This weekend, the missus and I wrapped up our shopping for family for the holidays. I have to say: “We were more thoughtful this year than any time previously…”
(at least I thought so)
We really thought through the whole process and I am pumped by the stack of “stuff” sitting in our kitchen that needs to be wrapped.
It’s about the relationship, right?
There are people you care about — people around whom you really want to build a history. It kind of parallels your deal making process.
That’s about building a relationship. Not seasonal email torpedoing. But a consistent communication thread.
My inbox got me thinking……….
How special would you feel if you were sent the following e-card from someone that you spent money with this year?
I love the “We hope this communication is welcomed…” Makes me feel like you really remember who I am. And are you really giving me the option to unsubscribe from next year’s seasonal greetings?
You tell me. Maybe I am being picky.
Now how about this one… Are you feeling the love?
I now have to click on a link to go a site to see all the Christmas warmth you can’t wait to share with me… As if that isn’t enough to do, there is the obligatory signature language informing me that I could be sued for mishandling the email you are sending me. WOW…. way too much baggage for me to do anything with. I just have to archive it…
These both ended up in my inbox (along with a tiresome few others…) and I just didn’t have the energy to keep clicking through to link after link so I could get in the Christmas spirit. It kind of made it all feel like a “chore”…
Like maybe our relationship wasn’t so important after all…
Know what I mean?
It gets you thinking. What’s the logic behind this?
Who emerged from their marketing “bat-cave” with the fantabulous idea that impersonal seasonalized hyperlink creation was something that made customers feel like “you care”?
Was there a memo in the late ’90s that I missed?
Two words: CALL ME…
I know I’m a little cranky when it comes to this stuff, but doesn’t it seem a little dis-ingenuous? Even if you give the sender the “benefit of the doubt”, you can’t overlook the general lack of creativity. The fact remains that in the haste to have another “client touch”, the marketer forgot to put himself in the recipient position.
Here’s reality: No one really reads this stuff.
(not even your grandma who has unlimited Facebooktime)
Maybe the first one you get (right after Thanksgiving), but right around the second week in December you are left with no other choice but massive select-and-archive. You even feel a little bad about it, but you justify if by telling yourself that if you have time, you’ll dig them out later at home to look through.
And you never do… It’s just not a high priority.
Without a relationship, you just avoid all the rest of the noise coming at you.
And certainly this mirrors a hunch I have had for some time now as I talk with C-level executives and ask about their behavior to inbound messaging. I decided to test my theory. About a week ago, I put a poll up on LinkedIn asking the following question:
“If relationships really do matter in sales, why don’t we build better ones throughout our selling process?”
Here are the overall results:
40% stated that they didn’t have enough access to the right people to build a great relationship…
10% noted that they tried to build good relationships but didn’t know how to keep it up…
20% thought that it wasn’t really a good use of their time… AND
30% admitted they weren’t really sure how to build great relationships…
When you study this further, you see that ALL of the CEO’s who responded to this question answered the same — that they had not developed this skill of long term relationship building.
Are you surprised? You might have thought that senior level executives had “schmoozing” all figured out. Maybe not. Maybe there’s more to that cocktail parties and fast one-liners.
The numbers get more interesting when you look at the size of the companies responding. All of the big guys (who would have the biggest sales and marketing budgets) all noted that they didn’t have access to the right people to build great relationships.
Essentially, the guys with the most advantages toward building the best relationships were the least likely to know how to get the right people. Interesting indeed.
When you look at the age for relationship building, it becomes even more significant. The young guys and old guys fall into the same category — limited access to the right executives. While the mid-life high-performers know the right people, but aren’t really sure what to do to keep their attention.
Kind of what you would expect from life, right? You work hard to get somewhere; and then once you’re there you push so far and fast ahead that you lose valuable ties to people who could be a valuable resource to you.
Young or old, big or small — we all need to work a little harder to keep our relationships strong. They are our lifeblood, our lifeline to accomplishing our life’s mission.
So think about how you treat your relationships.
