Making a product is just an activity, making a profit on a product is the achievement.
Marketing and promoting doesn’t come down to the likes, the pins, the plus ones, the followers, the fans, the friends, the views, or the plays online. Marketing and promoting comes down to the conversions.
Subliminal influence, is the constant drive to the change in consumer choices.
Marketing is so powerful that it can make even an extremely untalented musician a one-hundred-hits wonder.
In the end, every startup is different. But in the beginning every startup is the same.
Feedback doesn’t tell you about yourself. It tells you about the person giving the feedback. In other words, if someone says your work is gorgeous, that just tells you about *their* taste. If you put out a new product and it doesn’t sell at all, that tells you something about what your audience does and doesn’t want. When we look at praise and criticism as information about the people giving it, we tend to get really curious about the feedback, rather than dejected or defensive.
When your pipeline is full – with business coming out of your ears – the notion of people asking for a discount will sound hilarious, because you’ll already be at capacity
We all need salespeople who help people with the same enthusiasm shown by a small child describing the best Christmas present EVER
Get up in the morning on a mission to save prospective clients from the shabby, ill-fitting, overpriced and worthless alternatives that those charlatans - who are your competition - are trying to get away with flogging them.
The salesperson you’d ideally like to be and the salesperson you’d like to encounter as a customer should roughly be the same, shouldn’t they?
Salespeople who think that it’s all about price aren’t required: If it can be sold on the internet at the lowest price, you can take the huge cost of a sales team out of the equation.
We all need salespeople who understand the problem and can deliver a solution that works brilliantly for both sides.
We all need salespeople who deliver value that wasn’t there before they arrived.
I can’t and won’t promise you magic sales fairy dust or the Jedi Mind Trick for salespeople – they simply don’t exist.
Remember: when you walk into a DIY store to buy a drill, you don’t want the drill. Your end goal is to make a hole and, in order to achieve this, you have to buy the drill.
Your target market are more bothered about whether what you sell will get them promoted, sacked, recognised, accepted, praised or laid.
Don’t tell me you’re passionate about your job – show me that you’re passionate about helping people like me.
If what you sell doesn’t help me then why are you knocking on my door?
We all need salespeople with humility, honesty, integrity, empathy and an old-fashioned work ethic that ensures the job gets done.
Ignore the people who say that the sales industry needs to become professionalised: it already has.
For all salespeople - Driving around and talking to people for a living, with no recognisable return for the time or money spent by your employer - is a job description that belongs in the past.
If you sound like a contestant from The Apprentice or if the customer believes that they are being sold AT, you have already failed.
Every deal can be closed. Every prospect can become a buyer. Every no can turn into a yes. In any market. In any economy. There is always an angle. There is always another attempt. There is no law against how much you can prospect, or how many times you can try to close a deal. There are more than enough ideas and millions of resources and billions of people out there to make any dream that you want, a reality. The only mental chain that will ever imprison you in a life of scarcity, is a belief that there is not enough, or that there is not a way to make what you want possible. This chapter is going to awaken and stir up a monster of influence and achievement inside you. This monster works by being totally aware of all the resources that you have at your disposal, and not being afraid to any means to influence. ”Excerpt From: “Unlimited Influence: Sell Any Idea One On One - Chapter: Gun To Your Head
Your level of audacity affects how well they perceive your idea. Audacity in asking means that you ask for what you actually want. When you are in the heat of the conversation, and things are getting real, and the yes and no affects your bank account, you will sometimes feel a temptation to be safe, rather than... sorry. What a bullshit phrase, by the way. I’d rather die in the pursuit of my peak potential, than live forever in a mediocre, average way.”Excerpt From: “Unlimited Influence: Sell Any Idea One On One.
You truly help people with the things that you sell. Once you are aware of that vital piece of information every demonstration, every presentation, every transaction will be delivered with a light shining from your heart. From your heart will shine a beacon that tells all prospects you can truly help and that that is your sole purpose for being there.
At the heart of all sales and marketing is the ability to create demand even in the absence of logic.
Listen to people from your heart, as if your life depended on it, and you will find that in turn people will listen to you with all of theirs.
The choices you make from this day forward will lead you, step by step, to the future you deserve.
Spend your time designing the greatest reputation a man could possess.
What you deserve will be down to you, and you alone.
