The content for this month’s Agency Sales is “Sales Technologies That Work.” With all the technological developments we’ve seen in the past couple of decades, there’s no doubt that the technologies for helping close sales has evolved right along with the rest.

All the great and innovative technologies in the world won’t help much if the salesperson doesn’t have the right sense of purpose. What’s your sense of purpose when you’re with a customer? Are you there to close the sale, to make the commission? If you are, you may be wondering why it’s not working out quite the way you expected.

I was that way until one of my principals put his manufacturers’ reps through a four-day consultative sales course. The first morning, we discovered purpose. All 20 of us in that session were asked by the leader “What do you think the purpose of your business is?” To a person, the answer was in one form or another, it was about the money.

Four hours later, we learned we all were wrong. The real purpose of our businesses was to help our customers solve problems in the most economical long-term manner. We also learned that you can’t fake a sense of purpose; it has to be genuine and come from the heart. For me, while I rationally knew what I had learned was correct, it took a while longer and constant focus every time I visited a customer for that sense of purpose to move from my head to my heart.

That one lesson I learned from the course fundamentally transformed my sales career in a very positive manner. Once I developed and internalized that purpose, my sales (and commissions) took off. Without a doubt, it was the most important lesson I learned in my entire sales career.

So what’s it going to be for you? Are you calling on customers to make some commissions, to make a few bucks or are you there to help them solve problems? Your choice.