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How to Stand Apart From the Competition

Jan 032012

What does it mean to stand out in a crowd? Is it just a matter of looking or acting different? That could be one way to stand out but you’ll never be a seven figure earner if you look or act like a buffoon. Standing out in a crowd will get you noticed but standing apart in a crowd will make you a success. Being noticeable different than all those around you is not just about acting differently, but delivering something of value that is different than anyone else. This “something” must contain something of meaning.

If you’re in sales, it means that not only do you find a point of differentiation for the product or service that you sell but also that you find points of differentiation for how you interact with your customers in delivering this product or service. Successful sales professionals differentiate themselves by delivering value that they personally create. It’s not the same old “canned” approach that you might see from others in your profession. Super sales professionals have the ability to enhance information and the way it is presented to deliver something that is unexpected, surprising, valuable, and highly desired.

This skill comes from a concerted effort to continually develop your knowledge and skill sets, think outside the traditional box, and put yourself in the shoes of others to understand what is really important to the people that you are dealing with. Most importantly, it’s about having vision. You must be able to communicate to others information that is impactful not just now, but also in the future. This communication lays out the vision of how situations or lives can be enhanced by the value being delivered.

It takes courage to stand apart from the crowd. You must have a very strong sense of your identity in order to do so because you’ll be doing things that no one else has thought of and if they have, most won’t have the guts to follow through. It also takes trust. Some of it is trust in others but most of it is trust in you. You have to be able to trust that you won’t waver when someone looks at you strangely. You have to trust that you are completely confident in the vision that you are presenting to the other person. Because if you don’t, you won’t be able to weather the criticism that will always be there from others that lack the vision that you have.

Finally, whatever you decide to do, you must be consistent. Remember that you are building a brand for yourself. People will remember you for your actions and for the value that you deliver. Don’t disappoint them as they will develop certain expectations of behavior from you that they will look forward to.

Now get selling!

Rich Greene

Being Different Quotes

“We are all born originals – why is it so many of us die copies?” – Edward Young

“If we did all the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.” – Thomas Edison

“The truly important things in life — love, beauty, and one’s own uniqueness — are constantly being overlooked.” – Pablo Casals

How Do You Feel About Change?

Personal Development No Responses »

Oct 222011

So, how do you feel about change? You either like it or you don’t. Maybe you apathetic about change. Hopefully it is not the latter because whether you like change or not, it’s going to happen. In fact, there is a saying that no one likes change except for babies!

The one thing I can predict with 100% confidence is that change will occur. Change is a known constant, and you can’t stop it. Why do people not embrace change? The simple answer is “comfort.” Doing anything differently than we are used to doing is uncomfortable. Webster online defines “change” as “to make radically different.” That can be a pretty scary definition for many people. Most people hate change because it makes them uncomfortable and sometimes discomfort causes pain. In fact, resistance to change is perfectly natural.

Recent neuroscience research shows that the human brain is wired in such a manner as to protect oneself from pain. This leads to avoidance and procrastination. Think about it. Why do some people stay in an abusive relationship when they could have some other happier scenario? The answer is pain avoidance. The pain or discomfort of the unknown can be greater than the known circumstances of not moving forward in life!

So people stay stagnant in life because they want to avoid change. In Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man, he discusses a theory on evolution of the human species. His theories around cultural differences attempt to explain that the advancements in philosophies and technologies are the result of peoples facing severe environmental challenges and their attempts to overcome them advanced their cultures.

I don’t know if Darwin’s theories are correct, but I do know that anyone who faces a challenge head on will grow in their skills and knowledge, regardless of the outcome of their efforts. People learn and advance through doing new things.

Most people will deal with change only when it has reached some crucial point. In Darwin’s theory of human evolution, the “change challenges” people were faced with were usually life or death ones. These challenges had to be dealt with or survival was at risk.

You don’t have to wait for something as dramatic as a survival issue to face and embrace change. The number one mental strategy to deal with change it to realize that everything in life is impermanent. In other words, nothing lasts forever. No matter what age you are, we all have fond memories of earlier days. Sometimes we wish that things were as they used to be. It’s better they remain as good memories than to try to recreate the “exact” experiences. Any exercise to do so will surely end in some level of disappointment.

