If you’re in sales you need to be learning if you want to be earning. There’s no way around it. Unconscious Selling Competence has roots that date back to the 1940's when psychologist Abraham Maslow created a conscious competence theory, more commonly known as the “Four Stages Of Learning.” These four stages of learning describe how a person learns.
Stage One: Unconscious Incompetence. In this stage you don’t know that you don’t know. This stage can be perilous for professional sales consultants. When you don’t know what you don’t know it’s easy to become over confident in your abilities based upon a false set of criteria. There’s only one way out of this stage: realize you don’t know that you don’t know, then get information and learn it.
Don’t be fooled, ignorance is never bliss. Keep reading, listen to CDs, watch DVDs, or go online to www.worldwidesalestraining.com. You'll soon realize how much you don't know about the selling profession. Then you can go to —
Stage Two: Conscious Incompetence. In this stage you are aware of lack of ability or skill. You recognize where your strengths and weaknesses are in the work you do. A weakness, if not strengthened, can be carried around for a lifetime. For example, “I’ve always been lousy at handling the price objection.” Another example, “I don't like asking for the business; it makes me feel too pushy!”
Imagine your weaknesses as shortcomings all contained inside a block of granite. As a sales representative, your job is to keep chipping away at all the things that don’t add to your personal professionalism. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a professional sales consultant. Once you are aware of your shortcoming, you can go to —
Stage Three: Conscious Competence. Here you will develop skills as you think about them. This stage is for salespeople who aspire to bigger and better things. They are hungry for the skills they need but do not yet possess. They are committed to self-development. The word quitting is not in their personal dictionaries, but the word perseverance is highlighted. Once this becomes second nature, —
Stage Four is reached: Unconscious Competence. Now customers and fellow employees will think your skills come naturally. The fourth stage is where you want to be if you’re an entrepreneur or a professional sales person. After years of hard work that others may not have seen, you make everything look easy. Pick up the phone and talk to a stranger? Ask for and get an appointment? Identify and solve customer problems? Ask or answer a dozen questions? Naturally weave your way through a conversation? Tailor sales presentations on the fly? Dealing with the price/payment objection? Asking for the business?
No problem for you because why? Oh. That’s right. You have recognized you don’t know everything, have identified your weaknesses, and have practiced to get better.
The only things separating Unconscious Incompetence and Unconscious Competence are dedication, discipline, focus, and your sheer desire and determination to become the best you are capable of becoming.
As Sales Consultants, Service Advisors, Wholesale Parts, BDC, or Internet Sales professionals, we should be looking each day at “Mastering The Basics.” If we wait to engage a guest without continuing practice and role play, we lose. In other words we can’t keep practicing with the guest because we will not get to the next level we were hoping for — Value Selling.
We at Evans Consulting Enterprise, LLC strive to be the innovative automotive industry leader, totally committed to customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, integrity, and teamwork.
“Motivation is the art of getting people
to do what you want them to do
because they want to do it.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
(WW II Five Star General and 34th President of the U.S.)
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