The last thing I want to be good at is discounting.  In sales, if I have to get business through discounting, then its only a matter of time before someone else can do my job for a lot less money. Wait a minute, I am not talking about discounting my products or services, its the other discounting that gets me in trouble.....

When is a discount not helpful?

Did you ever get that sinking feeling after you spent all the time fixing one of your sales people that, after a great week of selling while you were watching, they began to slide back to their comfort zone over the next couple of weeks? What is it about sales people that, even thought they know what to do, they don't always do it? Ever wonder why?

Part of the problem is that human beings often do a lot of discounting. We discount problems by not even noticing they are there. Ever see a sales staff with a high turnover but no one really noticed because they were so busy recruiting the next potential superstar? Ever see a business owner who says proudly: "Sales are just fine!" without even knowing what his sales could be if the organization paid attention to the sales team? We discount reasons for the problem by coming up with excuses. We spend lots of time trying to figure out why problems happen instead of coming up with solutions to the problem. Excuses are always discounts.

Another discount is discounting the significance of a problem. "We don't really have a sales problem. We just have to weather the business cycle. We can make it through this. We always have before." Ever heard that? Another familiar discount is discounting the solvability of a problem. "You know, you just cant find good sales people. We've tried to develop our sales people, but it never works." No confidence that the problem can be solved leads to ineffective behaviors.

The last discount is the most debilitating: discounting people, either other people or even ourselves. We discount people when we don't listen to them. We discount them when we think our thoughts, our beliefs, our needs and wants are more important than theirs. "I don't care what they are saying, I want those sales up this month or else." Not that anyone in your organization would ever say things like this, but they're out there.

All this discounting, which is a belief, leads to ineffective behavior. And ineffective behaviors never help improve sales. I wonder -- how often do our discounting beliefs result in poor sales performance? Probably more often than we are comfortable in admitting. (Which is a discount itself.)

Jeremy Rawitz

Sales Strategy Corp.

1375 Broadway, 3rd Floor

New York, NY 10018

jr@salesstrategycorp.com