The second best mental strategy is to embrace change with a positive attitude. There is always some positive benefit that will result from a change. Sometimes the benefits are not readily apparent, but with a little work, you may find some hidden gems in the rocky path. When you alter your perception of change to one in which you look forward to (think about the adventure waiting for you around the next corner), you will find greater success and happiness with the cards that life deals you.

What strategies do you employ to deal with change?

Now get selling!

Rich

Change Quotes:

“Nothing is permanent but change.” – Heraclitus

“Things do not change; we change.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” – Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom

Top Sales Performers Take Care of Their Health

Personal Development No Responses »

Oct 012011

Often overlooked (until it’s too late) in the attainment of peak sales performance is your health. Proper nutrition, exercise, and rest is of paramount importance to the becoming a peak sales performer. Probably more important is that you need maintain peak performance. It is often overlooked because it takes discipline, hard work, and sometimes it’s not something that you want to do. But you must do it!

Why is health an important factor to becoming a top sales professional? There are many reasons. Let’s assume you’ve reached the status of being at the top of your game in your profession. One could probably also assume that you are making some pretty good money too, right? Maybe you want to retire early and enjoy life. The simple fact of the matter is that if you are not doing everything you can to be responsible for your own health; you probably will not live very long to enjoy the fruits of your labors. Even if you do live long, you might be plagued with health issues that will detract from fully enjoying life. You could end up spending all that hard earned cash on medical bills!

There are some other reasons why you want to be taking care of yourself that aren’t quite as depressing. When your mother told you breakfast was one of the most important meals of the day, she wasn’t kidding. Proper nutrition starting the day and throughout the day will give you the fuel you need to get the job done. Eating “clean” is a key dietary factor. I’m not going to tell you to eliminate all the bad stuff from your diet. You know that is important already. It’s hard for most people to do. Instead, I recommend that you eat the most nutritious meal that you can and keep the junk food to a minimum.

My grandmother liked dessert, and she liked to have a cocktail before dinner. To the best of my knowledge she did it every day of her adult life. She was thin as a rail, sharp as a tack, and she lived to the ripe age of 99. What was her secret? One word; moderation.

Part of proper diet is ensuring that you get the proper daily hydration. Most people are mildly dehydrated and don’t even know it. If you get a drink when you are thirsty, you are already dehydrated. Make it a habit of sipping water throughout the day and you’ll never be thirsty.

Something as simple as proper water intake can have a significant impact on your cognitive abilities. Proper hydration is also the key to top mental performance. Water makes up approximately 80% of the brain. It is an essential element in ensuring proper neurological transmissions. When you first notice the signs of thirst, your mental cognition has already decreased by about 10%. This decline continues progressively as you become more and more dehydrated. There are many different formulas for how much water one should consume. Probably the most common recommendation is to drink 8-10 glasses of water daily. More is O.K. too if you can do it.

Another great practice in moderation is exercise. You don’t need to train like a madman in order to be healthy. But, you need to get up out of your chair and move your body every day. One of the most common excuses people give is that they don’t have the time. Poppycock! It doesn’t matter what your current physical condition or even if you have some type of physical impairment. There is always something that can be done to stretch your muscles, get your heart pumping, and an increase in respiration.

Peak performers always find the time to exercise. The minimum you should shoot for is twenty minutes of moderate exercise. I recommend that you discipline yourself to get up one hour earlier in order to achieve some type of daily exercise. If you just can’t get out of bed, figure out what you’re going to give up. A great disposable pastime is television. Watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous will not make you thin, nor will it make you rich!

The road to success is paved with courage, compassion, and discipline. Having great physical health will help you become a peak sales performer and it will help you stay a peak sales performer.

Now get selling!

R. Boyd Greene

Health Quotes:

“A Man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.” – Spanish Proverb

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.” – Buddha

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold or silver.” = Mahatma Gandhi

Do You Practice Continuous Improvement?