Are you asking friends to triple-click through your e-card nonsense, or are you bold enough to just say “Thank You”… and mean it…
P.S. Thank you to all the amazing readers of The DEW View! Have a Happy Holidays. I am grateful that I was able be a part of your 2009 selling year. Take some time to get recharged and then let’s plan on changing the world together in ‘10…. Thanks again!!!
You get beaten up in your personal life and it starts to affect your chances at closing deals.
You have opportunities that demand finesse, skill, and talent — and you feel defeated and ready to quit.
Winning is more than about a notch on the belt. It pays the bills. Not succeeding is something you don’t want to consider….
So, what do you do? How do you put your life back together while not missing a career beat?
Recognize that life dealt you a black eye. There is no use denying the obvious.
Try to solve solvable life problems as soon as possible. Let go of your ego.
Spend time “grinding” through the sales steps you know you need to get done. Send emails. Return calls.
Set aside a few special minutes a day to focus on your sales goals. Focus on your dreams.
Write down your scattered sales strategy thoughts throughout the days. Your mind has a lot going on so take the time to store your half-finished ideas on paper.
Write your daily goals on a calendar and don’t let time commitments slide. Don’t let things that used to take 5 minutes take 30 minutes.
Talk to someone that you trust and get the bad stuff out of your head. Telling yourself that you suck is not a super way to build confidence.
Challenge yourself in a favorite hobby or through physical exercise. Take time for mastery.
Take the first step toward your sales goal that day. Then another. Then another. Build momentum.
Learn from the experience — about yourself, about how your customer might be feeling. Build empathy.
There’s probably more to this list than the points I have included. In fact, I am sure there is more to consider. The point is that life happens — and it hurts. You want the world to stop so you can heal and it won’t. It just runs you over again. Use these basic steps to stay “in the game” while your world works itself out.
Winning is not about removing problems that you can not control but about continuing in spite of them…
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And a special event for The DEW View! community. Join me November 19th for a Masterclass about “Edgy Conversations: An Explosion of Opportunities“
Ever wonder how some sales executives land big deals with big players and you feel stuck chatting up the small guys about opportunities that will probably never happen. Do you want to get the attention of the right people? Do you want to see the number of opportunities you are working on explode? Learn how to have “Edgy Conversations”. Learn how to have conversations that matter….
Think through the mind of your customer… and ask yourself if you are “illogically” wooing your customer. Are you doing what no one else will do to make them successful? Are you working to guarantee that your customer hits a home run by working with you?
It’s not logical. In fact, it doesn’t really make sense from a “nuts-and-bolts” perspective.
But like anything, when you swing the opposite direction, you get a better perspective. Instead of being illogically helpful, let’s look at being illogically awful. Let’s look at the bad emails we send and see how we can make them better.
The endless onslaught of crappy emails has accelerated. It has gotten serious. For some reason, crazy sales people who need to have a strong Q4 all decided that they need to mass email the world in the hopes that we will magically take an interest in their nonsensery.
There is no interest in a relationship or learning what might be important to you or me. It’s all about their email and how they have access to an amazing service that we “can’t miss out on”. I want to drag them into my office, throw them on the floor and let them know this simple fact that they are overlooking:
We have thoroughly enjoyed not “enjoying” your service; and if your current care of us is any indication of your future care, then we are best served to not be your customer….. ever — for the sake of our health.
It is such a horrible experience to get these emails. It’s like a sudden nausea that has me tasting a little stomach acid in my mouth. I feel sick but my head’s not warm. I just don’t feel well after reading this chicanery.
I had one such illogically awful encounter earlier this month when I received the following email in my inbox…
Of course, I was more than a little surprised and then annoyed at the premise of the email. (In this case, “annoyed” is a code word for “enraged”).
