Selling with Intention: The Mindset and Tools You Need to Double or Triple Your Sales This Year

By Ursula C. Mentjes

Every Sales Person and Entrepreneur knows that selling is the key to success, but most never achieve their potential even after attending numerous trainings and reading dozens of books. Why? Most of the training industry focuses on technique without ever addressing the most important part of the sales process – what the Sales Person is saying to themselves. It doesn’t matter how well you implement the concepts and methods if you haven’t addressed the beliefs and behaviors that are sabotaging your efforts. “How we think about selling makes all the difference.” In Selling With Intention, Sales Expert and Certified Sales Coach Ursula Mentjes shares the expertise she uses to help clients double their sales revenues in as short as two months. Her principles and exercises will help you: Transform the way you think about and interact with your target clients, the sales process, and yourself as a sales person; Develop the mindset, systems, and intentional sales plan you need to significantly increase sales; Let go of the fears and limiting beliefs that have been sabotaging your efforts; Move forward with a renewed sense of confidence in solving clients’ problems; and Take a quantum leap toward your greatest sales goals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781600378423

Book preview

Introduction

I decided to write Selling With Intention after founding my own coaching and consulting company and realizing that many people over-complicate sales. The truth is that sales can be boiled down to a few fundamental principles that are easily followed by a new sales person or by seasoned veterans looking to double or triple their sales!

Throughout my career, I have heard many people saying, "Selling is difficult" This includes sales people, sales managers, branch managers, executive managers, and business owners. You have probably heard it too. Let me let you in on a little secret…

Selling is as easy as you make it.

For those who believe selling is difficult, it is. For those who believe selling is easy, it is. Would you like to begin to make selling easier for yourself?

Now, let me draw a sharp distinction: Selling is not simple, but I do believe that it can become easy. I think, like anything else, that selling is easy if one has the right knowledge. For example, being a dentist would be difficult without the right knowledge about teeth and everything that is involved with dental work. Likewise, being a highly paid and successful sales person will be difficult if you do not have the right knowledge.

So, what is the right knowledge? There are many, many excellent sales training programs in existence that will tell you how to make a sale. Those programs will give you the nuts and bolts of the mechanics behind making the sale, such as: Asking closing questions, waiting until the prospect speaks first, isolating objections, and so on. Those courses will likely teach you to be consistent in your sales process to ensure that sales are closed. However, in addition to teaching many techniques and methods that don’t feel authentic or natural to most people, these programs leave out essential information on how to sell easily and successfully with intention.

I hope you are getting excited about the possibility that increasing your volume and number of sales could actually be easy for you! Believing in that possibility is the first step toward making it a reality.

This book is designed to help you make selling easy by changing the way you think about selling. If it is true that we create our own reality, then it is possible to create a reality that includes a world where selling is uncomplicated and easy. The goal of Selling With Intention is to help you tap into your subconscious mind and make real changes toward success, and in order to make real change in your life and your sales, you must first develop a clear awareness of how you are holding yourself back.

For those of you who are serious about dramatically impacting your sales results and your bottom line, I have added a Bonus Section to this Second Edition in which I share a few more principles that will help you take a quantum leap in your sales this next year. Enjoy! And be sure to complete all of the Intentional Action exercises included in the book.

INTENTIONAL ACTION

Complete the exercises along the way so that at the end of this book, you will have created the Intentional Sales Plan that will help you reach your greatest sales goals.

For best results as you read through this book, use the Selling With Intention workbook, which is available with other sales training resources at www.SalesCoachNow.com and www.MySalesCoachNow.com.

If you would like to receive 30 days free on My Sales Coach Now, our virtual sales training and coaching community, just e-mail us at [e-mail] with 30 Days Free in the subject line, and we’ll make that happen for you!

Get ready to change the way you think about selling and double or triple your sales this year!

Blessings on Your Journey,

Ursula Mentjes

Ursula C. Mentjes, M.S., ACC

The Sales Coach

Sales Coach Now

[e-mail]

www.SalesCoachNow.com

www.MySalesCoachNow.com

PART I

SECOND EDITION

Selling

With

Intention

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

Discover How You Already

Sell With Intention

He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

— Henry Ford —

You Already Sell With Intention

That’s right! You read the chapter title correctly — you already sell with intention, but it might not be in a way that is helping you increase your sales or client base. What does it mean to sell with intention? It means that you determine the result you want to achieve with a prospect before you even meet with them. Intention is defined as an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result according to the American Heritage Dictionary. Most sales people do have goals for each interaction with a prospect (to move them through the sales process), but they aren’t aware of the conflicting intentions, fears, and negative beliefs that their subconscious uses to achieve those goals.

Intention means that you decide to act in a specific way that gets results. To sell with intention, you make the decision that you are going to act a specific way and determine the results you want to achieve before you ever meet with the prospect. To make this happen, you must first change your thoughts about what selling means, and then your behavior toward your clients will begin to change. Once your behavior begins to change, then your sales results will begin to change. If you are not clear about the outcome you desire before you meet with the client, it is very likely that you will get an outcome that you did not consciously want. By the end of this book, you will not only be able to more accurately determine the result you will achieve with a client before you meet with them, you will have the mindset and tools you need to get your intended results almost every time.

