Hi, it’s Ben Lai from Sales Ethos. Today I’m going to revisit one of my previous topics, which is the concept “always maintain initiative.” If anything, this is going to reinforce this concept in your own mind. You’ll never know, sometimes I might spin things a little bit differently than I explained last time. Always maintaining initiative is a really great phrase to remember and to practice on a regular basis. It’s not just for sales. This is applicable to every aspect in life.
Always Maintain Initiative Tip #1: Be Proactive
Steve Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People put it this way: he said be proactive. Essentially the crux of this phrase is to recognize that we have the ability to influence our results. We don’t have to depend on external factors. You don’t have to depend on someone else doing it for us. We are taking responsibility for what we can control. We are taking the initiative to do it. That’s why this is such an important principle, especially for sales people.
Always Maintain Initiative Tip #2: Never Complain
You will notice that most of the people nowadays are complainers. They complain about the government. Or, they complain about the rules. They complain about the economy. This is the vast majority of people and how disempowering is that. You can’t help it feel weak and not in control when you are blaming others for your life and your circumstances. Let’s face reality, you are responsible for your results. You are responsible for your life.
The sooner you realize and take that, the sooner you are going to empower yourself to change your circumstances, to take control and to make things different for your life. When you’re maintaining initiative, you’re not depending on anyone or anything for your results, you are taking personal responsibility. The next thing that I like to suggest when you’re putting this mindset on, is to lead and guide your clients.
Why Initiative is So Valuable
Your clients are pretty much happy where they are even if they have a lot of problems. Sometimes people can actually grow accustomed to their problems, to the extent that they don’t even know that they’re going through that problem. From that point of view, they’re not going to take the initiative to make things happen, even if they contact you at first, let’s just say it’s a fresh lead from your website, for example. Even if they contact you initially, that’s about the most initiative that they’re going to take.
Let’s just face reality, okay? They’re going to depend on you to lead them through your buying process. From that perspective, you must not lead anything to your prospects. To take the initiative. You need to be the one to suggest a time and a place to meet. Then you need to lead the conversation, you need to ask the questions and then you need to tell them what the next steps are and what the buying process is. You must constantly have the mindset of I am a leader and I am going to guide my clients to buy from me.
Always Maintain Initiative Tip #3: Follow Up Diligently
The final thing that I’d like to suggest, especially in sales, is to follow up diligently. Follow up is probably one of the most neglected areas in sales. There’s been plenty of quotes about how many follow ups it takes to make a sale and I’m not going to put a number to it because the variance is just huge. Sometimes it can take one or two follow ups to get a sale. Or, it can take six, sometimes it can take 12. Sometimes it can take 30. It can take anywhere between a few days to several years. I’ve heard stories from some sales consultants where they’ve been following up for several years before they get a sale. Usually those are the big ones.
Conclusion
Therefore, if we want to live out this phrase, always maintain initiative, we need to be responsible for follow up. We need to constantly follow up and follow up and follow up and make sure we define what the next steps are. Help the client to understand and to follow those steps and that is the way that we can be effective in maintaining initiative. To wrap up, don’t forget to like and subscribe and remember that integrity plus skills equals success.
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