Keep Your Own Profits Satisfied and Your Customer Satisfied, in That Order

When it comes to genuine profit, it is a law of pure persistence. Persistence so pure, it has to be combined fully with patience. Sales comes down to a law of persistence and averages. The more you call, the more you will get, even if you have to repeat some, sort of like how George Herman "Babe" Ruth got his home run record while striking out the most in baseball. So, this article is about keeping the customer and your own profits rationally satisfied. In life, the best you can do is fail forward and succeed back. Now, what do I mean by "fail forward and succeed back"? Well, I mean this: Failing forward is to practice the law of persistence and adjustment until you do succeed. And succeeding back is simply doing what works and honing it consistently until you get consistently successful results.

Indeed, genuine profit comes through genuine persistence and rational adjustment. So, in this case, the only way to genuinely succeed consistently is to "succeed back". If "beginners luck" were the rule all the time, then we would have a sickeningly perfect world with no room for growth. Growth is the key to real wisdom and necessary, otherwise there would be no need for natural law or even time or even learning of any sort. In short, it would be an uninteresting world and a genuinely unprofitable world with this sort of certainty. Sure, this sort of certainty sounds desirable until put into practice, then you do see what I am writing about.

Integration and rational living is the key, along with persistence. A genuine quitter is a person who in many ways quits before they do succeed. A genuine quitter does believe in "beginners luck" and not success after persistence.

To define a winner, a consistent winner is a person with a genuine ability to assimilate, learn, "fail forward" and "succeed back", as I defined it in the first and second paragraphs. A genuine loser is a traditional quitter that does not persist no matter what to ultimate success. Like the man who lost the patent to the telephone because of the turn of a screw on the telephone to create a device to talk over long distances with and not sing over long distances with. My point is simple, success can happen at any time, all you have to do is persist well and honestly adjust your approach. This is not just the reality of the situation as I see it, this is how existence, success and the universe work. So, although I have keep the customer satisfied second, and keep your own profits satisfied first in my title, they both go equally hand in hand. You cannot have profits without good customers and you cannot have good profits without being willing to consistently do business honestly and persistently. Both things require bringing out the best in yourself and people, no matter what.

Sure, what I am saying has been said many ways and many times, but, what genuinely works is what genuinely works. As a law that never changes, but, it can always be indeed honed and bettered, always. When considering genuine winning, there is no mission that is impossible without genuine persistence. Anything rational can be genuinely done if a way is found to do it. That is the fact. In fact quitting is a mystical unreali6ty as proven by the body of this article, unless "genuinely" considering "beginners luck" and silly games like that. Sure the rational definition of luck could be preparation meeting opportunity. But the idea of "beginners luck" is the real irrationality, for it happens rarely because it violates natural law for the most part. Right down to winning a lottery instead of earning the equivalent money. Earned money always has more value no matter what could be said for "not putting out the effort". After all most unearned money drains away and is quickly spent like water through a drain running without being used when considering the history of most people that do win lotteries. What is earned is generally taken care of better. It is as simple as that.

So, to end this article to keep your profits and the customer satisfied, persistence and effort is always required. Without exception we see this in all successful businesses, even those that do "have beginners luck" in conducting. Because there are no exceptions to what invariably works.

The Importance of Pre-Sell Preparation

You will find it is not sufficient to sell yourself on the value of your product just once. For a time at least, you should sell yourself every time before you approach a customer, whether it is on the internet or in person. The large number of objections that will be made to your goods by customers will have a tendency to put your mind in a negative state about the quality of your product. So before ever speaking to a customer, review everything positive about your product and make sure YOU are sold on it.You must sell yourself over and over again, until you have a reservoir of positive facts about your product that is inexhaustible; until you have at least two or three answers to every objection a customer can make.

Constant study of your product will bring new points to mind. Jot these points down and use them in outlining your sales talk or webpage copy.

It will require all your ability to keep your mind positive. It will require all your memory-power to retain the positive facts concerning your goods. It will require all your imagination to generate the enthusiasm which is so necessary in selling a customer.

