Just Be Yourself Next time you go on a sales call, don't pocket your personality at the door.

Think back for a moment to your greatest sales calls. What madethem so successful? Usually, it's because the sale went sosmoothly. You did all your research, you had in-depth knowledge ofyour product or service, you set your objective for the call, youclosed and, voilà, sales success.

But there's another factor that contributed to that success:you. Because you were so well-prepared, you were able to sit backand sell from the heart.

Baseball's Yogi Berra once asked, "How can anybodythink and hit at the same time?" My question is, "How cananybody think and sell at the same time?" The best salespeopleare those who feel so comfortable with selling that they don'thave to think about what they're doing.

When I was a sales manager, I had a rep who wasn't doingvery well. At first, I couldn't understand why. He had a greatpersonality; people thought he was a natural-born salesperson. Buthe wasn't making sales. So I went along with him on some salescalls to find out what the problem was.