Selling During a Pandemic: What Pandemic?
If you’re a salesperson on this planet right now who’s wondering what’s going to happen to your business, I feel you. We’re living in strange times right now and nobody really knows when it’s going to get back to normal.
What I can tell you is this. If you start treating this situation like it’s the end of the world for your business or sales career, it very well could be. Let me give it to you straight. But before I do, please understand this.
I am not blind. I completely respect, feel for, and empathize with people who have completely lost their businesses or ability to sell. I am fully aware that some of your businesses have shut down, offices have been closed, hours have been cut, and jobs have been lost.
Now IS NOT the time to stop doing what you did to get to where you are now. You SHOULD NOT stop prospecting, you SHOULD NOT stop building relationships, you SHOULD NOT stop improving your selling skills and you SHOULD NOT STOP working your butt off.
If you relax for even one second, not only will your competition fly right by you, but your opportunity to take advantage of this extra time you have, will be gone in an instant.
With all that being said, what would you have done in a normal circumstance, with no pandemic?
Plenty of people have lost their businesses, been fired from their jobs, or lost major accounts before. 1973, 1987, 2008 are just a few of the periods where our economy tanked.
What did people do? Mail it in forever? Sit in the corner and cry? Throw in the towel and quit?
Hell no!! In the 2008 economic meltdown, I lost two houses. Not one, but two. I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the blink of an eye. It sucked. But it happened, and there was nothing I could do to change it. So I decided to do something about it.
I moved almost 3,000 miles away (Boston to San Diego) to a place on the opposite coast where I knew only one person. I worked harder than I had ever worked in my life. I probably worked three times harder, now that I think about it. I made more calls, ran more meetings, sent more emails, gave more effort, did more studying, shed more blood, sweat, and tears.
That’s exactly what you have to do! Don’t worry about what’s going to happen in the next few months, because guess what, you can’t control it anyway.
Take this time you now have to invest in yourself. Invest in your sales skills, develop a rock-solid mindset, create production-forcing habits, and use this time to come out better on the other side.
Steve’s new book, “Sales is NOT a Dirty Word” was just released and if you’d like to learn more about how to get your mind right, there are tons of tips and strategies in the book on how to do so.
