By Todd Duncan

Tinkering is trying to skirt your problems for the sake of more sales, then hoping you don’t suffer the consequences. It’s treating the symptoms of poor selling efforts instead of getting to the bot­tom of why they occurred in the first place and making sure they never happen again. It’s like adding oil to your car engine every two weeks instead of repairing the crack in the oil pan. And when tin­kering becomes a mainstay of your sales career, you eventually end up with more problems than you can fix in a single selling situation. As a result, you start losing more sales than you close. You start los­ing more clients. You start losing confidence. And if tinkering remains your problem-solving tendency long enough, you will start losing jobs.

A Tinkering Tell-Tale

Do you feel that after weeks, months, or even years of striving, you just can’t seem to break through to major sales success? Do you feel that there’s a lid on your success that you can’t lift? If you have felt these things recently, it’s very likely that you’re suffering from the side effects of tinkering. And you may be surprised at how easily the little cracks in your sales efforts can creep in.

Prolonging The Inevitable

Sales Band-Aids are more common than most salespeople think, and many salespeople use them without ever knowing it. That’s why tinkering is the most common mistake of sales profes­sionals. Whether you’re tinkering a little or a lot in your sales career, the bottom line is that your sales efforts are not as efficient and effective as they could be.

To do away with tinkering once and for all, you have to first adjust your thinking. You have to do away with the notion that you can always quick-fix every prob­lem that arises over the course of a specific selling effort. You can’t. You have to get rid of the belief that working harder and longer can make up for your sales shortcomings. It won’t. You have to stop thinking that more calls mean more business. They don’t. Unless, of course, you want to continue to make more calls, deal with more unhappy clients, work more hours, and suffer more stress . . . and still fall short of your selling potential.

A New Philosophy of Healing

I’ll be candid with you: nearly every salesperson has made the mistake of tinkering at one time or another in his or her career. The fact is that when most of us began selling, it was more important to produce sales than it was to perfect selling techniques.

When I finally came to terms with my faulty philosophy of problem solving and began disciplining myself to get to the root of my sales problems, things turned around dramatically in my career.

A New Problem-Solving Prescription

To put an end to tinkering and initiate a new approach to problem solving, you must believe for yourself that cov­ering up the symptom of a sales problem is neither the best nor the quickest path to sales success, and that fixing the root of the prob­lem is.

For top salespeople, increasing sales productivity begins with a clear understanding of how a successful sale should be constructed— from the ground up. They have an instruction manual firmly implanted in their minds that reminds them precisely what a success­ful sale looks like as each part is added to the picture. And the same must be true of you if you are to permanently overcome the tempta­tion to tinker when something goes awry. It’s one thing to commit to getting to the bottom of your problems when they arise. It’s another thing to know when, where, and why a problem occurred. That begins when you understand the ingredients that make up a success­ful sale—from beginning to end.

The less time you spend tinkering around, the more time you will have to produce successful sales.

When you think about all the problems that can arise from a career in sales, it’s fairly easy to see why tinkering is such a common mistake in the lives of busy, assertive, ambitious, don’t-take-no-for-­an-answer salespeople. And sometimes tinkering is an honest mis­take. It’s merely pit-stopping in an effort to stay in the race. But the truth is that when the smoke starts to clear, it’s much easier to see how a sales career void of the fatal mistake of tinkering has a much longer, more prosperous life. In the end, that’s the remedy that we’re all seeking.

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