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“Sandbagging kills our momentum and our belief in ourself and our future success!”

Momentum Is Power

If you watch any sports, you can see the effects of momentum. How many games have you watched where a team is losing, and one play changes the momentum so much so that the losing team comes back and wins the game? The only thing that changed was the momentum of the game. This is also true for us in business and sales. The key is to learn how to generate and keep the momentum.

So often in sales we have good intentions, but we allow our momentum to slip away by playing it safe or not taking the next step. I will share with you three key ways to keep your momentum and ride it all the way to victory after victory.

• First: Stop sandbagging.
• Second: Always get the next introduction.
• Third: Never fear the “winner’s tax,” in fact count on it!

Stop Sandbagging

“Sandbagging” is a term every salesperson knows and at one time or another has probably done — and more than once in their career. I find it entertaining, no matter the industry or the country, that when I say sandbagging every salesperson knows exactly what I am talking about. For the few that don’t know what it means, sandbagging is holding back a sale for the future. In most cases salespeople do this to ensure their next month or next quarter is successful because they have enough sales in the current period to achieve their set goal.

The Problem

When we decide to sandbag, we subconsciously say to ourselves that we will not sell as much next period as this period. By doing this we already decided that we will fail in some way. In sales, much like in life, we get what we expect.

The second part of this problem is we now allow the momentum from that success to be delayed, so our momentum dwindles and, in many cases, fades away.

Last, we put off the ability to use that current client as a referral source because we tend to wait to ask for new contacts until we close the current sale. When you put those three problems together, we lose the momentum.

Always Get the Next Introduction

We teach our kids that if you want something, you need to ask for it and go get it. In sales we make the mistake of waiting for someone we just served to recommend us to others. Here is the problem: they have their own business to tend to and don’t have time to keep thinking of ways to help us grow our business. So just ask — and ask with a purpose and a plan. When I ask for a referral, I come from a place of confidence and gratitude. My ask sounds like this: “Mr. Client, I am so grateful that you allowed me to work with you and your team. Would you mind introducing me to a peer or a friend that might be a good fit for me to work with? If you could send us an introduction email, and/or would you mind calling them and saying a bunch of nice things about me, so they will take the time to meet me?”

Don’t just ask for a name, ask for an endorsement and an introduction. If we do a great job in serving, our clients most likely jump at the opportunity to help us. Truth be told, I believe it is in all of our natures to want to help others. I can always use the help of others and I try never to be too proud to ask for it.

Winner’s Tax

Another term most salespeople know too well is “winner’s tax.” This is the belief that the more you sell, the higher the quota or expectation will be. This is true, and should be true, even though it does not always appear to be “fair.” Don’t fear this “tax” — embrace it. In my more than 25 years of sales, I have never seen a top rep make less money by selling more due to getting a higher quota.

Keep this in mind: when we sell more, we have more new clients to get more referrals from — we also have a larger impact on more people — so we become more well known in our fields. The only salespeople that don’t get a higher quota year over year are those not making quota or achieving great success. When we remove this fear, we no longer desire to sandbag or more important, we start to believe we are unstoppable. And when that happens — that is power in sales.

As I told my sales teams during my corporate years — “Every year you should expect your quota to go up, but if you keep your productivity up you should never make less income.”

Final Thought

Some of you reading this are thinking, “This is not the case in every situation,” or “That may be true, but I find that we must not plan for the exception, we must overcome it when it happens.”

However, when we plan for the exception then we make the exception the norm. I don’t know about you, but as a sales professional I want to strive and thrive — and the only way I can do that is to believe that what I did this year will be less than I will do next year. As my little league coach used to say our players “Leave it all on the field, every game.” So, to my fellow sales professional — leave it all on the field, every day!

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].