A Long Term Outlook

One of the most common mistakes salespeople make is taking a short-sighted view of their sales strategy. Salespeople and salesmanagers are often more focused on their own immediate goals than they are on the needs of their customers. I know, cause I’ve been there. Where is my next commision coming from? Will I make my quota this month or this quarter? How fast can I close this deal? Don’t tell me that these thoughts don’t run through your mind. The problem with this is that if you don’t think that your customer can sense where your priorities are, you have another think coming. Look, we all have to make a living, but to quote Clint Eastwood, “Dying ain’t much of a living.” When you place your needs before your customer’s needs, you’re killing your chances of making the sale. Whoever started teaching salespeople that you have to be aggressive and manipulative in order to make a sale did our profession a huge disservice. Sales is NOT about being pushy to the point of being obnoxious. Remember that old adage, ”We all like to buy stuff, but we hate to be sold stuff.” As a professional saleman you should be trying to solve your customers problems in an advisory, consulting and/or educational role. And the first thing that you need to come to grips with as a professional saleperson is that you CANNOT possibly be the best solution for every prospect. In my own career for example, I have come to realize that I don’t want to win every deal that I come across. First of all, I can’t possible service them sufficiently, but even more important than that, there are some customers that are just not worth my time. A low margin customer, for instance, just distracts me from providing better service to my higher margin customers. Why not use the time that I would have wasted with a low margin customer to pay more attention to the customers that don’t mind paying for that attention? And here’s something for you to think about. I’ve found in my experience that it’s the low margin customers that are the most demanding and require the highest maintanance. I’m willing to bet that if you think about your own experiences, you’ll find the same to be true in most of your cases. As an example, I used to have a business partner that would routinely beat up our vendors for lower prices and he was also a pain in the neck to deal with. He wanted personal attention, fast service and low prices. And to top it off, he wasn’t even a fun guy to do business with. If anything ever went wrong, even the slightest mistake, he would bark and roar at the top of his lungs to let everyone know that he was the boss. If he was my customer, I would have told him to shove off. Come to think of it, I did tell him to shove off, that’s why he’s not my business partner anymore. But I digress. A long term outlook in sales allows you to think about building your client base over a period of months if not years. It gives you a different perspective about what deals to pursue and what deals to pass on. You begin to realize that you don’t have to close ever single deal, you don’t have to be a pushy salesperson and you don’t have to manipulate your customers. A long term sales strategy will allow you to build a portfolio of high margin accounts, of clients that are fun to work with and worthwhile business relationships.

Success Built To Last

I am currently reading a wonderful book called Success Built to Last-Creating A Life That Matters by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson http://www.successbuilttolast.com/.
I bought the book this past Wed. and I am halfway through with it. The main message that the authors of the book are trying to get across is to redefine our perception of the word "success" as we now know it. Our culture has been indoctorinated into believing that success is all about wealth, fame and power. The book is trying to change that perception by looking at success in a 20-year spectrum. By taking a long-term viewpoint, Success Built To Last (SBTL) makes a pretty good case that money, fame and power will not make you happy and therefore they cannot be benchmarks for success. One of the more interesting quotes in the book so far was that "despite acquiring material luxuries undreamed of even a few decades ago, there is a rising epidemic of clinical depression and suicide among the wealthiest citizens in American, China and other rapidly growing economies..."
One of the first points that the authors bring up is that unless you can find and pursue a life of meaning, success will prove fruitlessly elusive. "Passion" is a requirement of long term success. Larry Bossidy, author of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done http://www.honeywell.com/execution/toc.html
is quote as saying "Only by loving what you do will you actually do more and do it better than the person sitting next to you." "Passionate people spend twice as much time thinking about what they've accomplished, how doable the task ahead is, and how capable they are of it" said U.S. Army Brigadier General Clara Adams-Ender.
For every person who is half-hearted about their work or relationships, there is someone else who loves what they're half hearted about. This person will work harder and longer. They will outrun you. page 35 from Success Built To Last.
Much of what I've read so far sounds faintly similar to the dogma of Dr. Stephen Covey. As a long time fan of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, this is in no way intended as a sleight to the authors, but is in fact a compliment and I also don't infer that the authors weren't original. Nothing could be further from the truth. The books findings were based on actual facts and case studies. The only reason that I mention the similarities is to draw the connection between the two books. Dr. Covey has spent his life espousing values like "passion" and "meaning" and it's nice to have actual case studies that reinforce his work.
As I said, I am currently only half-way through the book, but I will continue my review once I have completed it.

