Idea Sellers

Mindless, Wandering Salespeople

Bob Hope, one of my all-time favorite entertainers delivered one of the greatest and most memorable movie lines ever spoken in this clip from the 1940 movie The Ghost Breakers. Wearing his signature straight face, he presented his comic interpretation of what was being portrayed to him. While the vivid description of what constitutes a zombie may in truth be embodied by all things both democrat and republican, it was funny to hear in that context, especially in a seemingly endless election year.

Sadly, the description of a zombie, as presented, could have actually been attached to the term salesperson. A salesperson lacking purpose, focus, goals and a sales plan might indeed be easily confused with a zombie, at least from a behavioral standpoint as described in the clip. Sales direction is critical to sales success, yet how many of us will get up in the morning, get in our car and wander aimlessly, hoping that someone will give us an order? There are many salespeople wasting their time each day "beating the bushes" and accomplishing little. Lacking real direction and purpose, frustration soon will set in, paying the salesperson exactly what they have earned for their meager and pointless efforts.

Salespeople must have goals. We must be expectant of the sale. We must be convinced beyond any doubt that our products and services offer real value. We must then act to bring our prospects and products together. All of these are critical to the selling process and the achievement of closed sales, repeat buyers and extended relationships. Otherwise we may actually begin to resemble the zombies mentioned earlier.

It is far better and more productive to schedule an office day to plan effectively and to design a sales strategy rather than to wander out of the office with no purpose or plan. Zombies do not and cannot close sales.

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Daniel Sitter
Author

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Rich Selling Opportunities Exist Now

Call it a recession or a declining market. Make excuses if you must. Regardless, what the economy is currently presenting to us is actually an unprecedented sales opportunity; that is if you are not allowing the nay-sayers to ruin it for you. To coin a phrase from the influence of my mentor, Jim Rohn, it may not be a season of stellar economic expansion, but there are still many "pots of gold" and plenty of rainbows if you look in the right places!

Perhaps you have noticed that my writing frequency has diminished somewhat over the last six to eight weeks. It's not that I have had little to say; on the contrary, I have much to say, yet have been busier than at any point in recent memory! Busier? That is correct. I have sought opportunity in the face of adversity and have found it. You can find it too. Forgive me for writing less... but I have been selling more!

In my recent article, Are Your Sales Growing Despite The Times, I cited several observations and made specific recommendations for finding sales prosperity. In following that advice, I have narrowed my selling focus, concentrating on offering my expertise and certain profitable products to a finite group of customers in specific industries that continue to provide sales opportunities.

Many companies, despite reigning-in expenses and operating in cost-cutting mode with fewer people, still need goods and services to operate. Many companies are open to cost-saving ideas and technical innovations that will contribute to lower-cost operations and improved safety. They are still buying. Are you there to sell to them?

The following are a few of the market areas where I have personally witnessed an expansion of sales opportunities despite the times. Perhaps you can prosper from them as well:

1. Hospital Services
2. Industrial Plant and Processing Safety
3. Food Service and Manufacturing Operations
4. Plastic Injection Molding and Extrusion
5. Synthetic Fuels
6. University Labs and Facilities
7. Green Power and Ecology
8. Nuclear Research and Power Plants
9. Military Installations and Applications
10. Biotechnical / Biological R&D
11. Advanced Composite Materials
12. Nano-Technology

What goes through your head as you plan each sales call? What are you saying to yourself just prior to the call? How do your beliefs impact your presentation?  Is your attitude expectant? Friend, if you do not believe that there is a successful sale approaching, you should not be wasting neither your time or that of your prospect. Why in the world would you even be there... perhaps hoping to stumble upon a sale by accident? Successful selling demands a success mindset, one that includes both optimism and vision. If you offer true value, you will find sales opportunity.

Nowhere have I said that it was going to be easy or a quick fix. Challenging the current economic storm is a daunting task, one worthy of your concerted efforts and persistence. It has been said "that which does not kill you will only serve to make you stronger."  You can and will prevail, if you believe you will. Set your goals and action-plan accordingly. Today's economic gloom will pass, leaving in its wake an exciting expansion. The question is; will you be positioned to prosper or will you still be wallowing in a "woe is me" attitude?