Destiny and fate are of one’s own making, and riches and happiness are rarely found at the end of an easily-traversed path.
Make sure everyone, who works with you or for you, feels the need to tell others about the incredible experience.
Adopt the positive in everything you do, for there will always be positivity there to find, if that is what you seek.
That which is currently beyond your capabilities now, does not have to be so forever
My intention was, only, ever to help you see the light shining brightly in front, and inside, of you.
Tell your good news as an evangelist would. Do so with a passion driven by a need to help and solve problems that some people didn’t even know they had.
Embrace the fundamentals like the closest of friends, for they will be the foundation of your future success.
Whilst people have answered questions, I have only heard my own voice thinking of the next question.
I was so sure that I knew what they needed and what I wanted to sell them that I never stopped long enough to find out what it was they wanted to buy.
In this world of half-jobs and liars, I will prevail.
I have discovered fallen trees across my path and have possessed neither the strength to move them nor the patience or tenacity to find an alternative way round. I have simply returned to where I came from, and told myself there had been no other choice.
Finding happiness by delivering it.
Everything would have been for nothing just because I simply didn’t listen.
I should become happier at what I do and leave others happier than before they’d met me.
Speaking from the heart is simple. Listening wholeheartedly, however, is much, much more difficult and most rare.
You must have realised by now that when one really cares, really tries to help, the other party recognises the fact and, therefore, easily sees the logic in working together for the greater good, for the mutual benefit of both.
You’ve got to be driven to become successful.
What is the true cost of a purchasing decision that goes wrong?
In the past, I have all too often listened without hearing, asking questions when I had no intention of hearing the answer or understand my customer’s requirements.
Like an ant, I will find my way round any obstacle. Like a child, I will persevere with pinpoint focus.
I will not let those, who cannot recognise how I can be of service, dissuade me from showing them how I can help.
I will look the part. I will act the part. I will deliver that which I have promised to deliver.
Like the evangelist, I will shine with the light I have been shown, recognise that I have the ultimate solution for all my prospects, nurture that feeling deep within, and repeat the words to myself every day, until there is no doubt in my mind that keeping such good news hidden would be the very worst type of sin.
I will design myself a reputation, in which prospects can place their trust, and customers return to and recommend.
I will design my reputation and my resolve shall be absolute. I shall not give in when I know I can help.
It saddens me to note that there will always be con artists and charlatans in the world. Men who aim to fool the public by clothing themselves in the robes of experts.
Listening is a discipline. It’s all about being present at that moment in time.
I want you to start realising how far away you are from being able to listen professionally.
You listen like an amateur and fool yourself into believing it is enough when it is not.
Sceptics are persuaded by a good reputation, for it is an unspoken statement of proof.
Reputation is the panacea for those who lack confidence in their own decisions.
How we feel about those we give our business to is of vital importance.
Who would be willing to put up with less than the desired result, if they could afford to have it done properly?
The confidence felt, when dealing with genuine reputation, often outweighs the simplicity of price.
In the past, I have bargained myself away, believing that price was more important than cost, quality, reliability, or reputation. In the past, I was clearly wrong.
I need a first-class reputation
In this world there are those who enjoy giving people balloons and there are those who take great pleasure in popping them. And I wish to be remembered as being firmly in the first party.
Most men have professions, yet few act like professionals.
If you woke before dawn one morning with the formula for a vaccine, which would cure the most ghastly disease currently known to man, releasing millions from an agonising death, would you roll over and resume sleeping until daylight?
There can be no success in sales without tenacity.
Seeking those elusive individuals is like mining for rare gems. It will take hard work, patience, and a persistent attitude. To find that rich seam of colourful stones, you will have to chip through dirt and rock. You will have to learn how to hold rubble in your hands and see the fortune inside.
It is your duty to save these prospects from that disappointment. Every potential customer, who misses out on what you have to offer, due to your lack of zeal or passion, every prospect who ends up with an excuse of an alternative from your lacklustre competition, should rest heavy on your conscience.
Mark my words. Perception is reality and how someone perceives you is their reality.
Let your customers and prospects recommend you to each other and let you competition wish they were you. That is our mission.
Sometimes, if you get too close to a subject you can miss what’s most important.
You look green, immature. A young boy playing at business, dressing up in the manner in which he believes an actual grown-up would. Your viewpoint of business attire is one of wide-eyed wonder from the nursery door.
