Fear of rejection is a major obstacle that you try to ignore.  Of course, ignoring it won’t make it go away and it won’t make it any easier.  Plus fear of rejection leads you to rationalize your behaviors and make excuses.

Fear of rejection is entirely in your head, but that doesn’t make it any less real.  At some point you have to be OK with the “no” even embrace the “no”.  One way to do that is to change your perspective.

By that I mean make it your objective to reject the prospect.  Not everyone is a good fit for you and your business.  You don’t want whiners and people that don’t pay their bills.  You don’t want people that you don’t have a great solution for.  So starting right now start thinking about the questions you need to ask that will help you to reject the prospect.

You can even set the appointment up from the premise that you may not be a good fit for each other, but that by the end of the conversation you’ll both know that.  The thing is the less eager you are the more attractive you become.  But we still have to deal with that underlying fear of rejection.

Make a list of exactly what you’re really afraid of.  Keep writing until you can’t think of another thing.  Now go down that list and beside each fear write down the reward having that fear gives you.  Whoa, I’ll bet you had to read that sentence a second time.  You’re thinking reward, fear doesn’t reward me but you see my friend it does.

You’ve allowed fear of rejection to become a behavioral habit.  The thing about habits is that no matter how ugly a habit is or how bad the consequences a habit may have on some level that habit is very satisfying.  Why else would allow themselves to get addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs.  Fear is your nasty little addiction, and you have to discover for yourself how fear is actually rewarding to you.

You don’t just turn habits on and off.  When someone overcomes an addiction they have to replace the behaviors associated with the addiction or they fail.  Go back to your fear list and ask yourself what behaviors can you demonstrate through action to replace those fear behaviors and reward yourself.  Then commit to those behaviors one experience at a time.

Yep, you’ll still come across prospects that are having a bad day and decide they need to kick you instead of the dog.  You can’t change or control that, but you can control how you choose to respond.  You are bringing each prospect an exciting opportunity that will benefit them, they have everything to lose and you have everything to gain.

No Top Producer is an island. What do I mean by that? I mean those at the very top of their field don’t get there by only listening to and doing the same things as others in their industry, the competition.

In fact, isolating or insulating yourself in your industry is a fatal flaw that average producers hold. If you want to stand out, be a “sales genie” you’re going to have to do things, think things, have different experiences, and rely on different resources than everyone else who does what you do. This is true if you’re an attorney, accountant, dentist, insurance agents, financial advisor, message therapists, whatever.

One of the quickest ways to rocket your success is to focus on an under-served market. But you wont’ even realize the market exists if all you do is the same things everyone else is doing. And even if you do know about it you won’t know how to communicate with that market so they’ll reach out to you, because there won’t be someone else in your industry you can copy.

Copying anyone else in your industry is exactly what you don’t want to do. Adapting ideas from other industries may be exactly what you do want to do. And the great thing about adaptation is you already know the idea works and only need to make it work for you too.

Whatever industry you think you’re in you’re really in the industry of marketing yourself. When you can’t market yourself you can’t develop a thriving business filled with the exact kind of clients you want. There’s a whole new world out there just waiting for you to learn how to market yourself so they can find you.

The problem is that until you open yourself up you’ll never be able to find that world and tell your story. You will stop chasing business and have business seeking you out when you do know how to reach out to that world. But this won’t happen until you expose yourself to the opportunities that will help you to make it happen. Search for ideas in the news and success stories of businesses outside your industry, read information that will help you to develop the skills you need to turn those ideas into cash like the monthly reports members of my 5 Star Achieving Excellence Group coaching program have access to, become part of a coaching group, and most importantly commit to taking action to make things different for you.

Discover how to get where you want to be in less time by visiting:
5 Star Achieving Excellence Group

There are a number of things that can make you a Top Producer.  Those things vary from person to person, but there is one thing that is true of every Top Producer.  Top Producers are ready, willing, and able to take massive action to produce desired results.

Why are you reluctant to take action? 

• You have a poor self-image.
• You lack confidence.
• You can’t see yourself doing it.
• You’re waiting for the right time.
• You procrastinate.
• “insert your excuse here”

The above list demonstrates the futility of inaction.   Most people fear making a mistake or doing the wrong thing.  But those mistakes are far more valuable than doing nothing.  You aren’t learning anything that will help you to become a Top Producer doing nothing.

You won’t become a Top Producer from ideas only actions.  Sales success can only be had from acting on an idea not thinking about it.  Align your actions with your objectives, and you’ll be on the right track.

Take your strengths and choose actions based on those things you already do well.  You have the potential to do the things you do well even better.  When you do the things you do well even better you’ll find it’s easier to take the actions you need to take, and you enjoy greater success from those actions.  So, if you’re struggling with inaction now commit to taking action and notice the impact it has on your results.

