20 Nuggets of sales wisdom from Adinkra symbols ; For salespeople to live by (I)

As a Ghanaian, I’m a big fan of the Adinkra visual symbols.  In this 3-part series, I will be sharing with you the little nuggets of wisdom from the Adinkra symbols as a motivation material for you.

It covers various sales attributes, skills and behaviours required to be successful.  As a salesperson, I’m hopeful that these little Adinkra nuggets will get you motivated or give insight to keep trying through difficult times.  

AKOFENA

 "Sword of war" -— a symbol of courage, valor, and heroism

1. Courage:  In the real world of sales, only the courageous will flourish. A salesperson filled with courage will traverse the challenging and completive business environment to achieve victory.  It takes courage for great salespeople to initiate a sales conversation even when they are afraid.  

Fear is the emotion we experience when you know that you need to take an action or else something is going to happen soon that you are not prepared for.  It takes courage to make cold calls to potential customers who are usually complete strangers.  Because of the lack of courage, many salespeople limit their prospecting activities to what they call “family and friends”.  

Once the leads within the family and friends are exhausted, their performance begins to decline.  It takes courage to approach the real decision-maker at C-level.  These individuals are not easily accessible and usually surrounded by effective gatekeepers.  It takes courage to ask your prospects and customers the hard questions.  

The hard questions are the questions that salespeople like you fear.  The hard questions are the ones which drill down beyond the surface and identify the ‘real’ needs of prospects and customers.  

The hard questions are those which probe for the prospect or customer’s pain, budget and decision-making process. It takes courage to close the sale.  

Great salespeople have the courage to trial close at every stage of the sales process.  At the end of the day, when all the conditions are good, they close the sale by asking for it directly.

AKOKO NAN

"The leg of a hen" — symbol of nurturing and discipline.

The full name of this symbol translates to "the hen treads on her chicks, but she does not kill them." 

2. Discipline:  It takes a lot of discipline for the hen to tread on her chicks and not kill them in order to succeed at parenthood.  In the same way, the underpinning attribute of all great people is self-discipline.  

Salespeople who apply discipline in prospecting, continuously create more opportunities to create superior sales results.  Such salespeople outperform their counterparts who have mastered the other aspects of the selling process.  

Secondly in sales, nurturing prospects is key to success.  Successful salespeople have the discipline to nurture their prospects through the pipeline by building trustworthy relationship with their ideal customers.  It includes creating value in the minds of prospects about the relationship.  

Thirdly, great salespeople demonstrate discipline in following up on their ideal customers.  Results from a survey conducted by The Results Corporation Plc show that 60 per cent of customers who buy, do so after saying five “Nos”, but 44 per cent of salespeople ‘give up’ after the first “No”; 22 per cent after the second “No”; and 14 per cent after the third “No.”  

This data highlights the importance of disciplined follow ups to win deals.

AKOMA

"The heart"

Symbol of patience and tolerance.

3. Patience: Two fundamental and very essential qualities that top salespeople demonstrate and average ones must cultivate are patience and tolerance. A deficiency in these two qualities will make it really difficult for an individual to succeed in the sales industry.  

Great salespeople are patient because they work step by step through their sales process no matter how long it takes; they are patient with ‘difficult’ prospects; they learn to cope and learn from their failures, but understand that there are experiences to be learnt from each loss.  They are patient in acquiring the required knowledge and skills.  Great salespeople are those who patiently plod on and persist even when times are tough.  

AKOMA NTOSO

"Linked hearts" —

symbol of understanding and agreement

4. Understanding:  Great salespeople know where their customers are coming from. They understand their potential customers’ world and needs;  they understand both their communication and buying styles as well as their pain.  

Information gathered by a great salesperson helps to flush out all the needs, and then you can think about how you will be able to help them achieve it.  

ANANSE NTENTAN

"Spider’s web" — Symbol of wisdom, creativity and the complexities of life

5. Creativity: The ability to invent and find the non-obvious solution to potential customers’ problems, as well as to prospecting and selling methods for instance is critical for salespeople to outperform your competitors or colleague salespeople.  

AYA

"fern" — Symbol of endurance and resourcefulness.

The fern is a hardy plant that can grow in difficult places. "An individual who wears this symbol suggests that he has endured many adversities and outlasted much difficulty."  (Willis, The Adinkra Dictionary).  

6. Endurance and resourcefulness:  In the same way, a salesperson “who wears this symbol” must demonstrate endurance which is an essential requirement for sales success.  It takes endurance to wake up every morning as a salesperson to the pressure of having to meet targets.  

It takes endurance to ensure that you work diligently in difficult times to continue to put food on the table for your family.  

It takes endurance to continue knocking on more doors when several have already been slammed in your face, or in difficult situations.  As Wendy Weiss, a.k.a. "The Queen of Cold-Calling," the President of Weiss Communications, says: “Sales requires someone who can always see possibilities, even in difficult situations.”  

In terms of being resourceful, successful salespeople need to use all resources or assets at their disposal to help build mutually beneficial relationships with potential customers.  

More importantly, this entails outside-the-box thinking of conventional sales techniques and systems. GB

• The writer is the C.E.O of Salesmark Services. He is also a Sales Consultant, Trainer & Coach  For a FREE Consultation, 

you can reach him at. E-mail: mocloo@salesmarkservices.com

Whatsapp: 0244279368