December 20th marked my 1 year anniversary in SJF fully commissioned sales. I have to say – It was a year that flew by fast. I learned an enormous amount about our different product and service offerings and was introduced to the fast and furious world of fully commissioned sales.
At the end of the year, when all things were tallied, I’ll admit I was a bit deflated. Although my end of year grand total was nothing to sneeze at ($700K+), the monies earned weren’t where I was hoping they would be. But to keep a little perspective, I still have a roof over my head and food in the fridge, so I decided to stay on course for year 2.
As luck would have it, in the very first month or 2014, I reached a personal sales goal of over $100K sold in one month. This one winning month provided me hope, inspiration and a new drive to see what else I can accomplish in wild world of material handling sales.
If someone were to ask me what was the most important thing I learned in my rookie year, I’d have to say “Listening Skills.” I think that you can never listen too much to your customers. It pays off big time to ask questions to get to what they need, but it helps more to uncover some of the things that they are not telling you. Sometimes it’s the regular stuff like price or availability that are the big factors in a sale. Other times it can be something else entirely. Even though they don’t take the time to mention it explicitly, it still may be important to the customer. It pays to listen so you can tease out the small details that can make all the difference.
Sometimes, it’s things customers don’t tell you that matter most, and unless you are a good listener, you’re just going to end up losing the sale – or worse…the commission!