Perception number one, how you want people to think about you when you arrive and perception number two, how you want them to talk about you once you have left.
In short, the difference between you and your doctor is that he has a well-designed reputation and you do not.
If your doctor told you that you needed immediate surgery could you perform it yourself?
Trust me. In a very short time, you will become sought out by those in your network. Initially for your sound advice, but soon after as a provider of service. Few people seek advice about a subject that doesn’t require a solution.
Each step of your current journey will take you to new and interesting worlds of opportunity and as every intrepid explorer knows, when one visits strange new lands one must be aware of their customs.
You will never change a prospective customer’s mind, my boy. There is a chance that he might make a new decision if enough reliable evidence comes his way, but to do that he has to want to listen - to hear it - and that requires trust and respect.
Young man, your problem and the reason so many like you fail, is simply because you allow yourself to give up far too early.
Fascinatingly resilient the tenacity of a child. Not yet conditioned by society to give up when instructed to do so.
We must design how we wish to be perceived, and then we must work even harder to continuously recreate and re-evaluate that perception.
Where he comes from, the education he has received, his family history, his wealth, they matter not a jot, but the perception he conveys - that my, boy, is the key. If they believe he belongs - that he is part of the room - then he does, he is. And whichever room he is about to step into, then that is who he must become.
If you honestly know how you help people, then you should become passionate about sharing it, spread the good news, give everyone a chance to share in the solutions that you can provide.
From today onward, you will learn how to become evangelical about the many ways you help people.
His belief is so passionate that it fills him with the burning desire to share his fabulous news with anyone who will listen. He is concerned that it is us that might be missing out, not him. His faith in a single road to salvation and paradise is so intense, that it would be ungodly not to share the good news with all those who are not aware.
This is how you must be. You must become as evangelical about your promised outcome as he is about his. You must believe that you, and you alone, have the solution to your prospects problems. Even if they do not recognise those problems themselves.
Think upon the numbers I have been sharing with you. Of your competitors, five out of ten will do little more than take their customer's money immorally. A further three out of ten will leave them dissatisfied.
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You should feel so driven to help the world that it would weigh you down if a single person received anything but the best.
A gentleman of ambition is aware of the people he wishes to be associated with both socially and commercially. He knows that moving through different levels of society is akin to stepping through different rooms in an enormous house, each door leading to a grander environment than the last. He may, of course, settle for the comfort of any room he reaches. Alternatively, he may continue through successive doors to surround himself with even greater fineries and riches.
And so it must be with the energy you muster for your own work. Get out there and convert the unconverted. Save them all from the charlatans and the nearly-men.
Understand why you are different and how you help, recognise your target market, and give them something they might not even realise they are missing.
It has nothing to do with the time being right or wrong. Storms just happen.
The only time you have is the where and when of right now. There will always be good times, bad times, hard times, and complete disasters. However, there is no other option but to be where you are, when you are. That is a universal truth for everyone. The important thing is how you respond, what you decide to do, and when you decide to do it.
You can’t plough a field by turning it over in your mind. Either you get out there and plough it or it doesn’t get done.
Plans are easy to make, dreams are easy to dream. But putting your back into it? A little bit of hard graft and discipline? That is just too scary and far too much effort for the masses
Ready? No one is ever ready, my boy. But some do what they plan to do and some never will. The difference between the two is that the first group understand that they need to start somewhere, so they do so. Straight away
And by making that plan you have differentiated yourself from more than ninety percent of the population. You are one of the few, who has a clear direction, a decisive plan of action.
Sometime in the future, when business slumps and there appears to be no solution in sight, you will hear others moaning about and blaming the things that are completely out of their control, wasting hour after hour on elements, which cannot be changed. Meanwhile, you, my boy, you will be focusing your efforts on the only thing that matters. The response which ensures you reach your destination.
You see continuous movement is the important thing here. Those who remain in one position and then lie to themselves about their progress are the ones in real trouble.
You may have an overall target to achieve with each prospect, but if you are going to have an ideal outcome for each call, should you not also have a tolerable outcome to fall back on? Something you are willing to put up with if things don't go completely to plan, but something that still moves things forward ever so slightly?
Currently, you are approaching each opportunity with a single possible outcome and when that doesn't happen you fool yourself that there was nothing more that you could have done.