Think right thoughts and you will soon be a confident, aggressive, optimistic salesperson that no customer can withstand. As a matter of fact, no customer will want to turn you down if you are a high-grade salesperson, because everybody likes to add to the success of an already successful person by doing business with that person.

The biggest thing in the world is not financial success. It is in being a "real person" in every sense of the word. Although you may not fully realize the great importance of character and personality and education to success, you will find in your actual work that, other things being equal, the "real person" earns the biggest income.

When you think of selling a particular customer you should mentally go through the sale, and decide just what you intend to say and do during the sales talk. You should decide just how you are going to approach this particular customer, in view of what you know about them. You should select the points that will give this type of customer the best understanding of your goods. You should work out the appeals that you are going to make and use only those that will convince him he needs your product.

You should outline the suggestions and reasons why that will bring him to the decision. You should give most careful consideration to what you are going to say, and the particular thing or things you can do to close him on the spot.

Now you are wondering how you get information about the contact. That is really beyond the scope of this article, however when searching for leads, even on the internet, get as much information as possible and then use that to develop a picture of who you are dealing with. Obviously they are looking for something you are selling or they would not have submitted their information in the first place.

It is good to have a script, but do not read from it. Use it to practice what you will say until you have it cold. There is nothing worse for sales than a stuttering, bumbling sales person who appears clueless about the product. Remember that those highly successful infomercial people have scripts they have rehearsed over and over again just like an actor. Why? Because you ARE an actor/actress and you are trying to sell your product with your performance and knowledge.

Positive Thinking As an Aid in Creating Confidence During a Sale

Think you are going to win in every sale. The fact that you do not close each sale does not mean that you are a failure in that line, as it may only be necessary to close one or two sales a day in order that you may earn a good living. There are some high end stores where 1 sale a MONTH is considered a success.

But you are surely a lazy and inefficient salesperson if you do not work your line for all it is worth. A positive attitude of mind will keep you from becoming discouraged when business is apparently poor; and it will whet your appetite for more and still more business, when business is good.

When you think of a prospective customer as being willing to listen to what you have to say, your mental attitude and the radiation from your personality will be positive; and the customer will feel the influence when you go into his presence.

Remember this, however, that this attitude of mind must be reached during the pre-approach. It is largely the result of your investigation of the conditions that surround a customer and the facts that you have been able to learn about the customer himself.

Salespeople, as a class, have to work harder mentally to succeed than do many other classes of workers. It is right that this should be so. The reason is that salespeople deal with ideas, people, and things; while mechanical and inside employees deal mainly with things. It is much harder to handle people than things.

You may rightly estimate that the average working person uses about 20% of his/her energy in thinking and the balance in working. The salesperson, on the other hand, uses 20% of his/her energy in working and the balance in thinking. The average worker or mechanic soon becomes accustomed to handling his tools and very little creative thinking is required to do work in a creditable manner.

The salesperson, in order to do the most creditable work, must be educated in salesmanship, progressive, courageous; in fact, she/he must be able to overcome conditions where the average person would fail. It is not surprising then, that the salesperson must have some way to keep himself positive in mind, body and will. Regardless of conditions YOU CAN MAINTAIN A PROPER MENTAL ATTITUDE. You can master yourself and make sales even on off days. You can sell every customer you make up your mind to sell. It is even a good idea to take extra time in selling a hard customer, when you have it to spare, to convince yourself that any customer can be sold when the salesman wants to make the sale.

Think success thoughts. If you think of making sales, you will make them. You cannot think of making good and fail. You must succeed if you think success. If you believe in yourself, others must believe in you. If you believe in your own ability, you will prove you have it. You will perhaps try new tasks, and increase your power to do and to achieve.

Five Steps to Being Assertive So You Get Things Done Without Being Aggressive

She looked at me and said, "I'll do whatever it takes to make it right. What do you want me to do?" The right words but her hands were on her hips, her legs were spread apart and she was looking down her nose at me. Everything screamed, "Lady, you really are the problem. Just tell me what it takes to get rid of you." And everything in my body tightened for battle.

