By Todd Duncan

If you’re serious about reaching the peak of your selling potential, you must acknowledge that mastering your "lines" is very important to your success as a sales professional. You must know your lines. You must know your presentation. You must know the next step.

In the process of selling, you don’t have time to think about it. You don’t have time to flip through the pages of your “How to Sell” manual if you’re interested in earning a customer’s trust. The truth is that if you want to be a world-class sales professional there are two things you should never have to think about:

1. How to sell

2. What to say in a selling situation

Sales Bloopers

Remember the popular prime-time show hosted by Dick Clark and Ed McMahon called TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes? For an hour we laughed as we watched some of the best actors thoroughly mess up their lines. We laughed because it’s very human to make mistakes. And seeing actors make bloopers reminded us that despite the flawless performances we saw on their television shows even the very best actors forget their lines from time to time.

Have you ever made a blooper in sales? Ever said something you shouldn’t have said or done something stupid then wished with everything in you that someone would just yell, “Cut!” so you could start again?

I have and it doesn’t feel good. That’s because in sales, unlike television, you don’t get a second chance to retake your lines. You don’t have a production crew to edit out your bloopers and create the impression of a flawless performance.

In sales, once a word or an action is out, it’s out, and you can never reel it back in. You can’t undo the negative impression it may have created or regain the sale it may have lost. Sales is a live performance day in and day out. Like a Broadway play, where most mistakes are noticed, and where one wrong move can jeopardize the entire performance if you’re not careful.

A HIGH TRUST PERFORMANCE DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN

Unfortunately, the truth is that most salespeople are not prepared to succeed when opportunities present themselves. Most salespeople are not sure how to proceed in a selling situation, but they do anyway, right or wrong. They’re not sure what to say in a selling situation, but they speak anyway, right or wrong. They usually end up talking too much and listening too little. And when the curtain comes down, they wonder why the customer didn’t applaud with approval.

Most salespeople are not prepared to earn a customer’s trust, so they generally don’t. That’s why the average salesperson has to make dozens of sales attempts before landing one sale. That’s because high trust doesn’t just happen. While you can haphazardly persuade, manipulate, or con customers into buying your product or service from time to time, you can’t earn their authentic trust and lasting business that way.

The Law of the Dress Rehearsal says that to give a great performance you must be well practiced. In other words, to be highly successful you must know what to say and do when a sales opportunity arises. You must know how to earn high trust initially, then foster high trust permanently. That’s what it means to follow the Law of the Dress Rehearsal.

Building A Trustworthy Sales Business

In sales it’s not enough to be a trustworthy person. While it’s certain that you must have a trustworthy foundation within you (beneath the surface) to be highly successful, high trust selling is still about taking action; the right action. Therefore to become a trustworthy salesperson with a trustworthy sales business you must not only know why you are selling, you must also know how to sell during each act of the process.

You must know how to apply yourself, so to speak. That’s why the Law of the Dress Rehearsal is so critical, because the better you know how to sell, the better you will perform. And every steadfast business is built one sales performance at a time.

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