The future is a fabulous place to bury your success.
Don't allow your imagination to colour events as lesser men would, and see movement in motionless things.
All these ships are currently safe at anchor but that is not what they were designed for is it? Your job is not to remain anchored and safe. Your job is to move closer to your destination at every attempt.
When things get tough, remember this mariner’s star. Bring to mind that everything external is designed as a challenge. A test sent to ensure you are actually worthy of acquiring your goal and reward. Recognise them as such and you will always find a way to go through, go round, or ignore them as required.
Until you take the first step forward, failure remains reassuringly impossible.
No one can mock your meagre achievements or inability to accomplish the simplest of tasks, if they remain figments of your imagination. You can revel, again and again, in the glory of a fairy tale doomed never to appear in reality.
As soon as I can find the courage to put my plans to action, I will turn from being a “maybe man” into someone whose future success lies completely in his own hands.
Falling has become far more terrifying to me than rising.
Dreaming and becoming are completely separate parts of the process. However, they are both as important as each other. Never discount how powerful your dreams are. If you cannot visualise what it is you wish to become, then the brain doesn’t have the first clue how to get you there.
The vast majority of the populace would never think of setting themselves any deadlines for the achievement of their dreams. They may have a vague notion they will get older and that one day they will probably die, but it all seems a long way away, and tomorrow will bring its own share of problems and pressing issues to fill their time.
Simeon had to agree that his future plans, although quite grand, were like pictures painted in fog. Nothing he could put his finger on. No dream ever remained unchanged long enough to take on any weight or substance, just a notion of something better waiting for him somewhere in the future.
Success does not judge one man for being worthy above another. Success doesn’t choose you because of your family name or existing wealth.Success is taken by the man, who has made himself ready for its arrival. And although I am not there yet, I have come to this place to become such a man.
I now know that success can not choose me. It is waiting on a path that I must walk. In truth, it waits there for everyone.Many do not know where the path begins. Some search for a shortcut to the end. But the majority of the world does not even realise there is a path there at all.I have been shown the start of that path and I am ready.
Well, at the risk of sounding a bit harsh…I think we can safely say that your recent successes could have just as easily been achieved by a mute monkey in a tiny business suit, holding up a written explanation of whatever it was the monkey was attempting to sell
It has been my experience that around half of those offering a product or service, in every line of business, are quite utterly useless. Some of them actually bordering on criminal. The remainder are split between two camps, the acceptable and the exceptional. Unfortunately for the average man on the street, it is incredibly difficult to recognise which is which
Obvious? Possibly. Sometimes, common sense is only obvious once you have been shown it to be so. Only after a shortcut has been revealed is it an obvious time saver. Before that, it had remained completely unknown to everyone but the enlightened. You can’t know what you don’t know and, therefore, never seek anyone’s tutorage of the subject
I'll make a book on learning how to be a complete moron someday, and I'm sure no one will buy it, because everyone will have mastered that already by the time I gather enough moronism to process it into digestible upgrade instructions for your average village cyborg-idiot.
Think about it: if someone had found a way to manipulate human choice and free will – if someone actually had that kind of power – wouldn’t it be a tad surprising if they then decided to share their secret with the masses in a book for $20? Not to mention how it would be just very slightly unethical.
RULE #1Market your business to the customer YOU WANT.Most beauty businesses try to be everything to everyone. It's exhausting and expensive promoting yourself to everyone. Most people simply give up.Focus on the customers you really want. What is your passion, what do you excel in? Who is your ideal customer? What would you ideally like to do every day in your business?Focus on what you want to do and the clients you want, and market directly to them and only them.
Why do customers (and that includes you and me) find it so difficult to recall more than a couple of occasions when they felt that they were treated exceptionally by the salespeople who dealt with them?
The typical industry approach is [retailers] to treat vendors like the enemy... If vendors can't make a profit then they don't have money to invest in research and development, which in turn means that the products they bring to the market will be less inspiring to customers, which in turn detriments the retailer's business because customers aren't inspired to buy. People want to cut costs and negotiate aggressively because there's a limited amount of profit to be shared by both sides. As a result of this "death spiral", most retailers fail.
I now know that success can not choose me. It is waiting on a path that I must walk. In truth, it waits there for everyone. Many do not know where the path begins. Some search for a shortcut to the end. But the majority of the world does not even realise there is a path there at all.