Personal Development, Sales Philosophy No Responses »

Sep 132011

If you are peak sales professional, you do! Sales professionals know that part of being on top of the game is working on always getting better. In order to get better, you first need to know what you must work on. Self assessments are a great way to find out your opportunity areas of improvement and I encourage you to do one.

Once you have done your self assessment, you will know those areas that are opportunity areas for improvement. Don’t worry what they are! Everyone has weaknesses. It is important that once you identify them, you work on developing those areas. Sales professionals realize that understanding their weaknesses is really strength and they devise a game plan to develop their skills.

Every sales professional that is at the top of their game practices continuous improvement. Continuous improvement means that you are making a constant effort positively change your opportunity areas. Sales professionals are never satisfied with the status quo nor do they ever think that their skills are “good enough.” Having the mindset of continuous improvement means that you are always looking for methods to get better that will help to sharpen your competitive edge.

In many industries and some segments of business, there is a methodology of continuous improvement called Lean or Six Sigma. The very first aspect of using either of these process improvement areas is to do some 80/20 calculations. These calculations help to identify the 80% of the errors that fall within 20% of the processes. A sales professional will use their self assessment to identify and focus on those 20% areas. These are the areas that will give them the greatest returns for self development. Once they have accomplished improvement in those areas, they move on to other areas that fall outside that 20% range.

Continuous improvement is easier than you might think. If you work towards incremental change, the process of continuous improvement won’t seem so daunting. It doesn’t matter if you think you need a lot of work or just a little. The process is the same. Remember the saying “Inch by inch it’s a cinch. Yard by yard it’s really hard.” Take things by the inch and make it a cinch!

Listed below are four things that will help you get started in you continuous improvement program. If you master these areas, continuous improvement will become part of your life, and you will have added another valuable skill of top sales professionals.

1. Master yourself: The important part of mastering yourself is accepting who you are. This means that you accept all the things that you like about yourself as well as all of the things you don’t like about yourself. This doesn’t mean you accept those negative aspects and don’t do anything about them! It means that you identify them as opportunity areas you will develop.

2. Face your fears: It’s all too easy to procrastinate or ignore the things we are afraid to do. Peak performers know that they need to push aside the thought of things that are unpleasant and just get to it! The one truth about fear is that it is self created. Whatever it is you fear, take a deep breath and face it head on. You’ll find that once you face whatever it is you fear, it will become significantly less scary. It takes bravery. Go ahead and take that step. The rewards will be great!

3. Don’t Procrastinate: Procrastination will cripple your chances for every becoming a peak performer. Procrastination is a self defense mechanism for fear. It also is used during times of high stress or mental overload to give the mind a break. There can be acceptable but once employed it should be used short term only. The problem with using procrastination as a tool is that most people don’t know when to turn it off. This results in paralyzing them from moving forward in life. It’s best to avoid procrastination and find other coping mechanisms that have a healthier outcome.

4. There is no final destination: Peak performers know that there is no end to continuous improvement. This is about a journey that will never end. Perfection in one’s skills does not exist, but your ability to strive towards becoming better will lead to perfection in your spirit.

Make continuous improvement part of your everyday life and see your sales explode!

Now get selling!

R. Boyd Greene

Continuous Improvement Quotes:

“Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” – Robert Kiyosaki

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler

“I’m learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” – Eartha Kitt

Taking a Measured Pace to the Finish Line

Personal Development, Sales Philosophy No Responses »

Aug 252011

Do you ever wonder why so many people fail to follow through with New Years Resolutions or fail to achieve the goals that they set forth? It’s not because they don’t want to be accomplishment oriented. There are many different explanations why this occurs but the greatest reason deals with focus. No…not lack of focus. Too much focus on the big picture and not enough focus on the right things!

A common mistake that people make is to plan grandly. I’m not saying that it is not a good thing to dream big. Most often the plan for accomplishment is either too big for the current resources available, or too large for the time allotted to achieve the goal.