There is no mention of my name in this entire email (I am not totally sure if she sent this to the right person…)
There is value statement (I can’t figure out what really sets Melissa apart as being worth my time…)
There is no call to action (I am kind of confused as to what logical action Melissa expects from me…)
There is way too much content (I immediately start skimming because it “appears long and boring…)
There is different color font in the email (I start wondering “why” and if there’s a special reason…)
So I emailed Melissa back. And yes, I was in a funk. My time had been wasted. My intelligence had been insulted. I was upset with myself that I had even given Melissa time in my busy day. I was irate and so I shared my thoughts:
I just asked Melissa why being “illogically awful” was a reason why I should care. And not to be outdone or undeterred she let me know. She wasn’t trying to woo me as a customer. She was throwing data at me and hoping that I might be interested.
AWFUL!
A truly “illogically awful” experience. Melissa clearly did not want me as a customer.
A lot of sales books tell you that you qualify and don’t take chances with customers — that you do exactly what Melissa did:
That you refine your questions to only work with prospects who have money and time…. you get then give…
That you only build a relationship once you see that your prospect has something “in it” for you… you prioritize based on immediate perceived value…
That you trade enough negotiable points and win a deal without taking any risks…. you never appear vulnerable or genuine…
That you explain all your moves logically in a “I always win” matrix… you need to appear important and in control…
But let’s not belabor the illustration. We can learn how to be “illogically helpful” by doing everything that Melissa failed to do.
Be personal — Start the email by calling me my name – my first name and leave off the “mister”….
Be brief — Keep it to 5 sentences max. If you need to tell me more, don’t…
Be thorough — Tell me something you know I don’t know… and convince me you’re bad-ass…
Be creative — Leave me wanting to hear the rest of your idea…
Be different — Remove any buzzwords and industry “gibberish” that make me tune you out…
Be inspiring — Combine what you want from me with what I care about. I might actually get involved…
Be important — Leave me good contact details so I can return your call or email and add you to my address book…
Be neat — Proof read your email to make sure it is grammatically “mostly correct”. Bad punctuation is distracting…
Be safe — Don’t go nuclear on a random idea until we have a relationship. (i.e. politics, religion, etc…)…
Be vulnerable — Admit it if you want help. If you claim to have it figured out and don’t I lose respect…
Be About Me — Rewrite your email if there are more I’s and me’s than you’s. You are writing to me so make it about me…
And here is the kicker: If you follow all the traditional sales rules (like Melissa did) you might never really ever lose a big deal. You’ll never be in a position to question whether you made the right decision. You’ll never have to take risks….
But you’ll never have the illogic to support yourself landing big deals.
(If you see the guy who switched the playbook let me know so I can slip him over the border into North Korea.)
I want a lifetime ban on boring HTML newsletters. They just suck.
At least pretend to know my name. I feel like the other side of a bad date. Like I am being used for just another number in your “see my 10 gabillion readers” quest for encyclopedic nonsensery.
And here is the ironic part about the craziness of your bad content:
I really want to be inspired by what you have to say to me. I want to get a rush of adrenaline and nod my head at the end of each paragraph as you rock it out. That’s what I want from our conversation.
Instead, you think that your fancy picture (which I have now officially deemed “Lame 2009 Clipart” or L2C for short) does a better job of telling me what you really want me to know.
Here’s another paradox: We all hate the loud dude in the office who just won’t shut up (which is usually me). But then we turn around become the sales people of the world who fight fearlessly for our loud and impersonal emails that just do the same thing.
We need to stop thinking about emails as sales tools and more as conversation tools. If you wouldn’t kick down your customer’s door and start spitting sales facts in his face in person, then don’t do it with your emails.
Sneak up behind someone and poke them with a safety pin and they jump. Do it 100 times to a 100 different people and you will get the SAME result.
It’s human nature. It’s a reaction that all people have. Going a little deeper — it’s a subconscious reaction to feedback from our nervous system. Millions of impulses every second tell you that you are in pain — to move your body away from the source of pain.
It’s not even something you think about.
Which brings me back to the topic of my recent angst — sales strategies based on stats…
Sales research is cool (our teams do a ton of it), but building your sales strategy around market perceptions research is absolutely senseless. I am not sure where we business people went so wrong, but the practice of “wind sniffing” is eroding the foundations of our businesses. We happily produce neutered sales teams while happily sharing the stats around why we are making stupidly uninspired decisions.
