You may find this hard to believe, but some people don’t like me.

Are you done laughing yet? I’ll wait. OK, seriously, it wasn’t THAT funny. All right. Catch your breath. Wipe the tears from your eyes. Ready? Let’s go on.

This is the type of person who doesn’t like me.

He makes excuses. The only reason that he wants any ‘training’ is to learn tricks. He doesn’t really want to make better matches between his company and it’s customers. He just wants more business. If the trick doesn’t work, he’ll blame the prospect, the trick, or me. Anybody but himself.

I coach away the excuse-making by asking him how he screwed up. I blame everything on him. Until he’s willing to accept full responsibility for everything, he cannot be fixed. Consequently, he might ask me why I’m always giving him a hard time. Why I’m always picking on him. I’ll stop when he’s fixed or he fires me. I won’t give in and be part of the problem.

He gets emotionally involved. He can’t control himself. He talks louder and faster, smiles defensively, and feels his pulse rate quicken. It upsets him even more that I can get him emotional at will. If I can do it at will, so can a prospect. Once a prospect gets him emotionally involved, the prospect is in control. Either the salesperson buckles and give the prospect what they want or cut and run.

He believes that he doesn’t have a need for approval or a self-limiting record collection, but they’re both on the cusp. I won’t talk about these two weaknesses except to say that I will always indicate behavior that is a result of the weakness even when my client would prefer to be ‘coddled’.

Weaknesses are different from skills. A salesperson that has been through years of training may actually be able to show skills in a typical interview or in the classroom, but in front of a prospect, a switch flips and although they may know what to do, the weakness won’t let them do it or makes them do it wrong.

So, what’s my point? Read this. If you’re good, do you want to prove it and know how to get closer to perfect?

If you’re not as good as you want to be, are you happy about it? If ‘yes’, thank you for reading. If ‘no’, click here to get evaluated.