Grrrrrr…

No matter what you seem to do in your sales process, you don’t close at the same rate as your office’s “superstar.”

You’ve tried everything: increasing urgency, closing more aggressively, qualifying prospects better, saying “no” to more requests, and nothing seems to improve your results.

It’s frustrating because you can’t seem to find what works!

An article at Harvard Business Review by Joel Le Bon sheds light on why luck seems to work better for some than others.

Most sales managers tend to de-emphasize luck because it’s uncontrollable. But, his interviews with 19 people and research of 250 students selling sponsorships and openings for players in a golf tournament showed why “luck” works better for some than others.

Experienced Salespeople Know How to Maximize Their Opportunities to Benefit from “Provoked Luck”

In other words, they know how to arrange their sales processes  so “lucky” things are much more likely to happen to them than other salespeople.

For example, the author of the HBR article knew a salesperson at Xerox who lost an important account. That person then helped another client, a friend of the lost client.

Happy with the service, that client spoke well to the lost account, who eventually came back to the salesperson. This salesperson always seemed to find themselves in lucky situations.

After completing the study, the author of the article found that 70 of the 250 students studied who sold opportunities to participate in a golf tournament attributed 60% of their $132,000 in sales to “luck.” Just 40% of the sales appeared to be from “standard sales processes.”

How Do You Provoke “Luck?”

In a nutshell, you always do what’s in the other person’s best interest. That’s what the Xerox salesperson, discussed earlier, did. And the article asserts you have to believe that’s the way it works. Because then you’re more likely to engage in all the actions necessary to provoke luck.

Here are some specific techniques for provoking “luck:”

1. Letting go of “failures:” The nature of sales is that much of what happens is uncontrollable. Good-paying customers suddenly go out of business. A desirable prospect gets fired from their job, and your relationship is lost. Failures will happen. Believing that continually doing the right thing will eventually lead to success is key.

2. Focusing on customers’ success, not sales quotas: When you focus on successful outcomes for your customers, you do what’s in their best interest. That could mean telling them you don’t have the right solution for them. That builds a large amount of trust, and you’re more likely to get a referral.

Focus on making the sale, and your customer picks up on that. They won’t buy, and they won’t tell anyone about your company or services either.

3. Knowing the lay of the market: The Xerox salesperson built a relationship with someone who knew the account they lost. The article doesn’t say for sure, but it may have been that salesperson knew the other customer had a relationship with the lost account. So, they may have reasonably guessed that they could win the account back by forming a good relationship with the new customer. Insights like that help provoke more “luck.”

You Can’t Control Luck, But You Can Maximize Your Chances for Success

Even experienced sales people  go through difficult times. But those times don’t last nearly as long, and don’t get nearly as bad, because of their ability to provoke luck.

See how you can make yourself “luckier” armed with this new knowledge.

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