There is a distinct difference between being assertive and being aggressive. One can move you up the corporate ladder while the other can alienate you. Let's start by defining the two words. Assertive is putting forward positively and with confidence even in the face of adversity. Aggressive is putting forward in a combative readiness. Both are forceful only one does it by breaking you the other by working with you.

In the example above, the sales women's words were positive but her body language was combative and aggressive. Aggressive behavior will push people away or cause people to be defensive with you. You only want to resort to this behavior when you are pushed to the brink and you are willing to handle the consequences for that behavior.

The difficulty becomes in learning how to say what you mean and mean what you say without being mean. There will be times you will need to buck heads with people and times your point will not be the most favorable opinion in town. But it doesn't mean that those times need to be full armored confrontations. Instead you just need to learn how to assertively speak so people WANT to listen to you.

Follow these five quick steps to ensure that you get your point across without pain:

1. Know the outcome/result you want from this communication. This is the framework you want the listener to think in and it sets the tone for how you will phrase questions and present your ideas. This tells the other person exactly what you want from them and what they need to focus on during your discussion. Are you looking for an answer? Ideas? For them to buy? Think deeper. In a memo, this should be your headline. 90% of all people I work with never stop to think about what they really want from a discussion, they just assume the other person will think the same way they do.
2. Think about what objections or concerns others might have and address those upfront. You had better address these upfront. Trying to ignore them or breeze over them causes the other person to think, "yeah, but..." and you never get 100% of their attention. On top of that, their energy gets spent on refuting what you are saying instead of on helping you discover solutions. If you don't shatter those objections you will not shatter their resistance.
3. State the bottom line and address the concerns/objections you think might come up. What is the outcome you want? Give it straight out. This again helps them focus their attention.
4. Give supporting data/facts. You need to be able to support what you are saying with the whys.
5. Summary/call to action. Rephrase your original question and drive toward the outcome desired.

Here's is how it looks in action:

Situation: You have a new idea of how to turn call-in requests for bank CD rates into new customers. You believe this new system; although it will take extra time can generate 30% of new business for the bank.

Taking the situation through all five steps:

1. Outcome you want from this communication: You want the bank to take action on your idea of how to generate new business from call-ins.
2. What objections/concerns might they have? It is too difficult, it requires us to have more face to face appointments, it might cost us too much in people's time while it gets up and going, we have too much change already.
3. State the bottom line and answer objections: You say: "I have an idea of how we can generate some new business from our call in requests for CD pricing. My question is, what is the best way to get this idea implemented so people are excited about it? As you listen to this business idea you may be thinking, "we all have a lot on our plates right now, it sounds like work, will it really drive new business or how will it fit with all the change we have going on. I will address all of these issues and show how it can add an additional 30% to our bottom line."
4. Give supporting facts/data. Here you would explain the procedure that is followed right now for a call in, what you propose happens instead and how that will generate new business. For example, you might say, "Right now when a person calls in for a CD we quote them the rate, thank them for the call or maybe, ask if they want to talk with a bank officer. I recommend we have them immediately transfer the person to a loan officer who will say, "in order to make sure that we recommend the best option for you, can you please share with me the following information." And he/she will ask the following three questions...
5. Summary/call to action. So based on what you heard, what is the best way for us to implement this new strategy and get everyone on board?

Pay attention to your last question because it sets the tone for the next discussion. If I had ended the presentation with "based on what you heard, can we get this up and going?" I would be openly asking for people to agree or disagree with what I said and I would have moved myself to a defensive position rather than an offensive position.

Science Before Art - The Science and Art of Selling and Sales

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

- Henry Ward Beecher

Do you know someone who has made an art out of cooking? Do you know someone who conjures up the most magnificent dishes by tossing together "a little bit of this, and a little bit of that"?

