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Tip #1:
A Good Attitude and Strong Self-Image Will Act As Sales Assistants
A good attitude is important in every job, but attitude is critical for people in the selling profession. Prospects and customers have come to expect a certain quality of excitement and optimism from salespeople. A damp personality won
Even the best opportunities need to be promoted.
Our founding fathers issued 74 invitations to the first meeting of the Continental Congress. Only about 52 people attended and half were lawyers.
It’s hard to “under-promote” a product, service or event. Use multiple channels to issue multiple invitations.
That’s why having one distribution list doesn’t carry the day anymore. Your competition is using their e-mail dist list, a personal Facebook page, a Facebook Fan Page, a Linkedin list and a Twitter list. They are posting to each several times a week and in some cases, several times a day.
The last thing you think about before sleep is likely to determine the quality and quantity of your sleep. This same thought can lead to teeth grinding (or not) and the content of your dreams. Wow!
The reticular activating system is a kind of filing system for the brain that tends to grab the first and last item from a set of critieria such as:
- the first thing you think about in the morning and the last thing you think about at night
- the first and last item of a list
- the first and last thing a presenter says
This first/last consciousness has all kinds of interesting applications. For example, a salesperson would do well to walk into a sales call thinking about a positive versus negative outcome and convey that postitivity throughout her presentation.
My friend Fernando Garcia, a talented salesperson and excellent golfer, tells me of something golfers refer to as "the last swing thought." Fern recommends approaching the ball with a specific positive thought because that thought or visualization is likely to influence the result of the swing.
This is something to think about before bed, eh? What's the last thing you think about before going to sleep?
I was recently talking with a client about empathy. We were planning a training event for his young store managers and he wanted them to know more about how to relate to customers and prospects.
As we discussed the content of the program, we began to consider the difference between sympathy and empathy. My client contributed something he had learned about sympathy. "When it come to business," he said, "Sympathy costs money."
His point was that feeling sorry for a customer might lead to a soft-hearted discount or unusually generous consideration.
I added that empathy or having the ability to share a customer's feelings can build rapport that leads to a larger sale or more sales.
So, when it comes to selling, sympathy costs your company money, but empathy makes your company money.
Be prepared
The twelve months known as 2008 have been an education for many people.
If we’ve learned anything recently, we should have learned simple two-word lesson, but some of us are still learning, including employees at the Detroit newspapers.
The Detroit News and Free Press papers just announced they will be the first major metropolitan newspaper in the country t not deliver its publication daily. Slow to embrace the Internet, they’ve even been offering the paper at no charge, but people still don’t want it.
Unprepared for change, newspapers are not just trying to make a profit, they are fighting for their existence. The newspaper industry’s troubles have been brewing for a while, but people in Michigan are blaming the economy and other issues. That’s how we know that the two-word lesson still hasn’t taken root.
Of course, it’s not too late to learn (or re-learn) the lesson. I teach this message for a living, so it breaks my heart goes out to anyone who still hasn’t taken action on this two-word lesson.
The two words are: Be prepared.
This slogan has been around for a while. Written by Robert Baden-Powell exactly 101 years ago, the phrase, “Be prepared,” was originally a simple lesson for the scouts. Yet, “be prepared” is a haunting bit of advice for anyone who was caught cash-poor during the recession.
So, repeat after me . . . “Be prepared.” One way to stay up to snuff is to be always learning.
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If you’ve been waiting for incentive to take action in your career . . .
If you want to be more prepared in 2009 and beyond . . .
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