We have all been there before. There are only a few days left in the month, and you are hanging by a thread to earn a tier payout or hit a sales quota. That sinking feeling, a sense of foreboding, starts to creep in. The pressure is on and you begin to think, “What if I miss out? Look at all of the money I will lose. I can’t afford to miss that incentive payout.” You think it over and over as you exert more and more self-pressure. You begin to realize and feel failure, and often your fears become reality…a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Next time, when the pressure is on, stay positive and remember the following:

1. You cannot control what the customer is going to do, you can only influence their decision.

Every salesperson can recall what they believed was a perfectly delivered pitch, only to be rebuffed by their prospect. Conversely, think of how frequently you can blow your sales pitch and still get the sale. Always remember you are unable to control how well you sell – only how well you offer. The good news is in the majority of situations, if you consistently offer well, you will sell well. When you are under the gun, focus on the following sales fundamentals:

• Greet and build rapport
• Identify wants and needs
• Offer the product that best meets the customer’s needs
• Answer all questions positively
• Offer ancillary products after the primary product is secure
• No matter what happens, close positively

2. Visualize your desired outcome, not your potential failure.

World-class athletes spend years training their minds to “see” and “claim” victory before they achieve it. What does success look like for you? Visualize yourself achieving the highest level of performance and you will engage the power of your subconscious mind to make it happen. The best time to create these “success imprints” is right before you go to sleep and as soon as you wake up in the morning. Research suggests this is when your subconscious mind is most impressionable.

3. Replace worry with work.

Worry is wasteful and destructive. Instead, spend your time practicing and preparing. Remember, you may be unable to control the results of your sales efforts, but you can control the behaviors that lead to these results. Ready yourself for the day by giving yourself an encouraging pep talk. Keep telling yourself that you are confident, that you will overcome this challenge, and that the results you seek are a given. Arrive early to work and prepare your workstation. Disorganization and arriving late increase your stress levels and make your customers feel uncomfortable. Most of all focus on how your products and/or services help the customers you encounter. Selling for your customer instead of to or at them will put you and your clients at ease, and position you for success.

Chris Brown - Senior Vice President, Frontline Performance Group

Creating a cohesive team from a group of independent workers with diverse backgrounds, abilities and aspirations takes patience, persistence and clarity of vision. Will it be hard work? Undoubtedly. Will it be worth it? Absolutely.

The following four environmental elements have been proven to move incongruent groups into effective teams and have a dynamic impact on how organizations function.

Commitment Through Input

Dictated goals and mission statements do not inspire. If you want your team to be fired up about the company’s direction, let them help shape it. Soliciting and using organizational input to craft a vision everyone shares will tether employees together toward the company direction. Whereas before, employees had nothing to lose if the company did not achieve its vision, now each person has a personal investment in the goals set.

Personal Accountablity and Leadership

The most progressive companies have learned that only through universal accountability can they function at their highest level. Circular models in which employees are interdependent and self-policing are highly effective. If you want your team to hold itself accountable, give each team member something to lose for poor performance and the ability to do something about it.

Collaboration and Trust

If there is a potential landmine that can derail the best team building efforts, it is the inability to resolve conflict harmoniously. Therefore, you must keep lines of trust and communication open by valuing all contributions, regardless of employee position or topic. Encourage respectful diversity of opinion. Understand and communicate that team members ultimately have the same motives – to satisfy their customers, families, fellow employees, managers and owners. The team is simply trying to determine the best course of action to satisfy all of these parties simultaneously.

Synergy

Organizations that reach their peak potential have a unique ability to combine solutions, “leap” beyond the collective knowledge of the team, and spontaneously generate new solutions as ideas are shared. A high level of synergy stimulates innovations that force competitors to constantly play catch up. Opposing companies cannot duplicate the game plan of a synergistic organization because it is organic and only grows when the team comes together and combines their creative energies.

Focusing on these four environmental elements will not only enable you to build strong organizational teams, but give your employees the one thing outside a paycheck they desperately want, but will never speak of – a sense of belonging.

Implementing monthly goal setting sessions and staying consistent with them will help your team stay motivated and focused on every sales opportunity. The most effective managers utilize the following techniques when setting goals.

1. Make it conversational and collaborative. Involving your sales associates in the goal setting process is critical. Goals that are handed to your team without their input or belief are not worth the paper they are written on. Schedule half-hour meetings with each team member the last week of every month to discuss and set goals.

2. Set the target goal, then discuss the correct dialogues and techniques that will help your sales associates achieve the goal. Allocating enough time during monthly meetings for practice sessions will help your team focus on the appropriate dialogues and build confidence.

3. Set goals in accordance with each individual team member’s motivational driver. In a professional setting people are motivated by one of three things – recognition, incentive, or accountability. Knowing your team members’ drivers will help you steer the conversation more effectively.

4. If possible, base goals on sales conversions and sales per day. This will allow your discussions to be centered on achievable goals and questions. Breaking the stretch goal down on a time basis will also help your team members stay focused.

5. Write it down! Studies have shown written goals always have a higher success rate.

In order to be truly successful companies must strive to reach their full potential, not just improvement.

Compare overall performance to your top performers. Now imagine the behavior of your high flyers becoming the norm in your organization. If you have found a few people who can perform at this level, why not duplicate them across your entire frontline team instead of accepting mediocre or poor performance from the other 90%.

Take a look at the tremendous impact each individual team member has on your revenue and profit. Many business owners and managers are experts when it comes to their P&L statement. However, when it comes to the revenue and profit potential just one of their frontline associates influences each year, they are amazed at what is being left on the table.

Aspire toward your peak potential not your perceived potential, which is artificially bound by the people and processes you have in place now.

Most companies have four to six customer touch points and related sales opportunities.

If you map out all of your customer contact points, you will find that many of them present substantial revenue opportunities, and all of them provide significant service improvement opportunities.

Look at each of your customer contact points and figure out what influence your frontline can have through them.