Proponents of traditional sales training simply teach the material, sometimes in a very entertaining format, but they place the responsibility for using the material on the salesperson.

So what happens? The salesperson sits at home, stuck with personal flaws related to identity, and he can’t perform. He takes no risks. Not being able to use what he has learned simply makes him feel worse. He gets caught in a downward spiral of failure and rejection. He continues to find himself not doing what he’s supposed to do – for example, not leaving his home to make sales calls. Pressure, guilt, self-doubt, worry, and fear will eventually totally immobilize this salesperson.

The Sandler Selling System separates identity and role. And by doing so, we reduce the risk factors in a salesperson’s life. Since self-esteem cannot be hurt by the rejection of the sales process, a salesperson will continually take risks . . . more risks, and higher risks, leading to bigger sales.

The Sandler Selling System doesn’t merely teach techniques and strategies. Human relations skills are included as well. The result is that salespeople whom we train are able to use the techniques and strategies with ease and success.

Tens Continue to Grow

When I tell people their identity is always a ten, some of them argue that it’s impossible, because a rating of ten implies they have no room to grow. The say, “If I was a ten when I was born, and a ten when I was eleven, and twenty-five, and I’m a ten today, then how did I grow?”

Okay, imagine that you are going to plant a seed in the ground. The seed is going to grow into a rose. When you plant the seed, what’s the value of the seed and everything in it? Can we agree that it’s a ten?

Now, after a couple of weeks of sunshine and water, a stem wiggles up from out of the seed and appears above ground. What’s the value of that stem? Can it be anything other than a ten? If you say it’s less than a ten, then explain when it lost value. It didn’t, of course!

So after six weeks, what’s the value of the rose? In fifteen weeks, what’s the value of the rose? It continues to be a ten. So the rose was a ten as a seed, and it’s a ten now. And yet, didn’t it grow?

Just because your identity is valued at a ten doesn’t mean you stopped growing. You grow all the time.

However, that’s not to say you don’t have psychological “trash.” In fact, everyone does! It’s part of being human. If you were the only person with psychological trash, then you’d have a problem. But we’ve all got some of it, and in spite of it, we continue to be tens, and continue to grow.

Excerpted from You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, ©1995 Sandler Sales Institute. All rights reserved.

Dan Hudock is an owner of the Sandler Sales Institute in Pittsburgh, PA. He can be reached at (724) 940-2388 or dan@sandler.com. His web site is: http://www.dan.sandler.com

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