Confidence Breeds Confidence — #213

May 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Nobody likes a jackass

Nobody likes a jackass

Confidence is crucial. If you don’t believe in yourself, your organization, your product, and your prospect, then your prospect won’t believe in you. The confidence that you emanate will help your clients be confident in their decision to choose you.

People that lack confidence tend to overcompensate by being pushy and a jackass. And, just in case you didn’t already know this, nobody likes a jackass.

One Moore Thing: The only way to have real confidence is to have knowledge: knowledge of your product, knowledge of your client, and (most importantly) knowledge of yourself.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Feature Post, Motivation, Relationships, Sales

Is Your Beer Glass Half Full? — #212

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
It's always half full

It’s always half full

Most of us have heard the old adage about the way you view events in your life either being as a glass half full or a glass half empty. If you look at a glass that is filled to the halfway point and see it as half-full, then you are considered an optimist; if you view the glass as half-empty, you are considered a pessimist. But what does that mean to you as a salesperson? Does being a perpetually optimistic person translate into more success?

One of the most in-depth studies was done by the Martin Seligman, involving 15,000 salespeople at MetLife Insurance. MetLife is a huge company with a very stringent hiring process; they look for a certain “fit” in their employees. Consequently, their salespeople tend to have similar experience, education, and work habits. Seligman started by giving the salespeople several tests to determine if they were an optimist or pessimist, then followed their sales results and found that the optimists in the group sold 21% more in their first year, and 57% more in their second year. To put that in perspective, if you’re on commission making $40,000 per year, you give yourself a raise to $62,800. If you’re making $120,000, shifting your outlook can increase your compensation to $188,400!

So, should you shift your perspective to positivity? Only if you want to make more money. Here’s a caveat: you must be an optimistic realist. Simply believing you will sell more without doing the hard work will fool nobody but you, and it won’t fool you for long when you no longer have a job.

One Moore Thing: All other things being equal (talent, intelligence, work ethic), an optimistic outlook will help you sell more.
Filed Under: Attitude, Sales

Speed or Service? — #211

March 4, 2013 By 1 Comment
It was worth the wait... oh, I didn't have to wait!

It was worth the wait… oh, I didn’t have to wait!

It’s 9:30 a.m.

I am in the Minneapolis airport and I’ve been up since 3:45 a.m. aboard various flights. I walk into TGI Friday’s for breakfast because I haven’t yet eaten. I’m met by a pleasant woman in her mid-30’s that escorts me to a table and tells me my server will “be right with you”. I look around and I’m one of less than a half dozen people in the restaurant. Between the combination of open seating and the promise made by the hostess, I expect to at least get my caffeine fix quickly.

After 3–4 minutes, I lose my patience, pack up my bags, and move on to the next restaurant. Although I’d never had breakfast at Chick-fil-a, I love that they voiced an opinion and didn’t recant their position just because of public pressure. Although my food was delayed for two minutes, they let me know that as soon as I ordered it. Two minutes later, the bad taste left in my mouth by TGI Friday’s subpar service was replaced with that of a chicken biscuit (awesome, by the way).

You may think I was too quick to judge and didn’t give TGI Friday’s a chance. In fact, I did give them a chance and they set my expectation up front… then fell woefully short.

So was speed more important, or service? They are both intertwined, but if you don’t deliver on schedule, it’s much harder to overcome… even with stellar service.

Like it or not, this is the way your customers think. Some responses may take weeks while others should take seconds. What do your customers expect from you?

One Moore Thing: Go out and talk to your clients and clients you lost. Ask them about your response time and your service. Don’t defend your organization, simply listen and ask what you could do better. Then go make changes.

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Motivation

What Do You Do In The Dark? — #209

February 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Keep working, even when nobody is watching

The Super Bowl is the most watched event on TV each year. Over 100 million people tune in to see the spectacle, advertisers pay $4 million dollars for 30 seconds of airtime, and players spend a lifetime of disciplined practice trying to win the game so they can call themselves champions. And last week the power went out in the stadium for 34 minutes.

There was no way to know if the power was going to be out for 2 minutes or 2 days; the cause could have been a blown fuse or a terrorist attack. The players could have speculated about the cause of power outage, ran into the locker room, or sat around talking to each other or the crowd. Instead, the players focused on the only thing they could control… themselves. They started stretching and moving to keep their bodies warm, knowing that the lights could come on at any second and they would have to be prepared to play without excuses. They took the free time to look over plays and compare observations with teammates. While nobody was watching they continued to do do the little things that would make a difference when the lights came on.