My grandmother would bake exquisitely by touch. No recipe required, just a taste and touch here and there. Yet even without a formal process her baked goodies were always consistent, down to the last crumb. Her chocolate chiffon and baked cheese cake were works of art.

There was a time however, when she was taught to bake by following a recipe. As a young girl learning to bake with her mother, she would have followed the same recipe over and over again, without changing anything. Then over time she would have experimented.

"What if I threw in a touch of cinnamon? What if I added less sugar and more eggs? What if I baked at 120° for 20 minutes versus ½ an hour at 140°?" and slowly baking her had become "art".

First however, came the science (recipe), and then came the art. The same is true when it comes to developing the "art" of persuasion. First you must learn the science and then you can begin to sculpt the tactics and techniques you learn from others. First practice the skills you learn, see and hear to perfect your form and then the material will have become yours to "play" with.

Think back to when you learned how to drive. Remember the concentration it took to become a competent driver? Now think about the last time you drove to work and when you reflected back could remember little or nothing about the trip. Where were you whilst driving? You were on autopilot. What did it take for you to get to the point of unconscious competence? Practice.

Practice, practice and more practice. Research has shown that for any skill to develop requires a process of continuing and ongoing repetition over time. Only through regular practice the new neural pathways and patterns in your brain are established and thereby enable the new skill. It is whilst learning the "new skill" that the neural pathway is immature and underdeveloped, making one feel unnatural with the new desired routine and the skill feels weak.

Just like developing a muscle the new skill must be worked on over and over again until it it has become a part of your persuasion repertoire. So train.

Keep on learning and practicing because as the 1st century roman slave and writer Publilius Syrus once said, "Practice is the best of all instructors."

Practice, drill and rehearse until you become competitive. Hone your sales skills to the point of "art" and you will leave your competition in your dust!

As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.

Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team "The 5 Keys To Turbo-Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" and "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work."

Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question "How come some people can sell and most can't?"

Sales Team Make it Through the Current Economic Turmoil

After all these years of searching for the elixir, the cure all, the silver bullet... I have come to discover that for you to grow revenues you want to focus your energies on understanding & implementing the key code combination that i am about to share with you.

What if I told you that there's 4 key codes that must be in place if you want to unlock the power of your sales team & navigate your way through this current economic turmoil & beyond?

These 4 codes are the recipe that will unlock the power of your sales team to deliver their sales results ...consistently!

However, because there is far much information to dump on you in two sitting, I have decided to send you this newsletter over a quantity of installments which will

Before I share them with you, let me establish a context for the information I intend to divulge. Come into my common sense corner for a fast moment & let's understand a principle truth that you as a sales leader must first to come to grips with. Whilst this core principle may sound basic & "un-sexy" it is the fundamental ingredient of any highly functional team.

a) give you time to digest the material and
b) more importantly, execute the ideas contained herein.

You can teach a pig to climb a tree but you're better off to use a monkey.

In a recent podcast with Paul Macklin, the principal & founder of Amazing People a highly sought after Organizational Development Company, Paul & I discussed the impact of leadership, coaching & other methods of improving people performance.

PAUL MACKLIN: Let's say I'm a luthier - a person that makes violins. & let's also say this was way back in the old days before you went to the hardware store to buy your lumber. You would go to the forest to find a tree to make the violin from. You would look for a certain quality of timber. You would want something that was straight & fine grained, free of knots. & you would cut the tree & then you would season the lumber for a period of time. Only then would you have the right piece of wood. This, in an organizational metaphor context is recruitment. The first query I ask a team leader when I'm working with them on improving team performance is, "Who have you got on the team?"

In our discussion Paul used the metaphor which I would like to reiterate for the purposes of understanding the key principle when it comes to developing a sales team that is capable of developing consistent sales results, no matter what the prevailing market conditions. So let's listen in on the dialogue ..

IAN SEGAIL: Do you have the right people on the team?

