By Todd Duncan

Where are you in your sales career? Are you a twenty-year veteran with a few success stories under your belt, yet you rarely feel satisfied with your work? Maybe you’ve jumped from sales job to sales job, each time hoping things will be better… but things aren’t better, really.

Maybe you’ve just begun your sales career and want to know how to build the right foundation for your future success , but you’re not sure where to start. Maybe you’re just con­sidering a job as a sales professional and want to know what it’s going to take to succeed. Or maybe you’re simply tired of mediocre success and are ready for a breakthrough year. After all, every sales professional wants to earn more, in less time, with less stress. Right?

No matter what description best fits your sales career right now, it’s never too early or too late to take your success and satisfaction to new heights.

The Law of the Iceberg: The Truest Measure of Your Success Is Invisible to Your Clients

Let’s get started with the first Law of High Trust Selling, The Law of the Iceberg. High Trust Selling begins for everyone by securing your truest measure of success. Because in sales motives mean everything.

Motives dictate your mood, mentality, and moves while serving a client. And motives will make or break you when it comes to establishing loyal, lucrative relationships. The Law of the Iceberg says that the truest measure of your success is invisible to your clients because the majority of real success occurs on the inside of a salesperson, not on the outside. Your fulfillment—not your finances— should dictate whether you are truly successful.

Without a solid foundation beneath the surface of your career, your outward success as a sales professional will never be stable or consistent—even if you’ve been in the industry for some time. Furthermore, you will always have difficulty establishing trust with your clients because you’re not trustworthy; your motives aren’t right. And most people can discern the difference between a sales­person who is out to make a dollar and one who is out to make a dif­ference.

“To become a successful, trustworthy salesperson you must first know why you want to be one.”

The problem is that most sales professionals get ahead of themselves. Most spend the better part of their early days trying to figure out the “hows” of their jobs. How can I make more sales? How can I make more money? How will I meet my quota? How can I motivate my sales team to produce more?

They’re all questions that have their place. But answering them is not where a successful sales career begins. It’s not enough to know how to be a good sales professional. To become a successful, trustworthy salesperson you must first know why you want to be one.

Why Sales?

Have you ever asked yourself, Why do I have this job? Really. If you haven’t asked yourself, you need to. Not tomor­row. Not next week. Not when “things slow down.” Not after you get your next big account. You need to do it now. And you need to be honest with yourself and ascertain more than a surface answer.

You need to get down to the bottom of that question, because if you’re just in sales for the money you could potentially make and the things that money could potentially buy, you’re probably not going to make it very far. You’re certainly not going to weather many rough storms. And if you happen to become one of the few who achieve a measure of success despite never establishing a greater purpose, your so-called success will have come at the expense of your inner satisfaction.

Laying Your Foundation For Selling Success

It’s pretty straightforward: To follow the Law of the Iceberg, you must be solid on the inside first. You must solidify your higher purpose in your sales career so that you are strong enough to weather the rough tides of the sales profession, focused enough to leverage the best opportunities, and steadfast enough to secure the trust of your clients.

With a sound purpose, you establish a firm and powerful foundation for achieving the highest and truest measure of success. When your foundation beneath the sur­face is secure, everything above the surface follows suit. Grow beneath the surface and everything above the surface becomes more substan­tial. That’s the Law of the Iceberg. And that’s where all high trust sell­ing begins.

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