We attempt nothing grand, challenging, or edgy. Instead we “grow a set of stats” and use them as a billy club to keep the sales guys in line and unoriginal.
Here is how it works:
“Business A” wants to generate more money in their marketplace…
Executives research what people are buying and doing in the “Business A” marketplace…
Sales team tasked to deliver on getting more people in the “Business A” marketplace to buy more…
Seems harmless. In fact, you might be thinking: “this sounds like a great idea to me; why so much frustration, Daniel?”
But here are the problems:
You can’t improve something by executing a “more of the same” sales strategy… (i.e. Bad people doing bad things produce bad things in bad ways. Copying that is bad too.)
Multiple snapshots of buyer activity produce vastly inconsistent data… (i.e. Like 5 blind dudes with a elephant you get a difference perspective every time you roll out of bed and check your numbers.)
People don’t want what they say they want… (i.e. People don’t want to pay a “fair price”. They want to pay “their fair price.)
Stats bear “builder bias” not facts… (i.e. You can’t escape that you will already have most of the answer before you start working on looking at your “viral stats”.)
Everybody else is equally as motivated to improve mediocrity (i.e. Improving your hustle over your competitor just means that you look like an idiot more times to more prospects.)
Building on mediocrity still has the failure of mediocrity at the foundation — which really negates the “building” part of the scenario… (DEWism)
Watching what people are doing or how they are acting is a good operational practice but quite limited when it comes to sales. It breaks down to Maslow and understanding people.
People do what people do because they are people and that’s what people do…
Instead of researching what already exists – what people are already doing — spend time on what you WANT people to be doing. That should be your ONLY concern. What people are doing is already the past. Your vision for them promises a new and better future.
Here is a stat for you: 99.99% of people want to live and love… Lose your sales stats and sell that with passion…
[...and a Happy Birthday to my mother who taught me to live with courage, to strive for excellence, and to never back down from my obsession with changing the world...]
Last year as I trained for a UFC fight I spent time in the gym pretty much every day running on the treadmill, pushing some weights, and hitting the heavy bags (The speed bag is still a challenge…). After I got out of the ICU from the staff infection that I caught, all the time in the gym was wasted. I had lost about 15 pounds in 4 days and for several months after I left the hospital I was weak and exhausted (from what I still don’t know).
This year I have been back to my roots — running. I will think about getting back into fighting shape later. Right now I am working on the cardio aspects of my training.
To keep myself h0nest, I have been using RunKeeper on my iPhone 3GS (which uses the internal GPS) to manage my entire running process. It then posts it to the web where I can measure calories burned and times and even track the direct link between a specific climb and the speed of attack. It does not however add in the temperature….
Unfortunately, Greenville is a hilly place. A really hilly place.
So is SELLING…
Most of sales is attacking a hill — a challenge, a target, a opportunity, a commission quota… There is no level playing ground and if you should be worried if it feels like you can do your job while coasting (that means a “cheaper” someone else can probably do the same thing).
Getting in fighting sales shape is about training on the hills. You practice on a slope and challenge yourself to run the course faster and more efficiently each time.
You become a master of winning where other people get “winded”…
It you have been in sales long then you can appreciate when I make the observation that SALES is a fight. It require discipline, dedication, and dogged training. To be the best (or even get better) you have to “put in the time” in the sales gym. You can’t get better by being a “January Gym Going”…
It doesn’t work. You will never be the dude giving the knockout punch. You’ll find yourself gasping for breath, knocked around, and feeling like you just got sucker punched. And the reality is just that. You got taken (and lost the deal)…
Like a good fight, the winner knows what he is going to do before the chime of the bell. He has a plan and he executes with a zeal of a man who is about to get his head split open if he doesn’t win. It’s that intense.
So what do you do?
You “put in the time”! (like a lot of life, there is no shortcut….)
You study your craft, study the big players, study some great sources (like Seth and Sandler and Shamus and SalesClub)… and you decide that whatever happens (no matter how badly you get hurt) you will show up for training the next day… Because that’s what winners do.