No longer will I measure myself against competitors, who don’t even know that a race is being run. From now on, I will measure myself against the man in front of me. I will measure myself against a new personal best, achieving my next ambitious goal.
Sales is a constant state of information gathering and analysis. There are numerous factors that will affect your sale – from market position, to manufacturing capacity, to a seemingly harmless tidbit of information received over lunch. The more quality information you have, the better your analysis, and the better your sales results will be.
In days long past, Jarod said he’d write a sentence about my love, translated in Russian, and that sentence, like my love, is clearly not for sale, unlike his virginity, or this book, which I’m both offering at ten times the market value, so hurry up and buy now, before it goes down.
They all call me "Excuse me," even though my nametag clearly says "Jordan." It's like people don't actually exist while they're working. Workers are just tools who aren't supposed to have feelings or personalities. You don't become human until your shift is over. Until then, we're all just zombies. We're dead to the world: infected people who need to be avoided, unless, of course, someone needs to know where the paintbrushes are located.
I wonder how Japan's futuristic robot doctors will treat the worst and most widespread disease humanity already has - artificially lowered IQ. Making people stupider makes them buy more stuff – so “How many robots can you afford?” will be the big question of one of the following decades, unless we go back to Communism and produce everything for the sake of it, for free.
you truly help people with the things that you sell. Once you are aware of that vital piece of information every demonstration, every presentation, everytransaction will be delivered with a light shining from your heart. From your heart will shine a beacon that tells all prospects you can truly help and that that is your sole purpose for being there
Do billboard salesmen record their sales on charts? If so, who's at the top of the billboard charts for billboard sales?
Marcus Brutus was the original tragic hero of the play ‘Julius Caesar’, Aditya concluded. Perhaps, Shakespeare should have named his play ‘Marcus Brutus’. But then again, it all must have boiled down to saleability and marketing; Julius Caesar being the more famous and thus bankable name. Ironical it was, Aditya smiled. The same Shakespeare had once said-‘What’s in a name...
What he wasn't so good at was manipulating the internal states of other humans, getting them to see things his way, do things for him. His baseline attitude toward other humans wass that they could all just go fuck themselves and that he was not going to expend any effort whatsoever getting them to change the way they thought. This was probably rooted in a belief that hed been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood.
What we're now starting to see, as online retailers begin to capitalize on their extraordinary economic efficiences, is the shape of a massive mountain of choice emerging where before there was just a peak.... By necessity, the conomics of traditional, hit-driven retail limit choice. When you dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. This is not just a quantiative change, but a qualitative one, too. Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for noncommercial content. Then, as demand shifts toward the niches, the economics of provided them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries - and the culture - for decades to come.
In fact, as these companies offered more and more (simply because they could), they found that demand actually followed supply. The act of vastly increasing choice seemed to unlock demand for that choice. Whether it was latent demand for niche goods that was already there or a creation of new demand, we don't yet know. But what we do know is that the companies for which we have the most complete data - netflix, Amazon, Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. in other words, the fastest-growing part of their businesses is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all. These infinite-shelf-space businesses have effectively learned a lesson in new math: A very, very big number (the products in the Tail) multiplied by a relatives small number (the sales of each) is still equal to a very, very big number. And, again, that very, very big number is only getting bigger. What's more, these millions of fringe sales are an efficient, cost-effective business. With no shelf space to pay for - and in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees - a niche product sold is just another sale, with the same (or better) margins as a hit. For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.
What Vann-Adibe had discobered was that the aggregate market for niche music was huge, and effectively unbounded. He called this the '98 Percent Rule.' As he later put it to me, "In a wordl of almost zero packaging costs and instant access to almost all ocntent in this format, consumers exhibit consistent behavior: They look at almost everything. I believe that this requires major changes by the content producers - I'm just not sure what changes!"... Everywhere I went the story was the same: Hits are great, but niches are emerging as the big new market. The 98 Percent Rule turned out to be nearly universal. Apple said that every one of the then 1 million tracks on iTues had sold at least once (now its inventory is twice that). Netflix reckoned that 95% of its 25,000 DVDs (that's now 90,000) rented at least once a quarter. Amazon didn't give out an exact number, but independent academic research on its book sales suggested that 98 percent of its top 100,00 books sold at least once a quarter, too.