A Tiger's Motivation

Work. Bust my butt. That's how you do it. I just need to do a little work here around the greens and get my stroke organized, " said Tiger Woods. Woods, the defending champion, had just shot a 4-under-par 68 and was three strokes behind the leader at the Dubai Classic. Woods flew halfway around the world just days after cruising to win the Buick Invitational on Sunday for his seventh straight victory on the PGA Tour. How does Tiger Woods stay motivated? He is the most successful golfer in history, working on an incomparable winning streak and is on the verge of becoming golf's first $1 billion player, and perhaps the first billionaire to accumulate his wealth as an athlete. See Golf's First Billion Dollar Man at http://www.golfdigest.com/features/index.ssf?/features/gd200602top50.html Tiger woods stays motivated to win because he HATES TO LOSE! So now you know why he does it, want to know how he does it? Four simple words. "Work. Bust my butt". There are no shortcuts. Tiger Woods was born with a talent to hit a golf ball like no one else before him. Yet even with all that talent, he knows that if he wants to remain the best in the world, he has to continue to work and bust his butt. How bad do you hate to lose? What are you doing to make sure that you succeed like a tiger?
There are so many attributes that are required in order to succeed, but motivation has to be near the top of the list. Without it, it doesn't matter how many of the other attributes that you have. So often, I hear people say that they could be great saleman, simple because they have wonderful people skills. Well, I'm here to tell you that people skills are a dime a dozen. If you are not motivated enough to hone your people skills by hard work and by busting your butt, there will always be someone else out there that will. No one can motivate you but yourself. Your boss can threaten you, your spouse can cajole you, your parents can nag you, your kids can plead with you, your banker can scare you, but no one can light that fire inside of you except for yourself. So what is one of the best ways to become motivated and stay motivated? Have a passion for what you do. If you truly love what you do for a living, you will happily work your butt off everyday looking for ways to improve yourself. In fact, if you really have a passion for your chosen career, your spouse might have to cajole you into taking some time off.
For more attributes of a successful salesman, see my aboutus page at my web site at hectorcadena.com/aboutus.html

When Does a Sales Become a Sale?

Here's a question for all you sales pros. And don't cheat and peek down at the answer before you at least give it some thought and try to come up with an answer on your own. "When does a sale become a sale?"
I was still fairly new in the sales industry, working at a new car dealership when I first heard this question in a sales meeting. Everyday, before our store opened for business, the entire sales staff would gather in the "War Room" to kick off the day with a sales meeting. I always looked forward to those meetings, not because I was into the rah-rah stuff, but because as a young salesman just learning how to sell, I was surrounded by older veterans and I always learned something from the daily exchange of ideas that came from those early morning meetings. The meeting usually were centered around sales challenges that might have come up in the previous day and then as a group, we'd all chip in and try to come up with good responses to the objections. It was a great learning environment and a great way to start off the sales day. Anyway, one day my manager asked the question, "when does a sales become a sale?" Now on the surface, this seems like a pretty simple question. In fact at first, you might think that it's somehow a trick question. But it's not. There was about 15 or so salesmen in that room that day, many of them were grizzled veterans with lots of sales experience, so I was anxious to see if anyone could answer this question. Many hands shot up with an air of confidence, certain that they could solve this riddle. First, all of the obvious answers were called out in rapid succession, "when they sign the contract" someone called out. No, that's not it. "When they give you the down payment", no. "When they drive away with the vehicle." Nope. "When their loan gets approved". Still not the right answer. After a while, the hands stopped going up. Here was a room full of prideful, experienced, smart veteran salesmen and not a one of them could answer such a basic question about the sales process. We finally gave up as a group and waited for the voice of wisdom to enlighten us. And enlighten me it did. For the answer to the question, "When does a sales become a sale?" opened up a whole new way of thinking for me as a salesman. The correct answer was "A sales becomes a sales when the customer takes possession of the merchandise IN HIS HEAD." Think about that for a second. That is absolutely brilliant! A sales becomes a sales when the customer takes possession of the merchandise in his head. Wow! If that's not that's Zen selling, what is? That answer crystallized in my head the process of selling. You see, once the customer decides mentally in his head that he is going to buy your product, you are over the hump. Now all you have to do is get him to admit it to you, but that's not necesarily that easy either. Remember, the customer will always think that it is in his best interest to not let on that he really wants your product, otherwise he loses all of his negotiating leverage. So he has to keep you guessing as to what he is really thinking. But that's OK. Your job as a salesman is to try to find out how you can discover his true intentions. That's the hard part. That's where the "Trial Close" come into play. A "trial close" is a question that is designed to solicit a answer from the customer that will help the salesman determine if the selling process has been successful enough to proceed to the next step of the sale, which is closing the sale. Since this is one of the most crutial steps in the sales process you need to have a great trail closing question that will help you determine if and when your customer has taken possession of your product in his mind. The trial close that we were taught to ask at this particular dealership was "If I can work our the right price for you, are you ready to buy this car today?" As a trial closing question, this question was OK but in my humble opinion, I could come up with better. Oh sure, the answer the customer gave you would determine whether or not the customer was willing to buy this car at the right price, but I didn't like it as a trial closing question because you were already telling the customer right off of the bat that you were going to be discounting the price of the car. Since I didn't like giving away my commisions, after some thought and consideration I came up with this as my closing question "Where are you planning to take your first trip in your new car?" Now this might not seem like any great closing question, but it is and I'll tell you why. If you are buying a new car, or a new boat or a new house, or some other big ticket item, the first thing that you are going to want do is to show it off. Can you imagine buying a new boat and not calling your best friend and inviting him to go boating with you as soon as possible? Anyway, the point is that when you buy a big item like a car or a boat, you are already planning your first outing in it. So remember what we said about the customer taking possession in his head. When you ask him where is he taking his first trip in his new car, watch what happens to his eyes. He sort of looks up, his eyes roll back just a little as he pictures himself behind the wheel of his new car, driving down the road. He just bought that car in his head. He can see himself in that car. Now it's only a matter of a little negotiating, but for all practical purposes he owns that car. He might not come right out and say it because that would weaken his negotiating leverage, but his eyes just told you what his mouth won't. On the other hand, if he really didn't like the car for some reason or other, his answer to that trial closing quesiton would have been "wait a minute, hold on, I didn't tell you that I wanted to buy this car." Now you know that you need to do some more selling on that vehicle or perhaps maybe even show him another car. The entire point of the trial closing question is to help you make a determination if and when the customer has taken possession of the merchandise in his head.