wrong, but ignore it for a while, and then take some action?
> Sees the threat but just wait, and think, and research, until it’s too late?
> Nah! No big deal, it’s just a fad, it’s going to go away?

The 10th code of the Sales Ninja is Improvement, others being abundance, courage, commitment, contribution, duty, focus, honor, honesty and trust. Improvement is a concept, philosophy, principle that we all know but sometimes forget. I just heard Tony Fernandez’s (CEO of Airasia, one of the leading low cost airlines in Asia) speech at EO (Enterpreneuer Organization) ’s Global Entrepreneur Congress. He mentioned most organizations don’t like to change and improve because it’s painful. It’s painful to admit that the current things you are doing is not good enough. After all, you may have done lots of things in the past, been through tremendous amount of trial and errors, continuous strategizing and restrategizing to finally figured out a winning route. Now you have to go through all those events again? Painful – but absolutely necessary.

Back to my original point, something is not working out for you, ‘wake up’ and do something about it.

Alarm: The culture is weak, ‘wake up’.
Alarm: The process has flaws, ’wake up’.
Alarm: Competitor launched a new product, ‘wake up’.
Alarm: Just settled in a new business model, ‘wake up’.
Alarm: Staffs not in harmony, ‘wake up’.
Alarm: New technology to embrace, ‘wake up’.
Alarm: Margin shrinking, ‘wake up.
Alarm: Sales team not performing ‘wake up’.

The Alarm is ringing, so ‘wake up’ and get to work!

Unconventionally,
HANZO NG
Sales Ninja Grandmaster

© 2009 Sales Ninja Training. All Rights Reserved.

Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their sales people into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation and leadership trainings, visit http://www.SalesNinja.com

   Click here to subscribe to Sales Ninja Killer Newsletter