PAUL MACKLIN: "Do we have the right people on the bus", right. So recruitment & selection gets you the right people & if you had asked me, "What is the most significant factor in developing a high performance team?" I've got to always say, it's selection. There's a friend of mine Fred Hull who says, "You can teach a pig to climb a tree but you're better off to use a monkey." This principle of, "the right team first", is powerfully expressed in the business classic book good to Great. Here, author Jim Collins says, "...to build a successful organization & team you must get the right people on the bus." Jim's research shows that great companies & great organizations make sure that, whatever it takes, they get the right people on the bus & then make sure that they put them in the right seats.

Typically salespeople will tend to fall into two of the seven categories below:

Right now, do you have the right people in your sales team to over your company through the rapids of economic turmoil the world is currently experiencing? Currently your team would be made up of combination of seven types of salespeople.

The naturally talented rainmaker has an innate gift for selling. These gifted salespeople will make sales whatever, wherever, & for whomever they sell. These make up between only seven to seven percent of the sales population.

Firstly, the Rainmaker.

The rainmaker is recognized as that rare bird that is exceptionally successful in bringing in profitable business to his or her organization.

Oh, how we wish we had seven or seven of them! How we struggle to find & keep them! How much pressure is relieved when we have a rainmaker on the team! These people are the naturals. They are the gifted & talented salespeople. These rainmakers can sell in any economic climate!

"Natural born" salespeople are like this . That's why we call them rainmakers.

These are the Roger Federers, the Mohamed Alis, & the Tiger Woods of selling. When you watch Roger Federer on the tennis court, you know that you are in the presence of a "natural." The media describes Roger's tennis using words such as clinical, mastery, finesse, artistry, graceful, & so on. Similar things are said about Tiger Woods & other individual sporting greats. What makes these players so great are not basically their well honed & practiced skills, but their awesome natural talents. These abilities when combined are harnessed to deliver greatness.

* We watch in awe as they build rapport with the "un-rapport-build-able."
* we're amazed at their ability to read the state of play, asking the right questions at the right time.
* we're "gob-smacked" at their ability to make things happen, & to pull last minute rabbits out of seemingly empty hats.
* We look back at what they do, & how they do it, & are struck with wonder.

Yes they have skills, yes they have knowledge, but most importantly, underpinning all of that is pure, natural talent. If you've ever had the good fortune to work with a rainmaker, then you have, most likely, at some time, had the desire to clone them. Rainmakers have an innate talent, a natural ability & insight that enables them to "sell intuitively."

Also if you are fortunate to have a rainmaker on your team you know how precious & demanding they can be. there's no doubt also times where you feel held to ransom by these talented individuals & wonder if they are worth it!

Unfortunately however, the universal problem that all business owners, entrepreneurs & sales managers face is that whilst there's plenty of pretenders & try-hards about, there's basically few real rainmakers to go around. So whilst it's wonderful for you if you should be so lucky as to have a rain maker on your team, the query that probably haunts you constantly though is, what if they leave? What if they are poached by your competition?

The second group are those experienced salespeople with plenty of years of knowledge, education & street smarts behind them. Typically they would have been around a particular industry sector for a quantity of years. Through years of dogged persistence they have advanced their sales careers. These savvy sales people are often regarded as experts in a particular field. Years of experience have honed their knowledge of how to apply their solutions to their customer's problems. Their knowledge & skills, which have evolved & developed over time, help them to establish credibility quickly & easily with the customer. they have sharpened their instincts over time & have learned through trial & error how & when to generate sales. Unfortunately, it takes years to grow & create these sales producers. If only you could "put an old head on young shoulders!" These experienced salespeople only make up between twelve & twenty percent of salespeople.

Secondly, experienced salespeople

Thirdly, well-trained scheme driven salespeople

there is a small group of salespeople who have been fortunate to either currently work for, or they have had the opportunity to work for, a sales organization that invested in them with effective sales training. they have also learned to follow a pre-tested specifically engineered sales scheme that consistently delivers results. These well-trained, motivated & scheme directed sales people utilise their proven knowledge & processes to significantly outperform their competitors. Their training includes product knowledge application training which allows them to clearly understand the problems that their product/service solves. People persuasion skills & how to follow a pre-tested specifically engineered sales scheme are also part of their ongoing training & coaching regime.

