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

One of my more memorable client experiences occurred a few years ago while I was working with a company to improve customer service and ancillary sales. After conducting the initial discovery visits and leading the frontline team through our core seminars, the company experienced an almost immediate and very significant improvement in both service and sales.

The general manger was so delighted with the positive results of the program launch – the changes in employee attitude, happiness, and the positive bottom-line impact – he literally cried out, “Thank God for Frontline Performance Group!”

In that moment he understood the power behind our principles, program, and the reason for our unwavering commitment to creating service-based sales cultures: happy employees = great customer experiences = improved bottom-line results.

This, of course, is no secret. However, what most business owners and managers do not realize is that changing a workplace culture requires much more than just wishful thinking; it requires the implementation of a hyper-efficient, impactful business system. This takes time, commitment, persistence, and diligence. But as this client realized, those willing to transform their business culture into one that supports employees and a service-based sales environment will reap the benefits a peak performing sales organization has to offer.

Andy Racz - Senior Account Manager, Frontline Performance Group

I often see high-level managers and business owners express an almost irrational fixation on a singular internal metric or Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Their steadfast focus, while admirable, is often shockingly misguided and harmful to the business. This owner intensity typically drives the organization to dramatically improve one specific metric while ignoring others, which frequently results in business trauma, unintended consequences and collateral damage.

One organization I recently worked with focused all of their attention, compensation and recognition on their top volume revenue producers. They characterized these agents as ”top performers” and rewarded them as such. Upon closer inspection, however, the agents who had produced the most revenue were not the best salespeople. They were simply “churning” calls and skimming opportunities rapidly for the easiest sales. This “cherry-picking” does produce large revenues; however, it does so at the expense of more needy customers who require greater attention and patience. Once conversion of opportunities handled and a customer service index were added as performance indicators, many of the perceived top agents fell significantly in the rankings. Although they were producing large revenue sums, the hidden collateral damage they were doing to the brand through their insensitivity to other customers largely outweighed the positive sales results they were generating. This situation is tragic…and common. Conversely, with the new performance indicators in place the true capabilities and contributions of some of the near-top and average agents were seen for the first time.

In one industry, an owner might place all of his focus on sales revenue only to get burned by profit slippage from excessive agent-to-customer incentives or discounts, or on the back-end through poor quality sales resulting in high accounts receivable defaults. In another scenario, an owner may become fixated on utilization percentage (as in car rental or hotel room usage) while simultaneously neglecting to see the harsh effect of the lower daily rates needed to drive that utilization. If you had a four room hotel, would you rather have 100% occupancy at $100 per room night or 80% occupancy at $150 per room night? The first example produces a Revenue Per Unit of $100 while the less-used property produces a Revenue Per Unit of $120 — a 20% revenue premium for less work! Factor in the reduced labor needed to handle the lower number of transactions along with the reduced product cost, and you see a new perspective surface. In yet another case, transactions produced per hour may be the driving force while little or no consideration is placed on the profit or brand-building potential of those transactions to the organization.

All of these metrics, along with many others, are worthwhile and critical to your success. However, it is important to remember more often than not it is the calibration of several Key Performance Indicators that will ultimately drive the two metrics that matter most, long-term customer care and profit.

Chris Brown- Senior Vice President, Frontline Performance Group

To truly understand the value of your frontline do yourself a favor, go out and work on the frontline for a day. Is it really that easy to balance sales and service? Is it really that easy to keep a positive outlook after five consecutive rejections, three of which came from irate and disgruntled customers?

The pressure to repeat the process 10, 20, or 100 times a day can be exhausting, to say the least. Most decision makers in sales and service organizations were not promoted from the frontline, and have therefore never actually spent much meaningful time there. Putting yourself on the frontline will provide you with a completely different perspective and appreciation for what really goes on and what it takes to be successful.

Understanding and appreciating the challenging nature of frontline work is a critical first step to executing a successful sales and service program on a universal scale.

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.