There's a value in that space - rent, overhead, staffing costs, etc. - that has to be paid back by a certain number of inventory turns per month. In other words, the onesies and twosies waste space. However, when that space doesn't cost anything, suddenly you can look at those infrequent sellers again, and they begin to have value. This was the insight that led to Amazon, Netflix, and all the other companies I was talking to.
The three main observactions - (1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; (2) it's now within reach economically; (3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market - seemed indisputable, especially baked up with heretofore unseen data.
What people intuitively grasped was the new efficiences in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing were changing the definition of what was commercially viable across the board. The best way to describe these forces is that they are turning unprofitable customers, products, and markets into profitable ones. Although this phenomenon is most obvious in entertainment and media, it's an easy leap to eBay to see it at work more broadly, from cars to crafts. Seen broadly, it's clear that the story of the Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance - what happens when the bottlenecks and stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone.
... the emerging digital entertainment economy is going to be radically different from today's mass market. If the twentieth-century entertainment industry was about hits, the twenty-first will be equally about niches. For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator far, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution.
If you have half a nothing - sell it for a double something, resell half at double-price, and buy another something and a half - how much nothing will you have two days from then? Like three. Because three is the short version of π, and π is involved in virtually anything, in some form, if you believe what the internet tells you.
I call these lessons ‘learned on the fly’ because the knowledge gained from the experiences connected with them were very much akin to the spirit of the centerfielder in baseball running backward at full speed, looking towards the heavens, trying to not lose sight of the ball or fail to notice the sensation of gravel from the warning track under his cleats as he knowingly approaches the blindside impact of an outfield wall. His focused intention guides him into trying to make the catch that will save the game for his team, his city and the harmony of the moment, despite the foreboding threat of a pending collision. Decisions in these situations are made in an instant. One weighs the purpose of the game, the success of the catch and one’s own safety of survival in a fleeting moment, and in all hopes one lives to tell about it in the glow of great success.
Over the years since that time I seemed to fall back into sales as a mainstay of existence of some kind, and I have learned many valuable lessons along the way. It has not always been rainbows and sunshine, but I have tried to gain knowledge from every experience along the journey. There have been many, many great moments; far too many to recount in one sitting. It is the great moments that outweigh the others.
Buying & selling is not a process, but a story, the base of this story is “need”. Need arising out of necessity or a feeling to own / experience that product / service. The customer narrates the base (need) of the story, but how well the story develops is left to the storytelling (sales pitch) skills of salesperson, sometimes the storytelling leaves such an impression that the customer has no choice but to be a part of that story.
Relations be it personal or with customers are very sensitive in nature, If you only remember people in time of your need, they will surely not return the favor, instead their favor will benefit someone who often keeps in touch without any visible benefits. The relationship will last longer if we start earning it & not take it for granted.
When people stop buying from us, do not blame the market conditions straightaway, we must first analyze a change in the buying behavior due to market conditions, maybe the luxury / exposure is not part of their wish list, maybe they only “buy” strictly out of need, and what they need is fulfillment of their need in a cost-effective way.
When we talk about smart selling, it’s not exclusive, anyone can be better at smart selling, if only we come out of self-illusion zone created due to a successful month-end scorecard, we fail the minute we start paying more attention to successful sales campaigns while ignoring the unsuccessful ones. Sometimes things do fall into our nets, but smart selling is all about paying equal attention to things which escaped the net.
Habits are nothing but a form of performing work with some satisfaction... We allow them to persist by being content with the outcome they provide. It's fine in some cases, but it becomes a disaster when it gets involved with our sales approach. We continue following the same approach despite not getting favorable results, eventually we accept the outcome so much that realization of becoming habitual losers becomes another habit.
How cold or warm are your calls can be best judged by the call duration and the number of questions you ended-up answering, and if the clients aren’t responding to follow-up calls, one of the reasons could be that they didn’t like “what & how it was said”, rejections teach if we start looking at the basic part of human behavior - we don’t talk to people if the talk doesn’t interest us.
We start under-estimating our capabilities, when we start repeating the failure reasons given by others to justify their lack of effort. “Market is very slow” is one common reason. The market never stops moving it only changes its pace from time to time, & we fail because of our inability to read the pace of the market.