You alone will determine your success by the decisions you make today. So lift up that chin and get moving, you have work to do. 

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Daniel Sitter
Author

Stumble It!

There Are Many Salespeople; So Why Choose You?

When considering their specific needs and all of the available suppliers competing for their business, why should a company call you to remedy their current situation? What makes you stand out in the crowd? What makes you special and worthy of their confidence?

As a salesperson, if you can't readily answer these simple questions, you need to go back to the drawing board and create or re-create your own elevator speech, concisely describing the reasons why people should want to employ your services. Your "why" should be both unique and compelling.  Your concept message or brand, should be all-inclusive and fully-descriptive of your specialized value, espousing exactly what makes you uniquely qualified to provide your service. It also needs to be both memorable and describable in only a few seconds. A challenging task indeed, yet one that will pay limitless dividends if handled properly.

Your brand is your display ad to the world. It is precious and uniquely yours. If you have established yourself as an authority in your field, properly positioned yourself in your marketplace and adequately promoted your services, your prospects are more apt to find you and will be eager to deal with you. You must have that little "extra," that slight-edge that keeps you in the forefront of your prospect's mind.

Your brand, being your personal storefront, is your constant exposure to the masses. Keep it clean, well finished and well lit at all times. Your branding efforts require constant and consistent attention. You cannot afford to let up or allow your image to be tarnished in any way. On the contrary, you must do everything possible to keep your brand spotlighted and ready to deploy, realizing that every decision you make and direction you move in will affect your brand image and thus, your income.

As a salesperson, how can you ensure that your brand stands out in the crowd? FOCUS. Specializing in a particular area of service and expertise will allow you to stand out. Become the very best at something in your marketplace. Once proven, you will get noticed.  Soon, you will be regarded as the go-to person in your field, the beneficiary of countless and continuous referrals.

Successfully provide valuable, specialized and unique services and your customers will surely act as evangelists, sharing you with their world.

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Daniel Sitter
Author

Stumble It!

Are your Sales Growing Despite the Times?

Sales as both a career choice and a personal skill-set requires the development of specific techniques, ongoing personal development, the expansion of our comfort zone, confidence, persistence, patience, gut-level instincts and unlike most other professions, a thick skin! On the surface, it looks like selling is a breeze; but any experienced professional will tell you otherwise. However, mastery of the previously mentioned traits will afford you a profitable, fulfilling and rewarding career in any economy, if you are willing to do the work.

Learning how to sell your ideas to others, to persuade others to your way of thinking, may be the most important interpersonal skill that one can develop. Most of our successes in life hinge upon our interactions with others. Those interactions depend upon the relationships we develop. Those relationships are built by trust and integrity expressed through effective communication between the parties involved.

Effective communication hinges upon our ability to sell our ideas to others, to effectively convey our ideas in such a manner that gains acceptance from others and influences their thinking and decision-making process. Are you effectively communicating to your market the benefits of you?

The volatility of the present economic climate has left many people, including salespeople, in a state of fear and uncertainty. We now have the highest number job losses in five years as businesses are trimming both people and operations. How do you sell in this environment? You must learn to expertly and quickly qualify new prospects and seek to offer the highest possible value both there and to your existing customers.

Selling is indeed a unique profession, combining personal chemistry with precise direction. Today's business climate demands greater focus and clarity from salespeople. We cannot afford to be congenial generalists as that mindset will not allow us access to key decision-makers. We must become the expert in our field, being perceived as a valuable resource, their go-to person. Salespeople must comb through their offering of products and services, specializing with laser-like focus in one particular solution that will be of greatest interest and service to their marketplace.

Despite tighter credit, job losses, shrinking production and other economic headaches, many businesses will remain a going-concern, requiring key products and services to operate effectively. Your focus must be at this level.

In the short term, selling almost anything will indeed be tougher. Prospects and customers will be busier, perhaps doing the jobs of several people in prior times. It will become more difficult to reach decision-makers, as their availability declines. The "sales-men will be separated from the boys" as they say. Some salespeople may not weather the storm, yet opportunity remains for those willing to adjust their strategy and tactics in this ever-evolving situation.