Think of goal achievement like running a race. Remember that most people can only sprint for a short period of time. It’s easy to get excited about one’s goal and give an intense burst of energy towards achieving it. The wiser strategy is to look upon yourself as a marathoner. Successfully executing a 500 yard dash takes a different strategy than completing a 26 mile marathon.

Just like getting the right strategy for a foot race, your strategy for goal setting and attainment should be appropriate for the specific type of goal. If it is a big goal, the best course of action is to break it down into small parts. Large tasks can sometimes be daunting. When people don’t make the progress they expect towards a goal, many people just give up. This is the main reason for failure in achieving goals. Smaller goals that are part of a larger one are easier for the mind to manage, and your successes will give you the mental fortitude to move onto accomplishing the next objective.

If you were to stand on a mountain, and look at your life from afar, you would see a couple of things. First, you would be able to see a path that your life has created. You would also see that there is a direction that the path is taking. There would be many zigs and many zags as you were faced with certain challenges. Also, you you would see where you are rewarded with your share of triumphs. At the end of the day, you were the one who blazed that trail. Everyone is on a path. Your job is to view your path from afar and make sure it is the one you wish to be taking. There is always a fork in the road to take. Someone said that. Was it the bear or the baseball player who had something to say about that?

Your life is a lot like building a monument. When you are gone, what type of monument will people look upon or remember? Will it be a modest building or will it be something on the grand scale of the Pyramids? If you think it is the pyramids, how were they built? They were built one block of stone at a time. It is estimated that it took somewhere between 15 and 20 year to build the great pyramid. If you started today, how many pyramids could you build in the remainder of your life? It’s never too late to start!

Peak Performers Help Others

Sales Philosophy No Responses »

Aug 152011

One of the skills that a good sales person has is the ability to maintain a positive attitude. Note that I use the word “skill.” We know from physiological and physiological research on humans that your “happiness” scale might be genetically programmed. The good news is that if you don’t feel that you are naturally a positive or optimistic person, you can increase that with a little effort. Top sales professionals know that helping others is a part what it takes to be successful in life. I could get into all of the moral aspects and even how many religions deal with helping others, but I’m just going to focus on what it will do for you as a professional.

Zig Ziglar, a famous sales trainer, has said “you can have anything you want, if you will help enough other people get what they want.” I’ve found this to be a true statement, but there is an added piece that is extremely important in order for this to work. You must help others without expecting an immediate return or even any return at all! So, the appended statement would be “you can get anything you want if you help others get what they want and you do so with no expectations of a return.”

Helping other people is about being selfless. If you think you have the corner on life’s challenges, you better take another look around. Everyone has challenges and some are a lot worse than yours. Being selfless and taking the focus off yourself and putting it onto others is a good way to get a reality check about your life and the blessings that you have to be thankful for.

Helping other people is really a natural law that all successful sales people understand and employ. When you help others, not only doing something positive, you are also networking. Successful networkers know that they will never know when or where they will get a return from their networking efforts. They only know that eventually it will come. Your acts of altruism will almost always have the unforeseen side effect of bringing benefits to you. You will find that people will be more inclined to help you achieve your goals and doors of opportunity will open for you.

The reverse also holds true. Unsuccessful sales people tend to be self absorbed. Their only thought is making the sale, and they don’t think about the person to whom they are selling. From time to time, they may have some sales successes. But, these successes are not sustainable as their true selfish character shows.

So how do you become more selfless and a greater sales servant? Here are three things that will get you started.

1. Be a good listener: Professional sales people know that you have two ears and one mouth and you should use them all equally. That means you need to listen more than you talk. Take the time to get to know your customers. Not only listen to what they are saying but listen to “how” they are saying it. What emotions are they using? If you are meeting someone in person, what does their body language say? Sometimes just words alone don’t really tell you what you need to know about a person and you will need to use your other senses to find out more information. If you don’t really know your customers how can you help them?

2. Be Empathetic: Try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and think about what may be going on in their life. Work is really just a small portion of what your customer is about. There might be other things that have an influence on their business decisions. It’s O.K. to get personal once in a while as long as it is done in an appropriate manner. You really can’t show empathy unless you know the person and you can make connections to experiences in your own life. Most importantly, people don’t really care about what you have to sell unless they know you care about them.