Sales business is funny, despite the target stress running in the back of our mind, we still chose & approach the clients to avoid rejection, we learn to live with the stress but we can’t learn to live with the rejection, which is the part & parcel of the sales process. To survive, we must act like a non-swimmer in the water, how the fear of drowning makes them hold on to anything in sight? In order to survive keep an open approach, don’t just wait for the rope of your perceptions to get pulled out.
Are you failing in sales? Are you not able to meet your targets on a regular basis? Do you easily get tired of trying? Do you want to be better than your team members? Don't worry! Try our magic potion: Add some drops of Focus (follow successful team members), some drops of listening (listen properly to customers), some drops of learning (be open to suggestions) & some drops of confidence, now mix it with a never-give-up approach, & finally garnish it with a pinch of confidence. Remember this potion works only if taken with a dose of belief.
For a batsman or a bowler, the job never ends at just batting & bowling, it continues with switching the positions in time of need, the stand out players never limit themselves to their primary role but change their style of play as per the happenings in the game. Anyone can hold a bat or ball in their hand, only thing matters is how well you use these things to make your team win. Similarly, as a Salesperson - your job is not only to think as a salesperson, but also as a client, and sometimes also to make an unfavorable situation favorable by planting an idea in a client's mind & creating a need.
The quality of the problem that is found is a forerunner of the quality of the solution that is attained. It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship, that often sets the creative person apart from others in his field.
His baseline attitude toward humans was that they could all just go fuck themselves and that he was not going to expend any effort whatsoever getting them to change the way they thought. This was probably rooted in the belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and there was no point in arguing about anything that would be so observed and so understood. As long as you made a point of hanging out exclusively with people who had the wit to see and understand that objective reality, you didn't have to waste a lot of time talking. When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows. It wasn't necessary to have a meeting about it. The sales force didn't need to get involved......It was time, in other words, to call out the sales force, take Jones to lunch, begin gardening personal contacts, shape his perception of the competitive landscape. Forge a partnership. Exactly the kind of work from which Richard had always found some way to excuse himself, even when large amounts of money were at stake. Yet now his life was at stake, and no one was around to help him, and he still wasn't doing it. He simply couldn't get past his conviction that Jones could go fuck himself and that he wasn't going to angle and scheme and maneuver for Jones' sake.
Give me a person who sincerely wants to commit themselves to being a salesperson, and put them on my team and I will give you a hero. That has always been my mindset as a sales manager, whenever I have been in that position. I believe in people, and I seek to encourage them to perform at their best.
However, more important to all of that: the players played the game as a true team. There are many teams in baseball, but not all play as a team. Many merely play as a group of talented athletes, which is a huge difference over the course of a long season.
Is the competition really some mythical beast? No, not really. Knowing how to play your group of salespeople as a team, to overcome the group objective of winning the customers support, is the objective. The opposing team in proper viewpoint is not just the similar competing business to yours. Nor is it the competing franchises of your home office.No, in order to really be effective in the market place as a surviving business, you must go beyond that philosophy. You must be willing to expand your viewpoint to fully understand who the competition truly is. Your true competition is simply this: Anywhere that your customer would spend his or her dollars as opposed to spending them at your company or place of business.
Have you ever seen someone buy a piece of furniture or clothing from New York, Chicago or London? Even though the exact same product was available right down the street at a local retailer for a fraction of the cost? This kind of phenomenon is referred to as ‘The expert from afar’ enticement that enraptures the naïve with the idea that things distant and far removed have more value because of the popularity of their location or the pedigree of the presenter. They often neglect to seek resources locally that offer the same product or practical wisdom, and do not employ the benefits of direct first hand observation to test the efficacy of what can be found close by within arm’s length. Instead they venture afar without looking at what is often right in front of them, invisible because of proximity.However, invisibility has its own value too. It allows one to carry on unnoticed, and go merrily about your own successful way.
History's peddler, chapman, drummer, canvasser, commercial traveler, hawker, and packman may be gone from our roadways. But their indomitable spirit and unflagging optimism, along with an understanding of human nature, will endure in each of us who choose to follow their lead.
The starting point for ‘discounts’ may be the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), an arbitrarily high price that no one will ever pay. By crossing out the high MSRP, retailers are handing shoppers a psychological victory that will make them feel good about the purchase, even if the discounted price is still expensive.