Many successful sales careers have been damaged or lost due to poor training, poor management and an imbalance between personal values and the demands of business.
Why is it that many salespeople who are making good money in salary (and/or plus commission), leave their selling career, just when they seem to be so successful?
More importantly, what can cause successful salespeople to ‘plateau’ and even regress in their sales achievements?
The answer is “Burnout”.
The emotional strain that some successful salespeople (and many unsuccessful salespeople) may be feeling far outweighs the financial gain they may be receiving.
So, they just up and leave.
Sometimes they stay and suffer from ‘presenteeism’ which is worse than absenteeism because they turn up for work and still do nothing.
These high calibre salespeople can start to get strong feelings about wanting to leave their successful sales career, often finding the alternatives they choose aren’t any more satisfying.
Many salespeople today are facing a tough time of it.
Competition, disruption, and continuing pressure from shareholders, are making life for salespeople more challenging than ever.
Mix this with an increasingly more educated, aware, and demanding customer base, and the salesperson’s lot can be a difficult one.
The pressure is on to win the sale … but win the sale at what cost?
A Question of Integrity
Many of the issues confronting salespeople can place their personal integrity or values at risk.
Quite often salespeople who want to be honest and trustworthy with their existing and potential customers, are not competing on a level playing field.
Their competitors may have been to the school of dirty tricks and manipulative selling strategies, and will do anything (lie, cheat, coerce, or even bribe) to win the business – regardless of the long-term implications (to the customer and to their company).
But this is the redeeming clue for the honest and trustworthy salesperson.
Customers today are certainly more aware of the manipulative selling strategies and tricky closing lines.
Trustworthiness Goes Viral
Customers today know when they are being “techniqued”.
They may buy once from an unethical salesperson, but it is unlikely that they will ever buy twice.
And they will surely tell many of their friends and business associates about the unethical way they were treated.
To compete against the “dodgy” salesperson, the ethical salesperson does not need to adopt the manipulative and tricky techniques.
If they do, this will cause a conflict between their inner most personal values and their outward actions and behaviours.
In other words, they become emotionally torn between what they believe to be the ‘right’ thing to do, and what they are actually doing.
This is what can cause the burnout.
Successful selling has more to do with what a salesperson truly believes about what he or she is selling and how they go about selling it.
Successful selling is not reliant upon tricky techniques and manipulative closing strategies.
