Being a successful salesperson takes time and effort. According to Darren CdeBaca, one of the things you can do to achieve success in your sales career is to have a plan of accountability in constant purpose. It also boils down to how you are visible in the industry, what are the steps that you make to maintain that visibility, what your reputation is and your performance. Darren points out that while you can’t control the performance of the product you’re representing, a salesperson that wants to be successful must know how to control and maintain his visibility and reputation. He also highlights the importance of developing the plan of action that creates results.
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The Trifecta Of A Successful Salesperson
This episode is part of my heart. I grew up as a salesperson in many years of this wonderful financial industry. I learned from the best. I want to share this formula with you if you are part of a sales team or a salesperson or a sales leader. This episode is titled The Trifecta of A Successful Salesperson. Before I start, let me share with you the phrase that defines our work at DCB Strategies. This phrase is, “Being the best and average have nothing in common.” This phrase captures the results of achieving bold goals with a plan of accountability and constant purpose. This is a fact that has been observed in all walks of life. The best professionals, personal people around us and the athletes. The best and average have nothing in common.
Say that to yourself once, “The best and average have nothing in common.” How does that resonate? It’s amazing when you say that to yourself because your brain intuitively puts you in a question period. What side do I sit on in what I’m doing, the best or the average? That’s exactly why the phrase means so much. Be self-aware. Have a trigger that gets you in a direction to become what you want to become. There is room for us to exercise our best attributes all the time. There is no room to be average. That’s not why we are here. The brain loves to progress. The confidence that you exude and the contagiousness that you will exude is incredible by being the best you can.
Let’s set up this talk about the Trifecta of A Successful Salesperson. First of all, let’s self-examined a bit before we uncover this proven trifecta. What are your main segments as a sales professional, 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 of those? What are the main segments of your sales efforts that you are diligently focused on improving on daily to achieve your goals? You may have multiple goals. I got that. Have you ever defined those? It's interesting to me when I asked that question. It's so important to define them. Once you define them, exercise them, activate them, be diligent to them and dedicated, that plan of action creates results. If you don't have segments like that in your daily commitment, which requires strategy, actions and persistence to your profession, I am confident that what I’m about to share with you will be immediately beneficial and exciting for you to start implementing now.
Fortunately, I was around some fabulous salespeople in the early part of my sales career. During that time, I was intense about observing any common threads of success that I could emulate in my own upbringing in the business. I was always told and rightfully so, in retrospect it’s proven, if you observe and listen well, the obvious will show up. The obvious started to show up quickly to me. What I saw was the best sales folks around me were structured. They were trusted by their clients and their prospects. They were calm because they were confident. How does that sound and feel to you as a dedicated salesperson to be structured, trusted, calm and very successful? That should be an immediate interest because when I interact and observe many sales professionals now in our conversations, they are not structured, trusted and committed point-blank. Either they don’t trust themselves in terms of their work, habits, ethics and they are not calm. They feel as though just because they have something to sell, everyone should be interested. It’s not.
As I look more into these common threads of structure, trust and calm, I realized that what created these were the following. They were structured in the way they manage their professional visibility. They were trusted because of the way they built and manage their reputation. They were calm because they knew they were not in control of the performance of the products they represent. Keep in mind, we are not defined by the product performance but only in the way we represent it, which goes back to your reputation. These are all interlinked, so there you have it. There is the Trifecta of A Successful Salesperson. It's around visibility, reputation and performance.
Some say, “There are only three main elements of a successful sales career?” Yes, that is it. When you manage these in a dedicated and elevated manner, you will thrive. No matter if you are face-to-face or Zooming, the opportunity to solidify your short and long-term success in sales will depend solely on how you manage your visibility, reputation and performance. I’m going to ask you a timely question. Of the three, visibility, reputation and performance, which ones are you not able to control? It’s performance. Hopefully, you know that and you don’t get unraveled by that. That derails a lot of salespeople who want to be successful but never become successful because they get caught up in that. When all three are working in your favor and are aligned while you are in that salesperson’s hat, you will be achieving sales numbers that will far exceed your expectations. When all three, your visibility, your reputation and the performance you’re representing are aligned and doing well, you will be achieving sales numbers that will far exceed your expectations.
Let’s discuss visibility. Visibility is defined as the state of being able to be seen or heard. Today’s world, which is rapidly reconfirming to what we have been used to in the past, but is all about still keeping above the level playing field. That’s through visibility through electronic means, in-person, face-to-face or Zoom, phone calls, the activity of your internal sales partner, calling out to your clients and prospects, your presence in industry forums and formats, your handwritten notes, etc. I just labeled a few. It’s all different ways but very simple ways to elevate your visibility. When you look at your visibility map, what's your cadence on these? How frequently are you delivering in engagement, opportunity and visibility communication? There should be a constant cadence, repetition, quality and engagement of value, visibility. It’s totally up to you. As long as you have a plan and you have more than 3 to 5 ways of creating visibility with a constant cadence, it works.
Let’s discuss reputation, which is defined as the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about you. We have heard that reputation takes years to develop and it can take a few moments to destroy. Reputation is the vital link to a successful sales career. Your reputation depends on it. You’ve heard that before. It certainly does. Reputation can be exercised, dedicated and elevated by keeping in control of the following, the craft or your professionalism, the creation and manner of how you manage client relationships, your credentials in your industry, your value-add components that you share along the way with your clients and prospects, the intellectual trust about your industry’s products, and your competition along with timeliness in response to your clients and prospects because they are the only ones that matter, etc.
