What I mean by this, is that you will of course have a sales manager or director and they will be there for a multitude of things, whether it be deal approvals, pipeline reviews, direct help with customers (always useful to add gravitas) but your sales manager or director is super busy looking after their team with all the same actions as above and more. And so…

If you are just starting your career in sales either brand new or first day in a new company, nervous, excited, motivated and you want to make an impression. You need to find a mentor.

So, who is the person making it all seem effortless? Who in your team has clearly get the edge, closing sales frequently and whom every one likes in the office? Who ever it is, this is the person you need to get close to and learn from.

The first step to gaining a mentor is to simply ask if they have time for a few questions, take them for a coffee and explain that you would like to understand their process, who they speak to, how they deal with certain knock backs etc etc.

The idea is not to replicate exactly what they are doing but to gain knowledge that helps you adapt (if you need to that is) and grow your abilities as a sales person, essentially tweaking your own performance.

You can always learn more from a mentor. I’ve been selling for over 25 years and only in the last week I asked a super sales person in my team to review a document with me before sending to a customer, they had one comment, a small change in the opening paragraph and the difference this made was amazing. I’m still being surprised 🙂

Once you have started these conversations it’s vital to put into action what you have learned! Being audacious will bring you good opportunities and once you carry out a scenario that works well, you replicate it and if something doesn’t work, run it by your mentor and talk it through and go again.

It’s important to have a mentor for these reasons, to stop you getting in a slump, to learn better ways to do things, help more people and also pass on the knowledge. Team work!

Let me know how you get on or of course if you would like to ask my advice please contact me on Twitter

Thanks for reading

Andrew