To fully understand the power of selling with intention, it is important to examine the simple power of intention. Being intentional and setting your intention can be extremely powerful in your life and in your sales. I teach all of my clients to set their intention, or know their desired result, before they meet with a prospect or make a decision in their personal life. I encourage them, and I would encourage you, to experiment with setting your intention on a daily basis so you can experience the power of being intentional.

The power of intention has played out in my business and in my life many times. One of my favorite memories in business was made at a networking event when the time came for the door prize drawings. I leaned forward to the six women who were sitting at my table and said, Let’s all set our intention that we are going to win! I remember that they looked at me a little baffled, and then said, Okay. I’m sure they figured I was a little crazy, but they realized that they had nothing to lose. The first name was drawn. A deep inhale in at our table, and then the name of the woman to my right was called. Our table erupted in clapping as we all smiled and shared knowing glances.

Another name was called, and it turned out to be the woman seated directly across the table from the woman who had just won. Again, we all smiled and clapped and the drawings went on. A couple of women at other tables won and then the next four names picked were those of women at our table! Everyone at our table had won a prize! The women were ecstatic and looked at each other in disbelief. I knew that the power of intention had been at play. So if being intentional can have such amazing results during a door prize drawing, imagine how selling with intention could dramatically increase your results. How intentional have you been in your sales efforts?

One way to bring this conscious level of being into your life and business is to set your intention, specifically with each prospect on your target client list. Setting your intention means that you are clear each day on what you want to accomplish in those 24 hours, from how you want to start and end your day (meditation, prayer, exercise, etc.) to which prospects you are going to call.

I had the privilege of attending the NLP Institute of California’s NLP Certified Coach program. NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is an innovative field that pre-supposes that human beings perceive their own reality and have the ability to influence that reality. This is achieved by tuning into the conscious and subconscious beliefs about their experiences and current life situation. By becoming aware of the inner world, human beings have the power to achieve great things in their lives and businesses. Selling With Intention is based on these concepts; they are at the core of this book and the exercises you will be asked to do.

To sell with intention, you make the decision that you are going to act a specific way and determine the results you want to achieve before you ever meet with the prospect!

Change can only come after awareness has been achieved, and the desire and decision to change has been put into motion. Throughout this book, you will have the opportunity to make real changes regarding how you think about yourself and what you think about selling. The results that you get will be determined by how willing you are to participate in this new way of thinking.

The Universal Laws

Today there is a lot of talk about the Universal Laws and the idea of attracting success to you versus just trudging your way through goal-setting. One of the most important laws discussed is the Law of Attraction itself. Simply stated, like attracts like in the world of science. When applied to business and sales, sales people attract the clients and circumstances they focus on most.

Whatever you are thinking about is what you will create. Sometimes we convince ourselves that we are thinking about our goals, focusing on them and saying positive affirmations. However, if there is an ounce of doubt lingering somewhere in your heart or in your mind, the doubt will manifest itself. Whatever you are worrying about or wherever you are stuck is what you will attract. For example, if you focus your attention on losing your prospect, and that is all you think about, you may unconsciously create that reality.

Most of the time, we get what we expect, so expect that your prospects will turn into your clients!

I recently had a conversation with a client I have known for awhile. She was selling a new product and really struggling with getting clients to keep their appointments.

Because I understand that it is critical that we pay attention to what we are thinking about at all times, especially when we are thinking about our prospects or current clients, I allowed my client to talk through how she was feeling about the new products she was selling and the clients that could really benefit.

We discovered together that she had lost her confidence and was beginning to believe that no one wanted what she was selling. When I helped her reconnect (in her mind) with all of the satisfied clients she already had, she was able to easily shift back into a place of selling with intention and expecting the prospect to turn into a client. And as soon as she shifted her thoughts, and began to feel better, her experience started to change. Her prospects began keeping their appointments.

So many times we want to blame the clients for not keeping the appointments; but often, they are reflecting exactly where we are. In other words, if there is any part of you that doesn’t believe you deserve more clients, or if you have limiting beliefs about money and how much you are allowing in, it will likely show up by clients cancelling on you.

I know that might sound strange, but if you think about it, I am sure you will find examples in your own life and business where this has occurred. Most of the time, we get what we expect, so expect that your prospects will turn into your clients!

As human beings, we must work very hard to cleanse our minds, on a moment-by-moment basis, of negative thoughts or feelings. This is not easy to do, but it is possible if you are conscious and committed to making this change in your life. When you do this, and focus on what it is you want and what you are committed to achieving, you might just double or triple your sales!

Some people might experience mystical feelings or a sense of Divine intervention. But no matter what, do not doubt the power of the Law of Attraction. Sometimes when wonderful things are happening and flowing in their lives, people begin to doubt that they have anything to do with it. This is the worst trap that you can fall into because it means that you