If you want to be successful in sales, you must have each of the 5 ‘believes’. Now there are other so-called experts out there who will tell you that you can overcome the lack of one or two of these but I’m here to tell you that you will never be as successful as you could be, you will never reach your full potential for success, without all 5. To be ultimately successful, you must:

Believe in yourself

Dr. Norman Vincent Peele put it this way, “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”  You need a strong self-image and self confidence. There is nothing you cannot accomplish if you believe, truly believe, you can do it.

Building your belief that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to is the first step in becoming a successful salesperson. Only when you are confident in yourself and your sales abilities can you be the best at what you do.

Believe in what you are doing

If you don’t believe you belong in sales, you don’t. If you are not willing to dedicate yourself to becoming the best salesperson you can be, get out now. If you are not willing to dedicate a portion of your time to continual learning and if you are not driven to become the best salesperson in the business, you will never be the best you can be. You can make a living being a mediocre salesperson but you will never be considered a success if you don’t believe in what you are doing and want to be the best at it.

With the wealth of information available on the Internet, help can be no farther away than your computer. Read and listen to past and present attitude and sales training material. Go to seminars. The secret is that training is not a one-time thing. It’s not even a sometime thing. You must constantly be seeking new knowledge and techniques to make yourself better.

Believe in your product

Is it possible to sell a product that you don’t think is the best? I have to grudgingly admit that the answer is yes. However, it’s much easier, much more fulfilling and much more lucrative to sell a product that you firmly believe is the best available on the market. You will close more sales, at higher prices and margins than if you are trying to sell something that, in your heart, you know isn’t the best available.

If you don’t believe that the product you sell is the best one there is, you should consider making a change. That change might be in your place of employment or it might be in your beliefs and attitude.

Believe in your company

In many industries, it is possible to sell the same product for different companies. Whether you sell real estate, automobiles or sneakers, you have options as to what company you choose to work for. You need to make sure that you work for one you can believe in.

Even selling the same product, there are differences in the companies selling it. How is their service after the sale, what is the company culture like, how do they treat their customers….and their employees?

If you don’t believe the company you work for is the best, you can’t put your whole heart into every sale and it may be difficult for you to have the next ‘believe’.  Much like the ‘believe’ above, if you don’t believe the company you work for is the best, you need to make a plan on how to change that. Again, it may be leaving like above or it may be working to change the areas where you believe your present company to be deficient.

Believe that your customer will be better off if they buy from you

You may have noticed that these ‘believes’ kind of build on each other. Each builds on the one before it until you reach this one. This is, perhaps, the ultimate ‘believe’. A great salesperson always believes that is customer is better off after making the purchase than they were before.

Your goal as a salesperson should be to help your customer buy something that they need or want. You should want to sell them the product you have that fulfills these needs or wants best. Only in this way will you ensure your long-term success.

If instead you focus on money and sell them a product where you make the most but it is not the best solution for your customer, your success will be short lived. Temporarily, you may be a few dollars ahead but you cannot do this and be an enduring success.

These 5 ‘Believes’ can take you farther than just great. Master them and you can be the best. You can set the standard for your company and for your industry if you believe you can. Set your mind to it and don’t settle for anything less. You were born for greatness.