There is one skill that if you master will help you to become a sales genie like the Top Producers you look up to. That skill is listening. The funny thing is most salespeople think they’re great listeners when they’re really great talkers.

You know that the prospect should be doing 80% of the talking. Yet, if you were to actually track how much of the time you spend talking you’d be shocked to learn the reality. But most of you would never actually take the time to measure how much time you spend talking or faking listening.

So put your understanding to the test instead. At the end of a sales conversation you should have a complete understanding of what the prospect wants, and the prospect should agree that you do. The prospect should openly relate to you that they’ve shared things with you that they’ve never shared with anyone else. If you aren’t passing the test there are a few simple things you can do to improve your listening skills.

Keep your eyes on the prospect. I don’t mean stare at them, that would be creepy, but I do mean keep your eyes only on the prospect. That means even if other people are walking by or a loud noise occurs you keep your eyes on the prospect. This simple act will deepen your understanding of what the prospect is communicating to you because communication is more than just what is said, it’s how it’s said and the body language that’s going on.

When you allow your eyes to look at other people or things while you’re talking to a prospect you’re being disrespectful. You’re communicating to the prospect that something other than them is important to you. Plus allowing distractions to take your focus off the client means you’re missing important communications from the prospect.

Quite your mind and your body. Allow your mind to slow down and focus on the prospect. Don’t be thinking about what you’re going to say or do next. Keep your body in a relaxed position so you’re comfortable, and you don’t distract the prospects thoughts. When you’re shifting around a lot and using big gestures the prospect starts to focus on what you’ll do next rather than what they want to say next.

Listening is a matter of understanding. Top Producers, the sales genies, understand their prospects. Because they understand the prospect they’re able to gain their trust and confidence, build relationships, and help more prospects choose their solutions.

If your system for success is based on winging it you’ll never enjoy the success of a Top Producer. Some people balk at systems and procedures because they think they’re limiting and constraining. The reality is that systems and procedures are liberating.

When you have systems you can track, measure, and improve. Without systems you mistakenly think that something that worked once is a good investment of your time and dollars when it isn’t. Without systems you make up the rules as you go along so it’s hard to remember how you did it last time, and your clients receive haphazard levels of service.

What systems do Top Producers have:

• A system to generate qualified prospects from multiple sources (marketing funnel)
• A system for moving those prospects from an interested looker into an active buyer (sales funnel)
• A systematic sales process that converts the majority of the prospects you meet into buyers without using manipulative or any other relationship damaging sales tactics (sales system)
• A system for encouraging, gathering, and rewarding referrals (referral system)

When you combine all 4 systems into a cohesive plan you have a system for sales success. If there are 4 steps in your marketing funnel and 3 steps in your sales funnel and 12 steps in your referral system, without systems they won’t get done.  With systems they will get done plus you can track and measure every step in each system.

That means you have the data to make improvements. You’ll know the exact response rate for each step in each system, so you can make improvements to each step until you have the highest response rates you can get. This might sound like a lot of work to some of you but…

It takes a whole lot less time, money, and work to develop a good system for sales success than it does working by the seat of your pants. All the time your wasting meeting with suspects when you could be meeting with qualified prospects would be better invested developing a system to attract qualified prospects. Most salespeople do not like to be told “no” no matter how brave a front they put on. A sales system for success means hearing “no” only on rare occasions and more time and more money than you’re experiencing now.

Learn more about the secrets of Top Producers: ’7 Secrets Top Producers Know that You Can Put to Use in the Next 9 Days”

Zig Ziglar certainly looks like a sales genie or a sales genius.  When you’re struggling to make sales yourself it can be frustrating to observe Top Producers like Zig at work.  They seem to have an almost magical quality that you don’t.

The truth is you too can become a sales genie or genius just like Zig or any other Top Producer.   There are some simple truths about Top Producers:

• they’re never afraid to invest in themselves and their development
• even though they’re considered great by others they continually strive to improve
• they’re great listeners and seek to understand the prospect and the prospects needs
• they never push for a sale when they haven’t uncovered a highly motivating need
• they always ask for the sale when they have uncovered that highly motivating need

According to Chris Hegarty salespeople fail to ask for the sale 63% of the time.  That’s an obvious problem yet many sales people just can’t bring themselves to ask for the sale.  If you can’t ask for the sale you lose, and so does your prospect.

Why can’t you bring yourself to ask for the sale?

• Do you believe in the value and importance of your service?
• Did you and the prospect discuss their highly motivating need for your service?
• Will you feel good knowing that your prospect will probably settle for a lower quality service provided by your competition because you wouldn’t ask them for their business?

