What Level are You?

Friday, August 13, 2010

What Level are You?

Here's the latest from Jim Meisenheimer. Subscribe to his weekly newsletter by clicking here.

Unconscious Selling Competence

Unconscious Selling Competence has roots that date back to the
mid twentieth century.

Back in the 1940's psychologist Abraham Maslow created a conscious
competence theory and more commonly known as the "Four Stages Of
Learning."

If you're in sales you need to be learning if you want to be
earning. There's no way around it.

These four stages of learning describe how a person learns.

The first stage is Unconscious Incompetence. In essence, in this
stage you don't know that you don't know something.

This stage can be perilous for professional salespeople. When
you don't know, what you don't know it's easy to become over
confident in your abilities.

I guess there's only one way out of this stage and that's with
information and education. The worst thing anyone can do is to
turn off the learning faucet.

Ignorance is never bliss.

The best way out of the hole of ignorance is continuous improvement.
Keep reading books and listening to CDs and you'll soon realize
how much you don't know about the selling profession.

The second stage is Conscious Incompetence. Interestingly, in
this stage you are aware that you are incompetent at some things.

In this stage you recognize where your strengths and weaknesses
are in the work you do.

You have to be careful however because a weakness you have today,
if not strengthened, can be a weakness you carry around for a
lifetime.

For example, "I've always been lousy at handling the price objection."

Another example, "I don't like asking for the business - it makes
me feel too pushy!"

Imagine your weaknesses are shortcomings all contained inside a
block of granite. As a sales representative, your job is to keep
chipping away at all the things that don't add to your personal
professionalism.

Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is a professional sales
person.

The third stage is Conscious Competence. In this stage you're
developing skills but you have to think about them.

This stage is for salespeople who want to keep growing. They aspire
to bigger and better things. They are hungry for the skills they
need but do not yet possess.

They are committed to self-development. The word quitting is not
in their personal dictionaries - the word perseverance is highlighted.

The fourth stage is Unconscious Competence. In this stage you are
good at a particular skill and it comes naturally to you.

The fourth stage is where you want to be if you're an entrepreneur
or a professional sales person.

Everything about selling comes naturally to you because you have
prepared and practiced a gazillion times. You make everything
look easy, after years of hard work.

You can pick up the phone and call someone, you've never spoken
to before, and ask for an appointment. You know exactly what to
say.

Your elevator speech is as smooth as ice because you know exactly
what to say - word for word.

Your priority is to identify and solve customer problems. You can
ask a dozen questions without thinking or blinking because you
have crafted each one. You're able to weave your questions in a
conversational way.

Your sales presentations are personalized and tailored to fit
sales prospects and customers and their specific needs. And you
know exactly what to say.

In fact, you're so good, you can go an entire day without doing
seal talk. You know, the "Ahs" and "Ums."

Dealing with the price objection is easy for you because you have
prepared and rehearsed how you'll do it, over and over again. You
could do it in your sleep.

Asking for the business is a piece of cake for you, because once
again you've created a short script that you memorized and
rehearsed over and over again.

When it's all said and done you can choose between Unconscious
Incompetence or Unconscious Competence.

The only thing separating the two of them are dedication,
discipline, focus and your sheer desire and determination to
become the best you are capable of becoming.

Three cheers for Unconscious Selling Competence!