Motivate Your Sales Team With Optimism

A sales career is difficult. You have to work through rejections that far outnumber your successes. At times, it can be tough to keep pushing.

That’s where effective sales leadership comes in.

I recently wrote an article about “learning optimism”. A good sales leader possesses the valuable quality of positive thinking, and passes it along to the team.

Retrain and refresh.

I’ve seen dejected sales professionals who have heard a few too many times about a competitor’s homes, and has maybe lost sales to the other builder. They start to question themselves and the product.

This is when the sales leader steps in. Take the associate away from the sales task for a bit. Engage in re-training. Talk about the new homes that the buyers seem drawn to. Discuss the objections to the homes you’re selling. Remind the sales person of the positive aspects of these homes. If a customer feels the price is too high, then the sales associate hasn’t sold them on the value.

Maybe you need to sell the sales person first!

Demonstrate the real-world value.

Connect your road-weary sales professional with two or more satisfied homebuyers. Suggest they visit the homes and let the owners gush over the features they love, and how easy the building process progressed. Ask them what mattered to them, what influenced their decision, and why this builder is so exceptional. It’s a good refresher for your sales team to rediscover the true value of the buying experience and the product they’re selling.

Share success stories.

Ask your team members to talk about how they turned adversity around. They should explain the challenge and how they faced it down. It can sometimes be disheartening to hear about others’ success when you’re down, so be sure to highlight the challenge and how the sales associate overcame it. They need to relate to the struggle, not simply envy the outcome.

Put the responsibility where it belongs.

Sit down with your sales associate and explore the individual obstacles. What is good about the job? What is difficult? What would you like to do better?

Set daily, weekly, and monthly goals—not necessarily in terms of sales, but in process improvement. For example, rewrite your script for the initial conversation today. Tomorrow, make a list of common objections and script your responses. Identify a weekly goal for follow-ups.

A leader motivates others to achieve their potential, but, ultimately, it’s up to the individual to put thoughts into action.

Myers Barnes is America’s favorite new home sales trainer, author, speaker and consultant.  For more information, please visit www.myersbarnes.com.

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