Here are some things to keep in mind on your journey to becoming a Top Producer. 

• The first sale you have to make is to yourself.  If you don’t believe in your service neither will anyone else.
• A buyer won’t buy until they’re ready to buy and their readiness is directly proportional to the reward they’ll get for making a buying decision, or the consequence they’ll avoid.
• When a prospect is ready to buy they will buy from someone and it may as well be you, but if you don’t ask the buyer may misinterpret your reluctance to ask as disinterest in working with them.

You use a service like sales genie because you’re desperate for appointments and you don’t know how to fill your appointment calendar with prospects.  Out of sheer frustration and desperation you turn to lead generation services hoping those leads will result in business.  But what happens?

Less than 1% of those leads turn into business.  Is it Sales Genie or any other lead service businesses fault?  Not really, it’s your fault.

First and foremost the smart thing to do is to learn how to become your own sales genie.  You want to develop your own highly confidential and proprietary leads list of highly qualified prospects.  Yes, this will take more work on your part but a high percentage of these prospects will do business with you and it will take far less time and work on your part than cold calling purchased leads lists.

What about that list of leads you bought already?  If you at least did your homework before purchasing your list there may be some potential in that purchased list.  The list will only have value if:

• you were very specific about your target market when you selected the list
• you have a multi-step marketing system to move those suspects into your sales funnel
• you understand your market well enough to get their attention and interest

When you’re riding a dead horse, get off.  The days of random cold calls to consumers and businesses are dead.  Accept that fact and move on.  Stop abusing yourself and get those suspects to identify themselves as prospects.  Then follow up with a value added opportunity that will get them in your sales funnel.  You can’t buy a sales genie, but you can become one.

Rather than hoping for a sales genie develop a sales action plan that produces results.  Sales is never about luck it’s all about having an effective plan and a steady commitment to the implementation of that plan.  Set aside a few minutes now to get yourself situated for the best year yet in 2008.

When it comes to your sales action plan there are several things to keep in mind.  First, think most likely to buy.  If you have existing clients and prospects in your sales funnel now those potential new and repeat buyers are in different stages of the buying process.

Identify your top 25 most likely to buy now existing clients and new prospects.  You can spend a lot of time and energy on every existing client and prospect giving them equal precedence, but that doesn’t make sense.  Pick those top most likely buyers and focus your time and energies on those folks first and foremost.

You know who, now you need to know what.  Sales is all about action, and Top Producers know it’s also about right action.  So for each of those most likely buyers plan out your next action steps.

All these next action steps should be defined and part of your normal sales funnel.  Now you know who, and what, so the next question is when.  Far too many sales people allow themselves to run around like a dog chasing it’s tail thinking if they’re just busy enough something good will happen.

Top Producers know that’s a recipe for hard work with little results.  Instead identify the most important 3 actions you must take each day and do them.  No matter what, no excuses.

Prioritize those most important actions not by urgency, but rather by how likely they are to produce a pay check.  There are lots of urgent things you could do each day, but urgency and importance should never be confused.  At the end of each day identify the top 3 actions you must do the next day based on their closeness to a pay check.

No, you don’t need a sales genie to be a Top Producer.  You just need a sales action plan and a commitment to follow through on your plan.

Prospecting is one of the biggest challenges in sales especially insurance sales. Out of sheer desperation many salespeople turn to services like Sales Genie to get lists of names of people they can contact hoping for a sale. Unless you have a game plan for these leads don’t waste your money.

Cold calling may be fine for product sales, but cold calling is a horrible idea for any service business. Cold calling sucks up huge amounts of time, results in few appointments, and produces poor quality sales. The sales you get through cold calling are poor because the clients typically have a very low retention rate.

The reason for that is simple to explain. When you cold call clients they view you as nothing more than a commodity, and they don’t trust you. You never want to build a service business based on cold calling because if you do you’re dooming yourself to a life of perpetually struggling for business.

The information you get from lead generation services can be useful if you know what you’re doing and how to use them. Be very selective about who you want on your list of leads. Set as many details and parameters as you can to generate a very narrow list made up of your ideal prospects.

Develop a direct response marketing campaign getting those leads to reach out to you rather than attempting to cold call them. You do that by having a clear call to action for something of value to your potential prospects. Rather than using a one-step approach plan a multi-step approach from the onset.

Better yet, develop your own highly proprietary leads list. That way you aren’t contacting the exact same people as hundreds of other sales people. Plus you can be much more selective about who gets on your list. And that means you are far more likely to create a marketing message that grabs their attention and interest getting them to act.