Find inspiration in others…books …authors…online. Put a different quote up on your mirror each week. Take it down to your quick print store and have them design a look for it so you’re proud of seeing it on your mirror.
Here’s one you can begin with by Gandhi. You’ve heard it before but it never fails to inspire me, “A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.” You don’t have the be in the same room with someone to learn something from them.
In this episode, Brooke Green takes a look at how we can improve the creative juices that make up the sales mind. Yes, sales people MUST be creative, but most are a bit afraid of it (our opinion). So Brooke let’s fly with some ideas.
Also, Bill Caskey rants about a cold call he received from an insurance agent (with a huge national brand).
*Watch other Whiteboard Wednesday Episodes: www.youtube.com/whiteboardwednesday
*Coming June 27, 2011, Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale interview Pat Williams – Senior Vice President of the Orlando Magic. View the episode “What Every Salesperson Can Learn from John Wooden” at http://www.advancedsellingpodcast.com/what-every-salesperson-can-learn-from-john-wooden/.
We don’t pay enough attention to “forward progress.” Appreciate it. Look back and marvel at your accomplishments. How often do we do that?
You’ve heard of the gratitude books – where you write down what you’re grateful for – so that more of it comes. Same with this. Each week, write down your list of accomplishments and revel in them for a bit. Don’t let that stop you from growing by reading the next great book – but smell the roses occasionally.
-B. Caskey
Role model…be careful before you pick one. We get the request often to ‘create a mentoring program.’ It all sounds good in theory. But there are many things you have to look at before you select one. Unconditional interest’ in your success is one. They can’t care about you more than you care about yourself, but they have to have some kind of interest in your outcomes.
One of the most common issues companies have is in managing (controlling) the sales process once it begins.
In this episode, you’ll get advice from all angles!
Enjoy!
We love emotion don’t we? When we see a coach ranting and raving on the sideline, we say, “Boy, look at that passion!!” Usually, what we mean is “He’s come unhinged-but it’s for a good cause.”
But is out-of-control emotion all it’s cracked up to be in the sales cycle? I say, “No.” Here’s why.
We have a saying in our business when we’re working with clients: “The only emotion that should be seen is the prospect’s demonstration of emotion of why they need to fix their problem.” Not only does your emotion (desire to sell the product, desire for the resulting income, ego satisfaction) not help, it hurts the process.
You want the prospect’s emotion to fill the air and the space between you and him. The more your emotion is on display, the less room there is for theirs to play out.
Believe me, this is hard for me to do…and I see it difficult for others. When your points are falling flat and your customer resorts to “Your price is too high,” you WILL get emotional. But it won’t come out as passion…yelling…screaming. It will come out as defensive. And the instant you go defensive, you’ve lost the battle.
Write down the thing that your prospect commonly says that drives you crazy. Then come up with a strategy/device so that when they say it, you stay calm and in the moment. Then you can, logically, walk thru how they got to that decision/conclusion.
And, of course, practice detachment. If it is not meant to be, then you must move on. But don’t use detachment as a way out of the process. Detachment is merely a ‘way of being’ so that you can logically sort out the truth.
Whiteboard Wednesday, a bi-weekly Web TV Show for Sales Professionals, is now available! The show is a tactical guide for any sales person to use in navigating the turbulent waters of professional selling!
If you want to change your results in sales or leadership, you must…must…change your thinking.
Once you do, you’ll find the business market quite easy to pursue. You’ll find that your confidence soars. You’ll find situations that used to frustrate you now become easy.
We suggest that every problem you have in business today is a result of old, antiquated thinking. Isn’t it time to change?
The proverbial sales funnel seems to be the ‘defacto’ way to measure results. No, it’s not always ‘revenue in’…it’s “what’s in your pipeline?” (Do you wake up in the of a nightmare hearing your sales leader shouting that question to you?)
Not sure how we got to this point, but this short video blows up a little of our preoccupation with “funnel” because it highlights an important part–not all people in your sales funnel are equal. Nor should they be treated that way.
It’s a topic that no one wants to broach, but it is “the topic” when it comes to sales results and that is: What is the image you have of yourself? The most common way this comes out is: What is your image of the role you have in the buyer-seller process.
One of my clients is a middle-aged man who’s been in his position for twenty years and is arguably the most knowledgeable person in the US when it comes to one specific niche. Yet, as we went through the exercise of finding your value, he could not come to the conclusion that he, personally, brought any extra value to the table, beyond his product/service.
It was preposterous yet at the same time common. Sometimes our humility gets the best of us, and we discount the value we bring to the process in favor of the value our product brings to the process.
In this case, the question I asked him was, “What would you do to help the customer maximize the use of the product they bought post sale?” He came up with a list of five things that he would do over the course of a year that would virtually guarantee that the customer maximize the investment in the product. In essence, the product itself was not the issue in this sale. It was how to get the product to work right after it was installed. (And I don’t mean that it was a flawed product. I mean, that like a lot of technology products, most people underuse the potential.)
After he came up with that list, his eyes got brighter and he stood up straighter and discovered that he is the thing that his customer cannot get anywhere else on the planet, and when they decide not to do business with him, they give up his expertise and his ability to make that small investment into a large return.
I urge you to think about the value you bring personally to the table through your experiences, your insight, your perspective, your collective knowledge of others in your organization that have expertise. You’ll be shocked at how valuable you really are. And if your self-image will allow you, you’ll be able to talk about that in a nice, conversational, elegant, non-cocky way.
