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

Duck, Duck, Goose — #210

February 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Don't wait for somebody else to Goose you

Don’t wait for somebody else to Goose you

In elementary school, our teachers would have us play a game called Duck, Duck, Goose. The entire class would sit in a circle cross-legged (back then it was called Indian-style) and one kid would walk around the circle tapping the other kids on the head and say Duck, Duck, Duck, and finally one person was the Goose. If she said Duck when she tapped your head, you didn’t do anything… if she said Goose when she tapped your head, you had to get up as fast as possible, chase her around the outside of the entire circle and catch her before she got back to where you were sitting.

The Ducks in the circle had no clue who you were going to pick even though you had made up your mind before ever engaging with anybody. Before you were ever chosen as the Goose, you knew who you were going to choose when it was your turn to tap the heads of your classmates.

The same thing happens in sales every single day. Because of the plethora of information available at your customer’s fingertips, they have normally researched solutions and made a decision prior to calling any potential vendors. You have two options to separate yourself from the rest of the sales crowd:

  1. Figure out how to provide prospects with the initial information through your website, articles, videos, white papers, etc. This should be educational, informational, and free. It’s called “marketing”.
  2. Find a major point of differentiation between you and your competitors and focus on that point.

One Moore Thing: Quit being so happy when prospects call you… they’ve probably already made a decision by that point. Separating yourself from the Ducks is the only way you will become the Goose.

Filed Under: Feature Post, Motivation, Prospecting, Relationships, Sales

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

Sell Like Santa — Part 2 of 2 — #207

January 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Either this is the 2nd part of the post or Santa is giving you the peace sign

In Part 1 of this post, I talked about making a list and checking it twice… basically allowing you to see how much time you actually spend on sales activities.

Today we’re going to find out who’s Naughty & Nice.

Start out by finding a quiet place and taking an inventory of all your customers. Some salespeople have hundreds of customers while others have a half dozen, so depending on your customer base and value per customer, this could take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours. Don’t worry about how big they are or how much revenue or commission they provide. We simply want to know if they’re naughty or nice. Typically, your gut instinct can tell you where a client falls on the naught to nice scale, but you should prepare a few questions to help classify the ones that aren’t readily apparent.

Here are some sample questions to ask yourself about your clients:

  • Do they demand unrealistic turnarounds without expecting to pay a premium? Naughty
  • Are they rude to any member of your staff, from the janitor to the president? Very naughty
  • Is their business growing or changing in a way that positively affects your relationship with them? Nice
  • Do they always act as if they’re your only customer in the world and, consequently, treats you like they’re doing you a favor (this is different than making a customer feel like they’re your only customer… that’s called excellent customer service)? Naughty
  • Do they offer referrals to you? Very nice
  • Are they somebody you would consider having dinner or drinks with… without discussing any business? Nice

One Moore Thing: Once you create the list, you have two options of what to do with the naughty list: you can either dump your naughty clients or focus on working with them to become nice. Either way, you have to make a change, because life is too short to be dealing with people on the naughty list.

 

Filed Under: Relationships, Sales

Sell Like Santa — Part 1 of 2 — #206

December 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Santa’s #1

We all know the song: He’s making a list, checking it twice. Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. Santa Claus is coming to town… 

(If you’re like me, you can’t even read those words without singing it in your head. Of course, if you’re like me, nobody wants to hear you singing outside of your head.)

According to legend, Santa starts off his sales year by making a list and checking it twice. If it works for one of the most recognizable marketers in the world, it can work for you. Make a list of all your actions and see if those actions are actually bringing in business or just wasting time. According to several bodies of research, the average salesperson spends less than 10% of their time selling, which leaves 90% of their time for other sales-related functions. Simply doubling that number to 20% could double your income.

One Moore Thing: Track all your activities for a week. They should fall roughly into the categories of prospecting, customer meeting, proposal development, closing, and follow up. Those actions should make up 80% of your time with the remaining 20% dedicated to learning and miscellaneous tasks.

Track those actions for a week and you’ll be surprised at how much time you’re wasting and how much money you’re missing out on.

If you’re looking for Part 2 of this post, you can find it here.

Filed Under: Feature Post, Motivation, Sales

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

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

Do You Have Vision? #201

September 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Success requires vision

You’ve probably never heard of Erik Weihenmayer. He was the first blind person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the world’s tallest mountain. He no doubt envisioned himself scaling the mountain hundreds of times, feeling every foothold. Even thought Weihenmayer had no sight, he was able to climb the mountain because he had vision.

Prior to your next customer presentation, visualize yourself in the environment:

  • What will you be wearing?
  • How will you introduce yourself?
  • Where will you sit at the table?
  • How hot or cold will the room be?
  • How will you sit in your chair?
  • What questions will you be asking?
  • What are all their potential answers to your questions?
  • How will you end the meeting with a positive next step?

By visualizing yourself in a given environment, your brain will believe you have already been in this situation and you’ll be less nervous and more in control of the meeting. The more times you visualize yourself going through the presentation, the better your results will be.

One Moore Thing: If you aren’t happy with your current situation, stop seeing things for what they are and instead envision things as they could be.

Filed Under: Feature Post, Motivation, Prospecting, Sales
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