3. Have a good heart: Be committed to helping others. Some call it servant leadership. I call it good a good business practice and good for your spirit. Kindness and generosity will make your customer or prospect feel better about you as a person. Iit will also make you a happier and more positive individual, which can only help contribute to your sales success.

Now get selling!

Rich

Quotes on Helping Others:

“In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us.” – Flora Edwards

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.” – Henry Ford

Achieving Balance in Life

Personal Development No Responses »

Jul 232011

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What is balance?

What is balance in life? We often hear people talk about being out of balance in life or complaining about their life being lopsided. Usually, these complaints involve work and the fact that it can sometimes seem to consume your waking periods. One of the first things that I need to make clear to you is that work is part of your life. It pays the bills, and it gives one a sense of purpose. It also helps if you like what you do!

Please don’t get me wrong. Living a balanced life doesn’t mean you take more time from your work life by attempting to reallocate it to other parts of your life. In fact in many cultures, this would not be possible. If you reside and work in the United States, you are probably working more hours than most all other industrialized nations (see the chart below). Longer working hours is mostly a cultural issue, and it’s probably not going to change radically.

So, living a balanced life is not necessarily about time portioned between life segments. It is more about how you spend the time that you have. It is really a philosophy about the things that are important to you. A well balanced life contains four segments:

1) Emotional – this includes your relationships with your friends, family, and others

2) Mental – this is what you think about yourself and your outlook on life

3) Physical – this relates to your physical health and your philosophy about exercise

4) Spiritual – this relates to your belief system (faith, values, etc.)

Each of these segments is important. If you give your work an inordinate amount of focus, it is likely that some or all of these areas will be lacking. That is not balance! Again, I’m not talking about time. I’m talking about focusing your attention fully to these areas when you are working within them.

Why is balance important?

There is a very high correlation between balance in life and self reported happiness. Studies in this area show that individuals who have very high weekly working hours report an increased incidence of depression (27%), anxiety (34%), and irritability (58%). More than 40% of employee’s who were surveyed reported that they are neglecting other aspects of their lives because of their work.

How do you achieve balance?

Achieving balance in one’s life is going to be different for every individual. It will be based on their respective weighting of importance in each of the four segments of life. In other words, a formula will not meet the needs of all people. Developing a philosophy about life and your individual circumstances will provide the most fruitful results in achieving balance.

I recommend that you seek wisdom and guidance wherever you feel comfortable in helping you shape your philosophy. Siddhartha Gotama taught his disciples to follow the “middle way.” The middle path is not about going straight down the middle, or as we discussed above, portioning equal amounts of time to each area of your life. The middle path is about moderation between the extremes of indulgence and self mortification. It’s about taking each of those four segments of your life seriously and not letting any piece suffer from lack of focus.

Your life will take many turns. You may find that you are neglecting one area of your life because events in another area of your life have become time consuming. Having the focus to be mindful of this and return attention to the neglected areas when you are able is crucial to the achievement of life balance. In many ways, your life is like a ship on the ocean. You can decide what your course will be, but, the tides, the currents, or a storm may push your ship off course. A good ship’s captain will deal with this by constantly adjusting the ships navigation as necessary. You must do the same. Life is not a straight line moving from one place to another but instead a zigzag path. If you make the necessary adjustments at the right times, you’ll end up at your desired destination and find balance along the way.

Now get selling!

Rich

Quotes:

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

“I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.” – Zig Ziglar

“The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.” – Euripides

Daily Task Planning for Greater Productivity

Personal Development No Responses »

Jul 152011

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Why are daily tasks important? They are important because daily leads to weekly leads to monthly leads to yearly! How much you decide to accomplish really gets down to getting good at planning your day. But planning your day alone isn’t enough. You also need to employ certain techniques to ensure that you actually finish what you plan to do!

