“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”–Thomas Edison
We all learned the story in school that as an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. However; when a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
The same philosophy applies to salesmanship. If we don’t experience failure; how will we know success? Unfortunately, as children and young adults, we may have been taught that to not succeed is failure; however, if we follow the wisdom of Edison, we see that each time we do not succeed; we’ve taken another step toward success. This may sound like an oxymoron; however, it’s not.
If opportunity knocks and we ignore the lesson learned from failure, then we’ll never learn the lesson which is; what NOT to do next time. Sales, like inventing the light bulb, is a process. If the process fails, it’s not you, but the steps you used to sell Payment Protection. Simply put, change the steps. Here are just a few ways to approach this:
- Record your Payment Protection presentation; playback and take notes of what worked and what didn’t work;
- Have a co-worker and/or supervisor listen to a “live” Payment Protection presentation and provide you with feedback, then execute the changes;
- Observe successful Payment Protection sellers in your institution and/or region;
- Think of a time when you offered Payment Protection and your customer bought; what did you say/do to be successful; and
- Review the steps you used, after you presented Payment Protection, and change the steps that didn’t work and continue using the ones that were successful.
In short, find the Edison in you and remember that if your customer doesn’t buy, you didn’t fail; you just learned what you step you want to change next time!