These are just a few of the elements that you can dedicate your reputation map to. You write down your reputation map. How do you define your professionalism in the eyes of your clients? How do you define the way you create client relationships and their client experience with you? What are your credentials? What are your value-added components? How do they know and how do they feel about the intellectual trust that you share with them on your products, the industry and competition? Do you have respect for your competition? You should. They are partners in the business. How timely are you or your internal sales partner in making sure that their needs are met? Write these down, measure, develop activity and action steps to develop a cadence of practice. This is the best practice of your reputation.
Let’s discuss performance, which is the third variable. Performance is defined by the actual or relative successful or unsuccessful performance of the product you represent. It’s very simple. You can’t control it. There’s nothing to put into an action plan. There’s nothing to develop a cadence on. There’s nothing to dedicate an elevate to other than your mindset and how you handle the performance of your product. If you know visibility and reputation are in play, performance will be just fine, either way. I know performance is important but as you know, you are not going to like it more times than not along the way in your career. You are going to question it. You are going to question your firm. You are going to question the person that’s in charge of the performance. You are going to question your team. Don’t question it unless you have diligent issues and legal issues incurring that you could not avoid, but not likely.
Here’s why it is vital to dedicate time to those elements of visibility and reputation. Those are the only two we can control. They lie in the difference between the best and the average. Let me share with you a couple of unique combinations. If you have performance and visibility aligned on your side, working together at their peak, you will be in pretty good shape all the time. Although it would be huge if your reputation was present because your clients do want to see you succeed also. If your performance and visibility are in play, high performance, great visibility, they will do a lot of business with you. If your reputation was heightened and they knew about it, networking would occur, more business would occur and the expansion of the business would occur because they want to see you succeed also.
There’s an expediential component of more sales when you have your reputation aligned. If you have only performance and reputation but no visibility working for you, you will be okay. Still, visibility needs to be involved to expand your potential reach of larger sales numbers. Keep in mind, if you have performance and visibility, you will be in good shape. Reputation would be extremely important to expand the network of more sales. If you have performance and reputation and no visibility, then find a way to get increased visibility to expand the larger sales numbers that are missing. It’s pretty simple.
Let’s say you have visibility and reputation for you during the time of subpar performance. You are going to be in great shape. Trust it because your client base still appreciates you and your trusted professional partnership, which pays huge dividends with a book of clients and relationships, the longer you are in this chosen industry. There will be one or a few times when all three elements are in play for you at the peak. All three, humming along. Let me confirm with you that when those occur, it is then that you realize the work was certainly worth the wait in time. The work of creating your cadence and visibility, developing an incredible reputation in the industry, and being calm about performance. When all of a sudden all three are aligned, it’s a memorable time.
People often ask me what they could do if they are in the initial stages of their career when their reputation is not there. They just started 1 or 2 years in the business. There’s no reputation yet created. Keep in mind, your visibility components are what will create your reputation. You have to work harder there. Your reputation will be manifested over time, but if you are dedicated to the controllables of that reputation, it will start to form and take shape before you know it. This is the proudest moment. You will enjoy the mental income, which is so rewarding when your know your reputation is at stake because you have one. It’s key.
This is the deciding factor of who’s successful and who’s the best. If you have a reputation, people don't spend enough time building that reputation. Being aware of what embodies a professional reputation that can be trusted. Do it and develop those action steps and strategy to control the development of your reputation. I've talked a lot about the importance of visibility, reputation and performance. We hit it on a few angles and we knew where it originated from, but let me review what we talked about. Number one, before this episode even started, what are the main segments that you are focused on and building out to be that successful sales professional? What are those that you’re building out? I have introduced three that I have seen for many years of work.
I introduced common thread characteristics of the best salespeople, which could be defined as structure, trust and calm, which led to confidence. This brings us to point three which you could see the attachment and structure of trust and calm. The fact that they were by-products of the way the best salespeople manage their trifecta, which inherently was visibility, reputation and performance. We discussed some straightforward activities to develop visibility and reputation. We can't develop performance. That's in the hands of another team that you represent. We share the results of relative combinations of the three working at the same time, along with real-life cases of a person who just started in the industry. How do they develop a reputation?
Now we start wrapping it up. It's time to dedicate yourself to this trifecta if you buy into it. Let me share it with you. Don't struggle with that. Buy into it. It allows you to be the thermostat of your success, not the thermometer. You set the temperature like a thermostat by controlling the visibility and reputation. You control how you manage and build it. Visibility, reputation and performance, take time now to write down how you are accomplishing the above if at all, and how you can integrate vital action steps in your salesperson trifecta now. If you do, you will be setting yourself up to elevate after you dedicate yourself to this important exercise in a trifecta. That’s going to define your career now and in the future.
I want to thank you for your time on this commonly overlooked topic that I labeled as The Trifecta of A Successful Salesperson. If you have any questions, you can contact me through my website, DCBStrategies.com or email me at Podcast@DCBStrategies.com. I would love to hear from you and your thoughts on this episode. If I can assist, we can talk as you see fit. It was fun to share this with you. In closing, I would like to say to you stay healthy and passionate. We control those and they are contagious. Have a great day.
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