Be encouraged. Dig-in your heels and aggressively ride out this storm. Those that do will emerge in a superb position to prosper when the economy cycles back to growth mode. Will you be one of those salespeople?

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Daniel Sitter
Author

Stumble It!

Sales Energy Boost Each Day

How about an early energy boost to get your day going each sales day? The following video featuring the Cactus Cuties singing our National Anthem is inspiring to say the least. While you are caught up in the gripping lyrics being sung a capella, notice how the concerns of your day slowly fade to the distance as you are presented with great talent and inspiration.

Another boost might come from the fact that there is actually a market for anything if you are bold enough and see the potential in ordinary things. Two sisters discovered a large corn flake in their cereal bowl that had an uncanny resemblance to the state of Illinois. Sure enough, they photographed it, put it on Ebay and sold it for over $1300, enough to pay for their coming vacation.

A consistent flow of sales energy is so critically important to your selling success. Actual physical energy is important to make it through the day while mental clarity and focus are necessary to provide both you and your customers conversational skills to thoroughly understand opportunities and provide effective solutions. This same energy must extend through the entire week, emphasizing the need for proper diet, quality sleep and recreational activities to renew your strengths each day. As the old adage, with adjustments, says: "All work and no play makes one a worn out, ineffective, incompetent salesperson."

Many effective salespeople will begin their sales day with energizing prayer or meditation followed by light exercise, a refreshing shower and a proper breakfast. We know that these are worthwhile uses of our time that pay huge dividends both throughout the day and in the long run. Shortcutting only cheats you. There are no shortcuts to success.

A full calendar is another motivator! There is something debilitating about lots of white space on a business calendar. Proper goal-setting, planning and lead follow-up will ensure that your calendar is full of appointments that will open the doors to opportunity. Now that's energizing!

There is no magic or mystery to starting your day in an energized manner that will ensure your success. Plan for success. Look for it. Expect it. Lay your success groundwork daily and reap the rewards.

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Daniel Sitter
Author

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Sales Is Not a Four Letter Word

Obviously, for anyone with rudimentary spelling skills, sales is not a four-letter-word. What is the point, you ask? The stereotyped image of the slick-talking used-car salesman is often what people outside our profession imagine when they think of salespeople. They may actually think that salespeople are out to take advantage of them.

Sales as a career and those individuals associated with it have frequently ranked at the bottom of the desirable career food chain along with lawyers and used car dealers. Why is this? Is it a bum-rap or one well-deserved? How does this perception affect the fledgling salesperson? Are there pre-conceived notions found nagging in the back of our prospect's mind? Maybe.

Sales is an honorable profession, yet one often associated with less than scrupulous people. It is no wonder that the only lawyers have witnessed more jokes associated with their field. There is no reason to be ashamed of for being a salesperson. In fact, you can make the claim of being a professional salesperson with great pride, as long as you are actually just that.  Did you know that many salespeople are highly respected and among the highest paid of professionals?

In order to be a part of that elite group of true sales professional, the credentials often displayed are typically not earned from any university. They are in fact values and beliefs deeply internalized and ingrained in one's character. The resulting behaviors are what prospects and clients actually interact with. These traits can be summarized in a few points, all of which are necessary to become a standout in our profession:

1. Integrity
2. Empathy
3. Honesty
4. Solution-Oriented
5. Service-Oriented
6. Unselfish
7. Value Oriented

Look at each carefully with honest scrutiny. Evaluate yourself and ask several trusted friends or associates to evaluate you as well, using each trait as the reference. How do you score? Select someone in your field, an associate or competitor, that you admire and respect, subjecting them to the same scrutiny. How does your score compare?

If you are found lacking in any of these areas, you need to get to work. Keep in mind that you are a work in progress, a diamond in the rough, an ever-evolving entity. Notice that traits such as product and industry knowledge, social comfort zone and oratory skills are further down the list, not even making the top seven. While important, they are far less so than your character traits.

This exercise is designed to show that YOU are much more important than the WHAT in your field. Master these seven traits and your success is guaranteed, no matter your market, industry or state of the economy.

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Daniel Sitter
Author

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Of Course You Want All The Sales

Barack Obama, responding to those who have suggested that he consider becoming Hillary Clinton's second in command; "I am not running for vice president," Obama said. "I am running for president of the United States of America." He is not interested in second place and neither should you. Translate that philosophy into the sales arena and one could say that one wants to close every sales opportunity. Second place in a sales contest is no order received. 