And this is your fight. And you have come to play……
High-performers in the world of “deal making” share the universal quality of self-assessment. It’s an internal process of strategically measuring the inputs and outputs of a process or idea (or just “what went down…”) and deciding if it could be done better. And that’s all good. It’s more than good — it’s necessary.
You work better when you work with gut instinct. At this stage in your deal process, you generally know what NOT to do (which is 2/3 of the learning process) and WHERE you need to head. But to be the best, you have to be extraordinary — and that requires a different, new, or abstractly innovative idea. Everything that your boss won’t probably agree with…. because it’s not safe.
But there’s actually science to prove that you do make better decisions from gut instinct rather than thinking too much.
“Whether evaluating abstract objects (Chinese ideograms) or actual consumer items (paintings, apartments, and jellybeans), people who deliberated on their preferences were less consistent than those who made non-deliberative judgments,” write authors Loran F. Nordgren (Northwestern University) and Ap Dijksterhuis (Radboud University, The Netherlands).”
And check this out. The science gets even more compelling. After 5 different independent studies, the authors found that “the more complex the decision, the less useful deliberation became.”
That means that less “thought-manship” and more gut instinct is the key to outrageous deal success.
P.S. Ever wonder why outrageous success is so hard to predict (i.e. there’s no formula)? It’s because you’re thinking too hard about it. As you move with gut instinct you see enough of the distance to move around obstacles to get to the finish line. And, like running at the North Pole, you don’t really need to look over your shoulder because your competition is slim…. (and that’s where I like to play)
A recent study conducted by the Shyness Clinic in Menlo Park, California, revealed that almost 90% of Americans label themselves as shy. Further, the California Department of Consumer Affairs estimates that 25% of all purchases result in some customer dissatisfaction, yet fewer than 30% of people actually complain. The rest are too shy or just don’t think it’ll help.
The fix is obvious — speak up!
Being more productive in sales is about having conversations with your clients. The days of hard closes, premeditated 1-liners, and glib unpreparedness are over. Have a conversation and the selling will automatically happen.
My CEO buddy Kriss Wilson posted a quote on Twitter from Buddha that fit right in to some of my recent thinking about selling and the differentiation between those who SELL and those who are “working on it.”
I return to my passion about effort and the idea of the PQ that creates All-Stars.
First — a quote from the mind of Kriss:
“Fools wait for a lucky day but every day is a lucky day for an industrious man.” ~Buddha
Quite a lot of selling is doing…
It’s about putting in the necessary effort to navigate your way around obstacles to be successful. It’s about being indefatigable, unstoppable, completely motivated…
It’s the age old principle of “making your own luck”!
No sooner had my mind stopping spinning when I got a call from Tom Searcy which led to another discussion with a CEO in need of “sales execution” — not any of the things listed above.
And I again questioned this.
WHY? Why is execution so hard for start-ups?
And it really comes to a handful of explanations:
You don’t knowhow…
You are too busy with less important details…
You underestimate the required amount of hardwork…
I usually find in working with high performing CEO’s that the last reason is by far the most common reason for lack of sales. The “sweat cost” of “always on” selling is easy to underestimate and it’s deadly if not fixed”
Entrepreneurs give up just before they become successful. CEO’s quit long after they should have given up on poor selling ideas. High-end “sellers” over promise results without understanding the resources they are being promised by the organization.
What to do?
Put in the effort!
Stay committed to putting in the effort!
You can change just about anything when you have the effort to back up your planning!
The 4th of July stands as a tribute to taking action against oppression, bad philosophy, and a depressing future. America’s foundation in being independent could serve as a lesson to many sales people who forget that most of what they will read in sales books WILL NOT work for them…
I am celebrating the great feedback that many of you sent to me about our webinar on how to achieve outrageous revenue growth this year. Thanks for attending. Only (2) people gave us less than 5 stars which means that almost everyone got something out of it — which is what I wanted to accomplish.
I have been asked if I would make the slides available and here they are below.
If viewing the slides is the first time you are looking at the content, then it may not make all that much sense to you. You can view the finished product over here.
