Differentiation

When it came time to learn how to ride a bicycle, how many of you went to Bicycle 101 before taking off on your first venture?  You can Google ‘how to ride a bicycle’ today and find lots of information but back in my day you got on the bike and rolled the dice. I doubt it is different for folks today. Even with Internet links or good advice from parents or loved ones, you don’t really know the ‘how-to’ of cycling until you get on and shove off. Once you’ve paid your dues, then and only then do you know how to ride a bicycle. It is no longer ‘explicit’ information on a written page or computer screen. What you have now is tacit knowing. You have experience.

These are difficult times we’re going through. As is true for all economic downturns, fear and uncertainty creep into our lives. In the time it took to write this article, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell 100 points. What we’re experiencing today is not unprecedented. I went through Black Monday (October 19, 1987) as a stock broker. The DJIA fell 508 points. Stock markets around the world plummeted. It was a terrible bloodletting.

I had an experience last week that shines a bright light on inexperience. We all have to start someplace as sales people. Most often we start with minimal training, minimal product knowledge, a desk, and a telephone. It’s the ‘baptism by fire’ approach. We flounder until we gain enough experience to be reasonably successful. The quotas and expectations are high and the success rate is low. This is a pretty brutal but common path to sales proficiency. We get beat up, our confidence suffers, and not many of us make it. The first months or years are tough. If it is difficult on us personally, it is no less difficult for our prospects and customers. They get beat up as well while we flounder. Carnage is obvious on both sides of the relationship.

In my last blog I talked about how crucial it is to have an opening statement that is compelling, that will engage your client or prospect. The open-ended question is a very effective tool for drawing out valuable information that helps you understand your existing or prospective clients.  A litany of closed questions will typically do the opposite. They result in ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers, which bring a hasty end to the conversation. Closed questions are not to be avoided. They are just as effective as open-ended questions but you have to know the right time and place to use them.

You are in the middle of something important, the telephone rings, you have to drop what you’re doing, only to find that it’s a salesperson. This is one of those types that wedge their foot in the door and won’t give you a chance to push it back out. Some of you will be reluctantly patient with them and perhaps most will have little or no tolerance for being flogged.

I’m hearing more and more proponents these days of the belief that cold calling is dead. A host of modern-day teachers and guru’s are preaching that prospecting via the telephone is an old ‘technology’ and should be discarded in favor of email and other modes of more indirect, and perhaps safer, communication. The validity of their claims has yet to be proven.

Referrals can be one of the easiest paths to more appointments and sales. ‘Can be’ is the pivotal term in this equation. For some of you, the ease with which you ask for and receive a referral depends on the relationship you have developed with your client or prospect. For the rest of you, asking for referrals is uncomfortable regardless of the relationship you have with the folks you talk to.

I’ve focused recently on the importance of changing the legacy that the sales profession, in whatever form it has taken, has passed down to us. I was going to shift gears a bit this week but after a recent conversation with an upper level manager about training materials and sales philosophy, I’m going to give it one more shot. Keep in mind this person was not an employee of an obscure company holding onto the last of the old-school sales ideologies. He was in a promient and influencial position in a leading corporation. The teachings of the old school are alive and well. This corporation is propagating the same techniques and tactics to their producers that brought us the legacy I’ve spoken about in the last few articles. It is the one where sales people are some of the most avoided and disliked of all professional people. I’ve borrowed a piece from You Tube to illustrate my point. I’ve provided a link to it in this article. Someone once said a picture is worth a thousand words. This is so very true about this video as well.

We live in a time that is increasingly impersonal. Much is said about customer service and many millions of dollars are spent on customer relations training. It is not difficult to see that corporations are playing lip service to the value and importance of good customer service. The airline industry, one that the world depends heavily on, is plagued by insensitivity to the people they serve. Their financial statements lately may very well reflect this attitude. Why has something so simple eluded us? Why has the fast pace of business, the pressure of quotas and sales statistics, and intense competition taken a front seat to the simple task of doing good things for your customers? This story of a small-time auto mechanic in rural Minnesota is a clear message that good, down-home, treating folks well is simple and it works.

My son Joshua has a 1974 bright orange VW bus. He was planning on traveling to Nashville to pursue his dream in music. I wanted to make sure everything was in working order for the trip. I was given a recommendation for a top-notch mechanic that works on classic VW’s. This guy was supposed to be one of the best in the city.