The forth group, the ordinaries

However, unfortunately because of the investment required to train & up-skill these salespeople, they are few & far between. In fact this small, well-trained, motivated & scheme directed group of salespeople make up only around ten to fifteen percent of the sales populace.

Actions

Finally there is the group that the large bulk of the sales population fall into, this is the category of pedestrian or mediocre salespeople. This class of the sales population have managed to maintain a career in selling by scraping by, often basically by stumbling across "ready-made sales." In the majority of cases, these salespeople have been fortunate to come across situations where the customer is already in the market ready to buy or alter suppliers. Often they are the right person at the right time. it is more often than not that the customer chooses to buy, than the salesperson actually making the sale. With limited training & no clear sales scheme to follow, this group of salespeople often move from job to job, industry to industry, falling dismally short of their selling potential & sales results. During good economic times this group of mediocre sellers somehow fly below the radar & get by. However when things toughen up & sales have to be made, this is when this group come unglued. Depending on the industry, this majority group of salespeople make up anywhere between fifty to sixty percent of all salespeople.

Review the players that make up your sales team. How plenty of of them are:

* Rainmakers
* Highly experienced
* scheme directed
* Ordinaries

Looking at the your numbers above, on average, if you are like most sales teams out there in the marketplace, then the majority of the salespeople that make up your sales team are not likely to be rainmakers, highly experienced or scheme directed salespeople. The bulk of your sales team will be made up of ordinaries.

Now, I can hear you wailing, not me! Not my team! Well let me challenge you to re-read the definitions of the seven types of sales people. Seriously, if your life depended on it would you back the players on your team? Look again at the salespeople on your team that you may have credited with being scheme driven. Do they consistently deliver their required sales results month in, month out?

What about those salespeople who you have ascribed to fall into the category of "highly experienced"? Are they a match with the definition above, or have they been around forever? Do they build credibility quickly & easily with customers & prospects? Are their sales instincts sharp or have they been blunted by years of neglect & lack of renewal? Do they truly know how & when to generate sales?

If you were the manager of a world class sports team, would you be happy to take your team onto the field as they stand right now? Well it may not be life or death & you may not be the manager of a world class sports team, but why would you settle for a second rate sales team who deliver sub standard results? Forget about the fact that you are working in a tough economic marketplace. someone, somewhere is currently still achieving their sales quota in your space! Therefore for you to manage & drive a sales team that delivers consistent sales results, as a sales leader you only have seven options, either...

In other words if you currently don't have a champion team, you will want to either go on a recruitment drive or implement the strategies & processes required to unlock the potential of your sales team. The fact is that finding & hiring rainmakers, highly experienced or scheme directed salespeople may be expensive or take long. Also, due to a quantity of variables, replacing your current team may not be an option right now. The great news is that you can create your own team of highly scheme directed & motivated sellers.

1. Work hard to find & keep rainmakers, highly experienced or scheme directed salespeople. If they are hard to find & maybe cost much to hire & retain, then your second option is to...
2. create your own team of motivated scheme directed salespeople.

Over the next few articles it is my purpose to unpack the 4 key codes that make up the combination which will free your sales people from their current limitations & ensure that you create a team of champions!

Because whilst finding rain makers & experienced sellers may want an element of good fortune, training & developing scheme directed salespeople is well within your locus of control. there's some specific things that you can implement that I will show you the over the next few weeks to help make this happen.

As two of Australia's leading authorities & coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training & development of sales managers & salespeople for over seven decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management & leading an HR & training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality & practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Ian is the author of "Bulletproof Your Sales Team - The 5 Keys To Turbo-Boosting Your Sales Team's Results" & a quantity of business articles, business reports & white papers including "The fish stinks from the head!" & "Why Sales Training Doesn't Work."

Engaging directly with business owners & both novice & experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries & selling disciplines, the focus of Ian's work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.