Celebrate your independence from everything that is holding you back from growing sales right now.
Explosive sales breakthough can only occur when you truly understand that your propect, customer, client, or whatever else you call the people that spend money with you are not your friends.
One of the biggest legends of sales mythdom is that “the customer is always right”… You hear that quote everywhere. It’s the golden rule for customer service training and RFP engagement.
And it’s dead wrong.
Especially when potential customers start getting shady over pricing. They order services they don’t intend to pay for. They try to renegotiate deals that are already under contract. They lead you to believe that doing them a favor now means more deals down the road.
And they are LYING. The customer is not RIGHT he is LYING!
Many thanks to my buddy, Kriss Wilson, for getting his hands on the following video that you need to see. It’s preposterous! It’s downright insane when you think about the man-handling you receive from prospects about your pricing.
You can’t change the world without polarizing the people you run into — your friends, your community, and even your “not so much” fans. Polarization creates “sides”. It’s the line in the sand that says “either you are with me or not”.
And it’s tough being the person who is polarizing. Here is your guarantee: someone will always hate you. Not just dislike you. Not even disagree with you. Hate your guts!
And then you have some great friends who are the polar opposites… They defend you to a fault. They stand by you when no else does. They are your brothers. They are the people that help you change the world.
To change the world you need to polarize!
The opposite is to paralyze… It’s a middle-of-the-road-please-don’t-be-angry-at-me position that results only in drama. So don’t be afraid to polarize (just don’t paralyze):
Be obsessively passionate… AND
Avoid needing to compromise…
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To hear more helpful “polarizing” topics, sign up to attend my FREE webcast on Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 11:00AM Pacific / 2:00PM Eastern. It’s going to be fun.
Here’s the first glance at what we will be talking about:
Stupid Is The New Relevant: Generate sales by being genuinely memorable
Check It While You Wreck it: Effectively and efficiently manage your channel and business reputation worldwide and LIVE
Forget Your PDA Batteries: The tools you use to communicate matter!
Stop Selling Lemonade: Empathize with your target with your messaging
Drink Your Coffee Hot: Maximize your channel marketing to sales handoff
If the average conversation lasts 2.3 minutes and the average sales pitch is 23 minutes…. something tells me our prospects stopped listening more than 20 minutes ago.
I get asked all the time to take a look at a business plan or review a sales process (which I usually find intriguing). There is something about a new idea with plenty of potential that gets me pumped up.
Not every investor is worth “getting in bed with” just because they have a bankroll.
I ran into this presentation poking fun at VC investors a few weeks ago and wanted to share. It is pretty humorous how many of these are right on…
Here is what a VC would never say to you: :-)
Here is something else they wouldn’t say:
Investors have to believe in you executing (not your product magically becoming the next Google).
Investors are too busy to hold your hand every day and make sure you meet all the other people in their portfolio.
Investors expect you to have the answers not to have to answer the same questions every meeting…
Just be informed!
Like your mom used to tell you, “Don’t believe everything you don’t hear…”
Some of my recent blog posts seem to have touched a raw nerve in the business world. Besides the stupid comments I deleted from this blog about how stupid I am and ego-maniacal (I might actually be that one), I got a whole series of personal attacks (i.e. threats) that made me pause for a moment and reconsider…
And then I thought: WHO CARES!!!!
Can I share a little secret with you? A huge part of long-term high-performance is understanding who you are….
Seriously. Let me share my own personal story with you:
Concepts like discipline, hard work, goal mastery, and passion were drilled into me from an early age. I was raised by Christian parents who were very moral people (still are) who set the bar very high for performance and personal endeavor. I was trained in the musical arts (piano and trombone) and in public speaking. I started my first business before I was a teenager. I had no access to television for 18 years of my life. In fact our house was not even wired for cable — my dad told the builder to skip it altogether. During the summers, I had to read books for at least 2 hours per day and during school “season” I was fined if my bed was not made, shoes lined up in the closet, or (God forbid) I left the window open. Silly or not, I was trained to be efficient and effective.