What do you do when the lights are out and nobody is watching? Are you sitting on your ass on the couch screaming “Yipee Ki Yay” while watching Die Hard for the 14th time, or are you reading a book on new sales techniques? Are you sitting around with your friends complaining about your job, or are you looking for new business models that may work for your organization?

One Moore Thing: What you do when nobody is watching is what separates the champs from the chumps.

Filed Under: Attitude, Feature Post, Motivation, Sales

Stop Doing That — #208

January 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Stop!

In your quest to make resolutions for the new year, you probably have said “I need to do this”, when in reality you probably need to say “I need to stop doing this”.

Need examples?

  • To lose weight, you need to stop eating food that’s bad for you.
  • To get in better shape, you need to stop sitting on the couch.
  • To sell more, you need to stop wasting time on unproductive tasks.
  • To become more organized, you need to stop saving items that you don’t need.
  • To save more money, you need to stop spending money on frivolous things.
  • To have a better relationship with your spouse, you need to stop taking them for granted.

Stopping an action is much easier to do than starting a new action, and it will also help you accomplish your goals much faster.

One Moore Thing: What are you willing to stop doing next year to get what you want?

Filed Under: Attitude, Feature Post, Motivation

Your Customer Has The Brain of a 13-Year Old — #205

November 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

No wonder teens get more selective about friends…

Science has proven that middle adolescents, aged 13–15, get more selective about peer friendships and relationships. It makes sense; when you were five years old, you could know somebody for eight seconds and you proudly declared them “your friend”. As children get older, they experience more disappointment, sadness, and loss, and that makes it harder for them to trust people or consider new friendships.

What does this mean for you in your sales career? You have to know that you can’t be friends to everybody, and people are selective about who gets into their circle. Are you the kind of guy (yeah, I said guy, because women don’t do this nearly as much as men) that shows up at every single appointment with a booming frat-boy voice excitedly telling all the details of your drunken guy’s weekend? Do you really think people are taking you seriously? Some customers might, but the vast majority will tolerate the act until the second the door closes behind you. Then they call you an idiot to everybody within distance of their voice.

It’s great to work with friends and that should be the goal of all your relationships, but not everybody wants to be your friend; it may be because of your background, your offering, your personality, or your hairpiece. You just have to accept that and treat them appropriately… until they do become your friend.

One Moore Thing: The best way to make a friend is to do what you say you’re going to do. It’s as simple as that. Familiarity leads to trust and trust leads to friendship.

Filed Under: Attitude, Motivation, Sales

No More Twinkies — #204

October 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Don’t blame the Twinkies

In my twenties, I smoked cigarettes… a lot of cigarettes. I was up to around two packs per day. I was short of breath, embarrassed of my habit, and my car smelled funky. Even though I told myself I needed to quit, I only really tried to quit five or six times. Thankfully, I did quit… but not until I took action.

I need to lose weight. I have to sell more. I should eat better. It’s about time to get a different job.

Have you ever said any of these things to yourself? I have. Even though I’ve recognized that some things needed to change, I didn’t always make the changes. In some cases, loved ones and friends noticed what I needed to change before I had an inkling that something was wrong. Other times it took years to get off my ass and make a change that would stick.

You might use different words or desire different changes, but if you’re like every other human on the face of this earth, you see things that you should do differently… and yet, you don’t adjust your behavior.  Why? Because these areas of growth mean that something has to change, and most people are scared of change. We all know that if we want to lose weight, we have to be more active. If we need to sell more, we have to see more prospects or increase the amount of revenue per prospect. If we want to lose weight, we have to stop shoving Twinkies in our mouth.

Anything in your life that you want to alter can be done with one simple word: ACTION. You can’t realize a different result or create a new habit without taking action. If you don’t take action, in five years you’ll be sitting on the exact same couch, with the exact same friends, in the exact same job, bitching about the exact same problems… and probably eating the exact same Twinkies.

One Moore Thing: If you don’t know what you need to change to accomplish your desired results, find somebody who has already made the change and mimic their behavior.

Filed Under: Attitude, Motivation

Do You Fear The Unknown? — #203

October 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The unknown could be your next opportunity

Everything you know now was once unknown to you.