Let’s tackle planning your daily tasks. There has been a lot written about this already and people still continue to look for methods to become more productive in accomplishing their daily activities. People continue to look for one simple reason. The success rate for effective daily planning is very low. So, why do most people fail at planning? The simple truth is that they fail because they do not take a focused approach to planning. In fact, many people fail because their approach is too focused!

I recommend that you build a solid planning foundation for your daily tasks then get into the details. The foundation is extremely important but fairly simple to build. The first step is to build a master list of activities. A master task list is a list of your most productive activities. This list can tie into your annual goals if you have them. If you don’t have annual goals, I recommend that you set them. It doesn’t matter what part of the year it is. There’s nothing magic about January 1^st as the goal setting day. Any day can be January 1! Your master list will feed your daily list and based on the type of activities you may find that you completely eliminate an item from your master list or you may simply make progress on a particular item during that day. Once you have your master list it is time to develop your daily list.

You must write down your daily plan. Many famous writers and speakers like Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and many more talk about the importance of having written goals. Your daily task list is nothing more than a set of your short term goals. I’m going to take this a step further. You must write them down with a paper and pen or pencil. The fancy electronic organizer is a great tool and so are all of the software programs that are available in the marketplace. But, there is something about the physical process of engaging the brain and the hand to a piece of physical media that is much more effective.

There is a large body of psychological research that shows that the act of physically writing down your tasks will improve your memory. This is important because it will help you to keep at the top of your mind those tasks that you have chosen to complete for the day. If you practice writing daily goals, you will find this to be true even if you don’t refer to the list. This is because memory is facilitated via rehearsal or repetitive activities. Actually writing down your task list is a form of rehearsal. The act of writing down your tasks also engages cross-modality of cognitive (visual) and physical (kinesthetic) actions that help to memory and further enhances the likelihood that your tasks stay at the top of your mind.

If you have the money to buy and expensive written planning system, do so. But, it is not necessary. You also don’t need to send a lot on planners. A simple lined book is sufficient. I’ve seen many people invest in elaborate daily planning systems and then spend lots of time setting up how they will use them. This is a classic case of getting caught up in the details and spending more time focusing on setting up the process than actually working the process. In the end, it doesn’t matter how fancy the medium is because you are still doing the same things. Like Nike says, “Just do it!”

Now get selling!

TPoS

Quotes:

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail” – Winston Churchill

“It pays to plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” – Thomas Alva Edison

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” – General George S. Patton

Is Sales Training a Waste of Time? – Unreceptive Students and Lack of Management Support

Personal Development No Responses »

Jul 092011

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Just to refresh, this is the final of my comments on the LinkedIn post that talked about sales training being a waste of time. We previous blogs I covered retention of knowledge and outdated training principals. The last piece in that LinkedIn post dealt with unreceptive students and management that was not supportive. First let me say that when I first read this my thought was not to waste my time commenting on this. But the more I thought about it and I looked at the detail I realized that this was a classic case of “excuse making.” I can’t or won’t do this because…

When I think of this I just hear wining. It says “I don’t want to go to training because no one will support me.” Boo hoo hoo! Get over it. If you’re a sales professional it really doesn’t matter what other people say or do. You are in charge of yourself and part of being a professional is lifelong self development.

Prince’s Commandment: Thou Shall Commit to Lifelong Learning.

The key word in this commandment is “commit.” What does commitment mean? Commitment is the state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to a course of action or to a person (like getting married). You feel it deep inside of you. It is part of the fabric of who you are. This means that it doesn’t matter if you don’t completely like the course that you are taking. You are committed to learning something no matter what. Look for the one good thing that you will take away. Look for that gem. There is ALWAYS at least one good take-a-way. Then move on.

What do you do if your management is not supportive? Your company may have paid for the training but your individual manager may not agree with it, or may not like you taking time off from your job to go to the training. I guess you have to do what you have to do. Your boss has the power to make your working life at your company either good or bad. So act appropriately.