I also picked up some bad habits. I worked so hard to be “perfect” that I spent a lot of “Dan PR” time trying to make sure everyone around me was happy with me. Was I wearing the right thing to go the right place to see and do the right things…….. It became an internal guessing games of “am I doing everything right”. That trickled over into my college choices, my business habits, and my selling style. I was out to prove everything to anyone within earshot, eyeshot, or “texting range”.
And then I hit a few rough patches… And all the critics that I was working so hard to please were no where around to help me. They were happy to throw their mental “sucker punch” and run. Everyone I was trying so hard to please was pleased that I was failing. I was pushed myself to “be better” and they were providing enough criticism to feed my addiction.
It took a great coach, a great wife, therapy, and lot of experience for me to come to grips with me being me. And guess what? I am more successful than ever — in every sense, style, and shape of the word… Lesson learned!
When you try to be who you are not, you waste enormous energy being someone that who is not effective. I may be wrong. I may be stupid. I probably am half as bright as you are. But I am cool with that. Being me is pretty surreal…
But I also have a secret that you should know: Long after you give up, sit down, and throw in the towel, I will be achieving excellence because the “me” that was trained to be effective and efficient is a warrior — and warriors conquer.
Do not apologize for greatness, achieve it.
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P.S. I had the best parents a child could ever ask for. Thanks Mom and Dad for being rockstars!
It is. If you can’t get sales, you die. That’s why I am so intense and polarizing about this issue.
Sales (and selling) is not a “gray issue”. It’s black-and-white.
It’s not about games or feelings or making people like you.
It’s intense. It’s a fight for survival. It’s life or death.
That’s why I push the entrepreneurs I work with so hard.
If we were playing with beach balls or snow-cones then I would be more relaxed and less of an ass-hole. I wouldn’t care if you succeeded or failed. I would be glad that I’m OK and let you fail…
But REALLY it’s more than life or death. Your death infects those around you…
Here’s something you are forgetting when you half-ass your commitment to selling. The after-life of selling failure threatens a generation of future entrepreneurs. It’s the HIV of free enterprise, and there are no pills to make the rest of your career comfortable — you die!
And the dying process is worse than just being dead.
You sweat and agonize and pain yourself into a million contortioned scenarios in which you try to imagine that doing the same silly mindless process a few more times might work this time (when deep down you know it won’t)…
Sales is a war.
You must be a warrior from the first moment you rise in the morning to do battle.
You must believe that within you is the ability to succeed. It is you that decides the outcome.
UPDATE: Thanks to @JakeWHayes for his vigilant proof-reading wizardry…
Investing in a sales book, sales group, or sales class can mask personal inadequacies around putting in the necessary effort to be successful. There is a difference between investing in “tools” and investing in your vision.
Don’t confuse “spending money” with developing discipline, working tirelessly, and fixing problems with your sales skills… It’s much harder to be better (but much more rewarding)!
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UPDATE: Just read the following quote and had to add it to my post: “My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.” Gandhi (1917 – 1984)
Confucius said: “Worry not that no one knows of you; seek to be worth knowing…“
Do you have your business card within reach? Take a look at it for a minute.
What’s your title? (Let’s start with that) What are you calling yourself?
Let me guess….
You have the words “executive” or “associate” or “VP“* or “representative“ or “development” (maybe “owner” or “founder” or “principal” too) somewhere in a 2-4 word label of what you do — what value you provide to a buyer.
*(I chuckle at the “VP” moniker as it seems to be a favorite among sales dudes. Somehow getting up in the morning and putting on a tie isn’t enough for most of us in the profession of sales. We need our VP badge of honor to go make some sales…)
If you have anyone of those words in your title then you are NOT a square peg in the sales hole.
You are friction-free!
Congratulations, you have played the game safe. You have not offered to provide anything different or extraordinary to prospective customers. You have not given your competition any concern about posing a threat to their market penetration. You have not had to explain to your boss, why you were “doing things differently”. You have followed the rules and you should be proud of yourself (or not….).
Can I make a bold statement?
