BIZCHINA / Biz Life
Why do so few sales people get rich?
(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2006-12-13 10:31
Sales is a frustrating profession.
There is a dominant rule in sales industry that the top 20 percent of
sales people make 80 percent of the money - which means the bottom 80
percent only earn the remaining 20 percent.
According to industrial statistics, sales people often earn more than
many other professionals including doctors, lawyers and architects.
Jeff Han, a salesman with IBM China, derives huge pleasure from the job
and reviews his two-year experience with a few tips for his counterparts.
"It is key to win the trust of your clients. You have to do two things:
The first is not to let down your clients - always live up to what you
have promised," says Han.
"The second is to think from their point of view. It is better if you can
figure out something ahead of your clients and provide corresponding
solutions."
Sound reasonable?
Here's more from Brian Tracy, a sales trainer who has worked with more
than 500 corporations. He has written a book titled "The Psychology of
Selling," which aims to help people become part of the top 20 percent.
"You only have to be a little better and different in each of the key
result areas of selling for it to accumulate into an extraordinary
difference in income," says Tracy.
"Success is not an accident. Failure is not an accident either. In fact,
success is predictable. It leaves tracks."
If you can follow these tracks, maybe you can become a good salesperson
and enjoy a high income.
The first thing the book emphasizes is that sales rejection has nothing
to do with the salesperson. Instead, it is like rain or sunshine, it just
happens from day to day.
Thus, Tracy recommends that in the first place people should recognize
and understand their self-concept and its relationship to their sales
performance.
People who focus on failures of selling or take them too personally have
a slim chance to make it to the top.
1 2
(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)
Learn mandarin