Of course you want to win with every opportunity! If you do not believe that you will close the sale, why are you wasting your time and your prospect's time as well? Zig Ziglar once said "I don't necessarily need to close all the sales, just the next one!" He is right. You must be expectant and positive, otherwise you lose. 

Tiger Woods reflected on his performance after winning on the final hole at Bay Hill today; "It's knowing that you have an opportunity to end the tournament, and it's in your hands," he said. "Whether you do it or not remains to be seen. It's like having the ball with a few seconds to go. Do you want it or not want it? I would much rather have it in my hands."

As salespeople, we too want the opportunity, the momentum, the energy, the excitement, the solutions and the chance to prove our worth to our customers. It is in the demonstration of the value we offer that we increase our sales. We are winners already because we are in the game to win; ie... we are engaging our customers with the goal of exceeding their expectations.

Focus, whether it's politics, sports or sales, provides the clarity and purposeful drive that leads the way to our inevitable success.

We not only want all of the sales, we expect them. 

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Daniel Sitter
Author

Stumble It!

Finding Sales Success in a Recession

The debate is on whether we actually are in or still approaching a recession. If you have been reading the newspapers and watching the news, then you know that our economy is in a tailspin. The news is leak with each new day revealing another economic woe. It seems that both consumer confidence and spending are down, foreclosures are up, savings are down, unemployment is up and the prices of just about everything are rising. What is there to do if you are a salesperson needing to derive your income from such a mess?

Downward trends are indeed a stressful time, but they do indeed present many opportunities. You might ask a certain real estate agent how his business is; he responds saying it's the worst scenario he has seen in years and does not know what to do. Ask another and she might tell you that she is excited and it's the best market opportunity that she has seen in years. It is indeed a matter of perspective.

For those clients who are financially able, now is an outstanding time to acquire property at a huge discount. She chooses to focus on those clients looking for bargains. The other agent gave up saying "woe is me."

I am not at all suggesting that the current scenario is that simple to overcome in all markets. There is no single answer to all issues, yet there is a superb approach. The keys here are "current scenario" and "downward trends." There will always be hills and valleys in every economic cycle. The tide will certainly turn at some point and a general wellspring of opportunity will spread over the markets. But for now, we must adapt to the current conditions. That's right, adapt.

What can you do now to help ensure your income and peace of mind?

1. Re-train. Become more of an expert in your field. Learn more about other products you have available to you. Become the local expert in your market.
2. Study new markets that provide somewhat consistent opportunities for growth such as food production, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, utilities, laboratories, safety and ergonomics, etc...
3. Make more of an effort to brand yourself. Become a valued expert. Focus.
4. Market yourself: Establish a blog, provide a regular newsletter, write articles, utilize email marketing to better stay in touch with clients.
5. Make yourself more valuable and visible to your clients. Become confident of your value.

Focus on one particularly profitable niche in your industry and marketplace and become the "go-to" person in your marketplace. We all have a product line or service that offers greater value and superior profit margins. Forget being a generalist and become a specialist. Establish your expertise and publicize it well. Get the word out.

I recently utilized this strategy at a local Tier 1 automotive supplier by seizing an opportunity to help them with a unique problem. They were impressed by our response and ability to remedy their situation. I asked about similar areas of their plant and the opportunity to address their issues before they became problems. They liked my pro-active approach and allowed me to proceed. That success soon generated others. In fact, their plant manager sent me an email this past week asking me to meet with him to discuss multiple opportunities for our products and services throughout their plant.

This company is quickly becoming a major account. I have successfully become their "go-to guy." We have demonstrated our capabilities and proven our ability and expertise. Oh, I started working with this account a mere six months ago. I have a goal to develop five more accounts like this one over the coming six months. They are already identified.

There are opportunities; plenty of them, regardless of the economy. Do not give in to the negativity in the news. Focus on your strengths and which clients need your expertise. Select companies that are in a strong financial position to weather this downturn and get busy. Be assertive. Become their "go-to" person and don't look back.

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Daniel Sitter
Author

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