You are probably the same person who is wondering right now how to make enough sales to meet your quota this month. You are also the person who is looking for a new job because “no one is buying” what you are selling. You can’t figure out why sales aren’t happening as fast as you would like. In fact recently, sales haven’t been coming to you at all.
Can I make another bold statement?
Forcing yourself to stick out isn’t for most sales executives.
It requires the fortitude to pop back up when the world pushes you down…
It requires the preparation to present value at every interaction…
It requires the creativity to think differently about your job…
It requires the courage to stand on your own and lead new directions…
It requires the passion to fight for what you hope you is right…
It requires being the square peg that can not fit in the typical selling “round” hole…
Be the square sales peg!
Start with your title. It’s the first thing people want to know about you.
By the way, sticking out isn’t the glory you way be thinking. There are actually only a FEW market gurus. Odds are you probably won’t be one either — to start. You can always fight for your place in history, but you can’t be shoved down the hole with everyone else and expect outrageously successful revenue explosion.
A lot of sales people bring no value to the marketplace. They take!
They bother us with their nonsense about “you can trust me more” and “I’m not here to sell you anything”.
That type of “selling” is the fingernails-on-the-chalk-board approach to getting a customer’s attention. It’s the BS that makes the good guys look like schmucks. It’s professional mediocrity and all of here at The DEW View are on a mission to fight it.
The “pay it forward” sale process understands that “qualified giving” before getting is the only way to build consistent high-value clients. You can’t replace a “Pay it Forward” philosophy with fake Zig Ziglar closes. (OUCH – apologies if you like the Zig-man). It’s a mindset that trumps just about any other high-achieving, high return-on-investment activity that you do.
Here are some “Pay it Forward” ideas:
Give away 30 minutes a day of your time to mentorships…
Write an article about recent trends in your industry and what that means…
Call your top 20 clients with a way to save them money…
Do the research for your customer that shows the value of your services…
Overwhelm presentees with crafty facts that they can repeat to their peers…
Host a webinar where you showcase the 12.5 leading problems that your customers need to avoid…
Suggest a (non-competing) industry partner your customer needs to meet…
Learn the top 3 frustrations of your target customer…
There are other great ways to “pay it forward” in sales without foolishly donating time to non-buyers. The key is that doing these actions is more than just the action — it is a philosophy of salesmanship. Also note that each of these activities actually advances your selling process.
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On another tangent, I am pleased that so many people find this blog helpful in generating more business. I started it with a “pay it forward” idea of putting in writing some of the thoughts that made me successful in closing big deals. In the coming days, I am taking this even further AND I WANT YOU TO BE A PART OF IT…
Launching in JUNE will be the Sales Matters group (a mini social network group). It will be a place:
for me to share sales tips like what you read here with entrepreneurs…
for me to help you close the big deals that you currently working on…
for sales guys to find a better job and a better future…
where bosses can find great sales people to hire…
where “revenue generators” can find other like-minded people…
I am on this incredible journey leading great people to even greater sales performance and I look forward to you joining me when the site opens…
Expect to hear more common sense talk about generating explosive revenue growth like the following:
This weekend, the missus and I wrapped up our shopping for family for the holidays. I have to say: “We were more thoughtful this year than any time previously…”
Sometimes life throws you a curve ball.
Think through the mind of your customer… and ask yourself if you are “illogically” wooing your customer. Are you doing what no one else will do to make them successful? Are you working to guarantee that your customer hits a home run by working with you?
Since when did we as business people decide that having conversations was too much work?
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Explosive sales breakthough can only occur when you truly understand that your propect, customer, client, or whatever else you call the people that spend money with you are not your friends.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=635bf951-aa33-4ed4-a68c-849dfc4787da)
You can’t change the world without polarizing the people you run into — your friends, your community, and even your “not so much” fans. Polarization creates “sides”. It’s the line in the sand that says “either you are with me or not”.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=45326465-c9cf-40d9-b2d8-8c69278c6a9e)
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That’s me by the way (the topic and scary pic)…![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7e58a47b-2b45-43e8-8279-41a57d92bbec)
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