In his book, The Accidental Salesperson: How to Take Control of Your Sales Career and Earn the Respect and Income You Deserve, Chris Lytle discusses the concept of No Bad Days.
Fire fighters have a saying, “If we have a bad day, somebody dies“. Lytle expands on this by suggesting that we can make a decision to do the right actions on a daily basis and greatly reduce the chances of us ever having a bad day.
I like this idea.
For most salespeople, a typical month is a string of bad days punctuated by the odd good day, one where they are happy with their results.
Lytle said:
What if you had a job that required you to have one good day after another or else somebody would die? And that somebody could be you. Do you think you might come to work a little more focused? Would you be a little bit more “into” what you’re doing?
Professionalism connotes the idea of continual education and improvement. If you have the desire to learn and to hone your skills, you can strive to be a sales professional.
FOCUS: No Bad Days!
So if our work was ‘life or death’, and if our work were more dangerous, we’d be more focused, “into” what we’re doing, careful to follow procedures designed to increase our chances of success and survival.
This is ATTITUDE, and a stark contrast to the mindset of the typical salesperson.
Our work might not literally be life or death, but figuratively speaking it is. Sellers entrust us with their most valuable asset: their properties. The difference between a good negotiation and a poor one can mean financial life or death for sellers who are in financial need.
With this attitude we may come to see that we provide an essential service to homeowners and buyers alike. Our job is to help homeowners realise the highest prices possible for their properties with the least amount of stress. It is also to help buyers to find the right property that suits their needs, and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. This property must also fall within the top end of their budgets.
Our job does not include helping buyers to secure a property at a low price, but whatever we negotiate should be fair for the seller, fair for the buyer, and fair for your company.
Fair does not necessarily mean low.
If we take this life or death attitude toward our negotiations we will negotiate more professionally. And if we apply the ‘No Bad Days’ attitude to every working day, and plan each day so that we work on activities that produce results, we will reach a point where we reverse the typical sales trend:
Bad days punctuated by the odd good day will become:
Good days punctuated by the ODD bad day.
It’s up to you to make this happen. Sure, you can blame the market for bad days, but what good does that do you?
Take responsibility for every bad day you have. Look at how it happened. Ask yourself, “Is there anything I could have done to prevent this?” Then make sure you don’t repeat that mistake.
It’s your career. Your career can be like a cork on the ocean, being taken wherever the current goes, or you can take control. Plan each working day. Decide on the result you will achieve that day, plan that day, and then competently work toward achieving that result.
Chris Lytle calls this “Selling On Purpose”. You achieve results because you decide to do so, and not because some mysterious presence called “The Market” allows you to.
Bad days sometimes happen because of bad luck, but MOST TIMES bad days happen through lack of planning and lack of skilled action on the right activities.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
NO MORE BAD DAYS!