Competitive selling is a combination of three things: mindset, competition, and positioning Let’s explore each: Mindset Competitive selling starts with your mindset. Your mindset is motivated and empowered. You are not driven by income, but rather from the satisfaction, challenge, and personal achievement that a career in sales affords. It also means you see sales as a game to play, to have fun with and to win. Competition You’re ruthless about understanding the industry (or industries) your solution serves as well as getting to know the competitors you’re likely to face on a daily basis. This doesn’t mean you’re constantly comparing yourself to the competition, it simply means you’re knowledgeable about what they offer and how your solution is unique and different. Positioning (Point-of-View) Your positioning or point-of-view is a particular attitude or way of considering a matter. It’s your position and passion towards the solution you’re selling and the people, companies and industries you help. When combined, these three elements give you the ability to leverage competitive selling as an approach and strategy.

What is sales momentum? How do you build and maintain it? Sales momentum is created as a result of your ability to maintain a certain velocity and consistency in your sales efforts. Oftentimes, it’s really not about your sales skills, it’s about your persistence and grit. And deals can stall in the pipeline because you simply get busy or just flat out stop following up. The more persistent, yet respectful, you are in your sales activities the more momentum you’ll gain. So what can you do? Simply follow these four steps:

More than 40 percent of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process, followed by closing (36 percent) and qualifying (22 percent) (HubSpot). But if you look closer, you can see that these three steps are all very related. If you're unable to generate good, quality leads then you won't be able to close the deal because the lead wasn't a good fit in the first place.

As soon as you close a sale, what should you? Hopefully you’ll give yourself a moment to celebrate and give yourself a pat on the back. But the most important thing to remember is that your work isn’t over, but rather it’s only just begun.

Before we explain how you can leverage the power of negative thinking, let’s first discuss what it is. There are two views on negative thinking: The first, and probably more common, view of negative thinking is linked to things like depression, complaining, worrying, and stressing about everything. It’s the process of finding the worst in even the best situations. It’s about inaction and fear. The second view, and the one we’d like you to focus on today, is about growth, understanding, and learning. It’s the process of visualizing all the bad things that could happen to you, so you become less afraid of taking action. This second view of negative thinking helped me train and successfully swim across the English Channel as well as start my own business in a recession.

If you always ask for the right next steps, you will always have a more qualified pipeline and a more effective way of managing your time and sales activities.