One Moore Thing: It’s human nature to fear the unknown, but innovators and high performers embrace that obscurity. It’s what separates them from the herd.

Filed Under: Attitude, Motivation, Sales

Are You Giving Customers The 3rd Degree? — #202

September 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How would you feel after intense questioning?

It used to be that salespeople were trained to walk into anybody’s office or home and give a presentation about why the prospect should choose their product. It didn’t matter if the customer actually needed the product, just that they bought the product. After decades of high-pressure sales tactics with less-than-desirable results, somebody came up with the idea of using questions to determine if the prospect actually needed the product. Sales processes based around asking questions were soon implemented. Brilliant!

Well, not so brilliant… for two reasons:

  1. Prospects are asked the same questions by everybody that walks into their office. Questions like “what keeps you up at night?” or “who are you currently using for this service?” have been asked literally millions of times in the past twenty years.
  2. Because salespeople walk in with a list of 15 questions to ask, the prospect feels like they’re being interrogated. There are many salespeople who just spit out the questions in a predetermined order and move to the next question. They either don’t listen to the answer or they don’t integrate the answer into their other questions.

After the salesperson asks their questions, guess what they do? They launch into a presentation about why the prospect should by their product. They use the same presentation that was used forty years ago… except now there’s Powerpoint!

One Moore Thing: Have 3–5 unique questions ready for your prospect, then sit down with them and have an actual conversation. You’ll be surprised at the results.

Filed Under: Attitude, Feature Post, Motivation, Sales

Sales Bil of Rights — #200

September 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Follow The Bil of Rights to achieve success

First Amendment: Free Speech

You have the right to free speech… and customers have the right to think you’re an idiot. Quit sounding salesy. Quit reading from a script. It’s okay to script things but memorize it and be agile enough to change what isn’t working. Work on your presentation skills. If you don’t have presentation skills, get them.

Second Amendment: Right To Bare Arms

I said bare arms, not bear arms. You have the right to roll up your sleeves and work hard. Nobody can stop you from working hard… except yourself. More than ever, hard work can set you apart from the crowd. Separate yourself from the competition by exercising your right to bare arms.

Third Amendment: Protection from Quartering

Don’t worry about this quarter. Worry about the long-term.

Fourth Amendment: You Are Not Protected From Unreasonable Search

Everything people say about you on the internet lives forever. Remember that and work hard to be the best you can be. If somebody does say something disparaging, make sure the positives outweigh the negatives at least 100 to 1. By the way, if somebody doesn’t disagree with you that means you’re not taking a stand and don’t have an opinion.

Fifth Amendment: Due Process

Shortcutting your process through dishonest means can ruin your career.

Sixth Amendment: Trial by Jury

The jury is your client list. Make sure you keep them happy, continue to add value, and get referrals. You don’t want to be judged by only one jury member, so continue to expand your market. If a customer says you did something, you must realize their perception is your reality. Convert them to fans by doing whatever it takes. If you can’t convert them to fans, at least make it right. If you don’t make it right, refer to the Fourth Amendment (everything lives forever).

Seventh Amendment: Civil Trial by Jury

If your jury doesn’t believe you, it will cost you. Prove your integrity by always acting ethically and with the customer’s best interest in mind. You may need to put your project on the back-burner so they can focus on a more pressing issue, but if you continue to stay in touch and add value, your project will move to the forefront of their needs.

Eighth Amendment: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

No matter how a poorly a client treats you, don’t do the same to them. The universe always maintains a balance and every negative action has consequences. You will be punished to the same extent you doled out punishment. If you believe the treatment was cruel and unusual, take a look at how you handled the situation.

Ninth Amendment: Protection of Rights

Everybody has rights. You have the right to go after any piece of business you desire. The customer has the right to decline your offers. You have the right to continue to try to win their business. Nobody can deny you that right.

Tenth Amendment: Power to the People

Organizations don’t hold power; individuals hold power. Your relationships with people will determine whether or not you do business with them. Gone are the days that people will do business with you solely based on the logo on your business card.

One Moore Thing: America is the greatest country on the face of this earth. Opportunities are literally around every corner, and you have the right to capitalize on those opportunities. Are you doing all you could be doing?

Filed Under: Attitude, Customer Service, Feature Post, Motivation, Relationships, Sales
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