Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Chris O’Byrne.
“Begin with the end in mind.” -Habit 2 from Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
I recently turned 50, and I found myself asking the big question: What is my end game in life? This led to thinking about my end game in other areas, including my business. We may think briefly about our business end game if we do an initial business plan, but after that we become too wrapped up in day-to-day details to give much thought to the big picture—just as we do with our life in general.
I recently started a new venture as a result of asking myself what knowledge and experience I wanted to gain over the next year. Since it is always better to learn from real-life examples, let me tell you exactly what this venture is and what I’m planning for my end game.
Real Life Learning
I currently run my own business, which provides self-publishing services for coaches, speakers, business authors, and other creative giants. My business has done well, but as I focused more on selling and marketing while allowing my team to handle services, I realized that I wanted to learn a lot more about selling. I’ve read many excellent books on the topic (heck, I’ve even published some of them), but nothing beats hands-on experience. That’s when the idea hit me.
I needed to find a job that not only trained me to be a great salesperson, but also forced me to sink or swim. That meant a commission-based sales position. That meant car sales.
I got a job at a local car dealership and found that I was going to receive three months of training. Score! After that, I will continue to train and gain experience for as long as I work there. That’s when I realized what a bonus this form of education is. When I attended college, I paid thousands of dollars for a little bit of practical knowledge. Now I am going to be paid thousands of dollars for a whole lot of practical knowledge. At the time of writing this, I’m only two weeks into my training, and I’ve already gained practical knowledge I can apply to my publishing business.
Applying Real Life Learning in Other Areas of Your Life
One of the first things I learned in my sales training was to build value. It’s not that your prospective customers need to “be sold,” as much as they need to be assured of the value for which they are potentially exchanging their hard-earned money.
This week, a potential publishing customer asked me to send him a price quote for my company’s services. I usually send a short list of services with the accompanying prices, but this time I discussed each service in a short paragraph and showed him the benefits that each service would provide. Seems pretty basic, but somehow I had been bypassing that step in my sales process—and probably losing a lot of sales along the way.
I’m glad to report that my newly learned method of discussing value worked. Not only did this prospect become a customer, but he was excited and told me how much he appreciated learning about how much we provided. I realized that learning better sales techniques is not about manipulating customers, but about helping them make decisions based on better information.
Being Clear on Where Your End Game Will Take You
My end game for this car sales venture is to receive as much sales training and practical sales experience as possible and to measure my success by the number of cars I sell. It is not my end game to become a long-term car salesman; I’m an entrepreneur at heart and need to be more in control of my work life. My end game is to gain highly useful experience, get paid for that experience, and then use that experience to grow my own business.
I suggest that you start planning your end games, not only your end game in life, but all the end games along the way that lead to a satisfied and successful life—for you. If you are currently working for someone else, what is your end game? Are you content to do an excellent job and help to grow someone else’s business (nothing wrong with that), or are you using that steady income to plan a different end game?
If you are a solopreneur, are you content with providing high-quality services and enjoying the freedom you have, or do you plan to hire other contractors to perform the work while you grow your business?
Determine your end game and start planning. (Click to tweet – thanks!)
Hi Chris,
Thank you for an inspiring article.
I am wondering if there may be additional ways to measure your success besides the number of cars you sell?
Thanks,
-Brooke.
Thanks, Brooke! I’ve been thinking quite a bit about that very same thing. Number of cars sold is an easy metric, but not the one that is most important to me.
One thing I always try to do is help people as much as possible, so how I do measure that? Customer surveys? People I talk to every day?
Or perhaps I measure it by what I hope to get out of it for my own business, such as how many new customers do I get per month or how satisfied those customers are or by how much do my referrals increase each month. To be honest, I’m a little overwhelmed with all of the choices!
Hi Chris,
In thinking about your, “…end game for this car sales venture is to receive as much sales training and practical sales experience as possible,” I thought maybe you could include a subjective measure of success as well.
Were it me, for example, I might survey myself. Each day, or once a week or so, I’d ask myself how I feel about going in to work, how I feel just before engaging the customer, how I feel with rejection, etc.
The idea would be to note how/if those feelings are changing. Am I toughening up? Trying again and again? Do I feel more confident day by day? Am I enjoying selling?
Sounds like you’re gonna get an education however ya slice it. I hope you have fun.
-Brooke.
Thank you, Brooke; this was very helpful!
I respect your practical approach to developing your selling skills and setting / achieving goals. Good for you, Chris!
Thank you, Steve.
Hi, thanks for giving me a good realization of what my end game should be. I never thought about that and now it’s time for me to start thinking about it. Great thoughts. Thank you.
Thank you, Lynne!
That sounds like the adventurous spirited Chris I knew years ago; go for it man!!!
Pastor Betry, I can’t believe you found me here! Thank you for the kind comment.
For those of you who don’t know (which would be just about everyone who reads this), Pastor Betry was my pastor growing up in my tiny rural village (yes, village) in southeastern Minnesota. The town was all of 80 people, if that. Pastor Betry was and is the kindest, most gentle man of God I have ever know. He shaped who I am today, although I would never have admitted it at the time.
I just got out of a 3 day insurance sales training course…. One that not even once nodded toward inbound, social media, or digital marketing. And it was refreshing and so, so applicable to any sales situation: Uncover where someone is and where they want to get. Help them see a viable plan for getting there, and building trust along the way that you’re the perfect guide.
Thank you for you comment, Brett. The car dealership I worked at was failing miserably at digital marketing, but they certainly taught me the basics of sales, just like you received. I hadn’t realized how much of the basics I had bypassed to get to what I assumed was the good stuff—all of the Internet-based marketing.
Yes… auto sales and insurance sales aren’t so far apart in their confusion on how to handle digital marketing.
What’s been fun has been learning very useful sales lessons for my insurance practice by following a variety of digital and internet marketing practitioners (some of the branding and relationship-building principles are powerful) while also learning some of the sales 1.0 that, frankly, have created most of the high-dollar producers in auto and insurance sales.
And NO sales training or approach worth its salt is ever snake-oil, smarmy, or unethical. An unethical salesperson (or internet marketer) will make anything good end up looking sleazy.
You are absolutely right. The (current) best salespeople at the dealership follow best sales 1.0 practices, build a reputation and relationships, and try to never go near a computer. lol They don’t see that going online (especially social media) just extends what they’re already doing well.