In this 10 Key article series, learn how to catapult your career, your sales and your life through learning superior 'Saleswoman-ship.' Key #2 is Avoiding Self Deception

Self Deception

Bob Broadley, one of the top insurance salesmen in Australia puts it in strong terms. He says that the single biggest failure sales people make is self deception. He said he wasn't 'born with success.' He had to study the most successful sales people he could find.

His advice? "Don't fool yourself into thinking you're selling when you're not in front of the right number of people every day." Working eight hours per day is not the point. It's what you do those eight hours that counts.

If you're not in front of enough prospects, you won't sell enough to make your target. And how do you get in front of enough prospects? By making enough appointments. It's that straight forward. "Yet many people fool themselves thinking they are selling when in fact they are doing busy work," says Bob.

"You must know your daily targets for finding prospects and do that first. That means making appointments and seeing prospects. All else is secondary."

Look at the list of success preparation points at the beginning again. All of them have to do with planning your targets and workloads so that you put yourself in front of the necessary number of prospects.

Remember, the difference between success and failure often is neglecting to break down the overall target into daily targets and tasks.

Let's look at advice from people who succeed year after year. How do they put this principle into practice?

One salesman with a world-wide reputation for success is Ove Sjögren from Electrolux in Sweden. He has calculated his yearly target and broken it down to a daily figure. He knows exactly how many sales he must make per day. He knows how many prospects he must see each day.

He stresses that staying at the top is easy if you know how much you must do every day and you do it.

Not me!

"Oh, daily targets don't relate to me," many people argue. That's the biggest misconception we hear from seminar delegates. They really believe they can't break their activity into daily targets.

This is the first mental adjustment change we must all make if we are to succeed in selling. Sales come about from methodically carrying out the right practices, day in and day out.

Whether we sell large systems to governments which require three years to close, or retail products to customers which take three minutes to close, we still have to calculate which daily component parts will lead us to success. Even if we only want three customers per year, we'll have to be negotiating with six, nine or twelve prospects constantly. We need to know how many and keep this running orderly and constantly.

In the research undertaken for Secrets of the World's Top Sales Performers, we found that every single top sales performer in every industry knows their daily sales target and daily activity schedule. Did their companies tell them? No. They've calculated it themselves. It's exactly what we all must do if we want true and lasting success.

There are 10 Keys in the Great Sales Success for Women Series.

Visit http://great-sales-training.com/ for more information

Christine Harvey is the author of 6 books sold in 24 languages, including In Pursuit of Profit, Successful Selling in a Week, Secrets of the World's Top Sales Performers, Public Speaking and Leadership Building, and Can a Girl Run for President? Harvey's high-energy books can be considered the ultimate sales and marketing success guide. For more information visit http://christineharvey.com/