But, you must ask yourself a couple of questions. What do you do with the time that you are not at work? What are you doing to improve yourself? When it comes down to it, you are the only one responsible for your development. Not your boss. Not your company. It’s nice when someone else wants to pay for your training. But, successful sales professionals know that they are in charge of their own training. They plan for it like they plan for anything else in life. Use your free time wisely and invest in your own self development.

Speaking of Investment, do you have a 401K or an IRA? If so, you probably put aside a little money out of each pay check that goes into that investment account. But do you have an investment account for you? If not, why not? After all, you’re the one making the money. Shouldn’t you be investing to make sure you have the best skills you can possibly have? I think it is a fairly easy correlation to make between increased income and increased sales skills/knowledge. So why wouldn’t you do it? Here’s a little investment strategy that will pay you great dividends. Put aside between 5 – 10% of your income for self development. To much you say? If you don’t do anything what will you lose? Maybe nothing. But surely you won’t gain anything either.

Now get selling!

Rich

Quotes:
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether this happens at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young, but becomes constantly more valuable regardless of physical capacity.” – Harvey Ullman

“The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you’re learning you’re not old.” – Rosalyn S. Yalow

“In a time of drastic change it is the learner who inherits the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live a world that no longer exists.” – Eric H

Is Sales Training a Waste of Time? – Outdated Principals

Uncategorized No Responses »

Jul 072011

In my last blog I talked about sales training and the issue of retaining new knowledge. In this blog, we’ll cover the issue of outdated principals and techniques.
Outdated sales techniques are always an issue. Business environments change. Political and legal environments change. Let’s take cold calling for as an example. The phone used to be a primary tool for sales people to communicate. What do you have today? The internet! We also have a rapidly growing number of exposure points for you to get you message to potential buyers of your product or service.

Are you using social media in your sales efforts? If not, why not?! Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a growing number of other communities set up around networking are all viable tools for your business. Some may be more appropriate than others but if you’re not in the game, you’re dead. That’s the technology side of things. Other change factors like government mandated “do not call” lists have also changed the way we interact with prospects. So, as things change, you must be able to adapt to those changes. A sale training that does not incorporate new technologies into them is a waste of time. Unless…

Unless we are talking about “natural laws” of selling. A natural law is one that never changes. It is part of the human experience and is inherent in our interactions. An example of a natural law is how you deal with people. I’m not talking about using the phone or email. I’m talking about how you interact. I’m talking about the stuff that is inside of you. We’re going to call these natural laws of selling the Prince’s Commandments. From time to time, you’ll see a Commandment in one of these blogs. Take note, write it down. If you follow them they will serve you well. So here is the first one.

Commandment: Treat others as they would like to be treated.

Does this sound familiar? The Golden Rule says that you should treat others as you would like to be treated. I think the right spirit is here. But, how do you know everyone wants the same thing as you? I could never be that presumptuous. How does this apply to sales? It’s simple. Forget about what you want (the sale) and focus on what is important to the prospect. In fact, I want you to forget about selling your product or service until you get to know them a little.

Yep. You read that correctly. Don’t sell. Don’t demean your prospect by selling at them. Treat them for what they are. Another person with many of the same life challenges that you have but sometime some different ones as well. What does that have to do with getting the sale? Everything. People aren’t going to care about what you have to sell until they know that you care about them. That means treating them respectfully and getting to know what their needs are. So, slow down, go through the process of getting to know your customer. Hear them out. Then and only then maybe you can sell them something. There are many other issues with personal interactions but the above example gives you a good idea. What other things don’t change?

Now get selling!

Rich

Quotes:
“If you treat people right they will treat you right — ninety percent of the time.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Before I can walk in another person’s shoes, I must first remove my own.”
- Brian Tracy

Older Entries

How to Stand Apart From the Competition

How Do You Feel About Change?

Top Sales Performers Take Care of Their Health

Do You Practice Continuous Improvement?

Taking a Measured Pace to the Finish Line

Peak Performers Help Others

Achieving Balance in Life

Daily Task Planning for Greater Productivity

Is Sales Training a Waste of Time? – Unreceptive Students and Lack of Management Support

Is Sales Training a Waste of Time? – Outdated Principals

R. Boyd Greene

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