Strategic Sales & Marketing Solutions

where do I go
how do I do that

am I lost
do I need to be found

will anyone
find me

I’m someone
after all
I exist in time and space
maybe I’m just not where I need to be
right now
I’m so confused
I may never figure it out

just how do you go about

finding someone

who doesn’t want to

be

© 2010 Peggy Carter

In the best of economies, people who can get away with it shut down mentally around Halloween. Any and all decisions that don’t involve matters of life and death are deferred until “after the first of the year.”

Well, the first of the year is here.

The people who use “after the first of the year” as an excuse for not taking action will, more often than not, fins some new excuse now that the first of the year has arrived. More often than not, it will be “I need to see how I do on my taxes”…as we approach April 1st, that particular dodge will become much more prevalent.

Your job, as a professional salesperson, is to recognize when prospects are being less than honest and direct with you. It is OK to come right out and challenge their excuses. It is OK to give them permission to not do business you. Remember…when a prospect balks at telling you they are not interested in what you are offering, they are not doing it to spare your feelings. They are doing it to avoid conflict or confrontation. They are thinking about themselves. They are always thinking about themselves. As soon as you give them permission to say “not interested,” you have freed yourself up to seek out the prospects who are interested.

From Self-Reliance:

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.”

As we approach the end of October and head into the November-December year end, there are a few things you need to understand as a Salesperson-slash-Strategic Marketing Professional:

1). MANY…far TOO MANY…business owners took a “time out” for the entire YEAR of 2009 when it came to strategically marketing their businesses.

2). Item #1 above, by default, created the return of “low hanging fruit”…the “market share” created by business owners too frightened to market their own businesses.

3). Many business owners have hypnotized themselves into believing that January 1, 2010 is a magic date…a date upon which the Heavens will rain gold coins upon their heads for “renewing” their marketing efforts.

4). The business owners are kidding themselves, because…through their own actions, or lack of them…they have knowingly and willingly surrendered their success to the business owners who remained committed to their businesses and continued to brand and market their offerings in 2009, no matter HOW much it hurt, no matter WHAT sacrifice was required.

There are NO “victims” in 2009…ONLY “volunteers.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.”

Anyone still hiding and hoping for a windfall of cash on 1/1/10 needs to wake up, and wake up NOW.

OR…just surrender. That’s it, plain and simple. Let your competitors harvest ALL of the fruit.

WHAT is stopping YOU?

Charles Stanley shares a funny little story in his book Our Unmet Needs. There’s more than a little wisdom here for salespeople…

A young man was discussing his love life – or rather, his lack of a love life – with his grandfather. He admitted to his grandfather that he hadn’t been out on a date in several months. He finally gave a big sigh and said to his grandfather, “Gramps, I guess I’m just going to have to trust God to send me a wife.”

His grandfather replied with a twinkle in his eye, “I suspect that God would be a lot more eager to help you if He knew that you had the nerve to ask the girl He sends you out on a date.”

In the movie My Cousin Vinny, Joe Pesci plays novice attorney Vincent ‘Vinny’ Gambini, a man who can’t get anything right. All of a sudden, Vinny finds…for lack of a better word…his “mojo,” and now he can do no wrong.

There’s one moment in the film that should speak volumes to any professional salesman. Fully confident, fully aware of his powers, Vinny struts away from a completed witness interview proclaiming “Now I’m finished wit’ DIS guy!”

In the prospecting phase of selling, we often spend too much time “processing” a lack of interest. We need to be skilled in qualifying our prospects. They need three things, and three things only:

1). A need for / interest in our products or services.

2). Willingness to buy right now. Not tomorrow, not next week, noth next month, not after the first of the year, now.

3) the means to buy right now, A.K.A. money.

Before you spend unnecessary time in the presentation phase, you need to work through the checklist above. If the answer to one or more questions is “no,” your immediate response should be “Now I’m finished wit’ DIS guy!”

But don’t take it from me.

Take it from your cousin Vinny.

Happy selling, and never give up.

A stomach for great slabs of fortune: In the body of wisdom, a big mouth is an organ of no minor importance, because great capacity requires large portions. One worthy of more will not be gorged by good fortune. One person’s indigestion is another’s appetite. Many get sick when the food is rich, because they are naturally weak. They are neither accustomed to nor born to high living. The business sours on them, and they get dizzy on the fumes of their unearned distinction. They run great danger in their high places, unable to maintain themselves in them because unaccustomed. So let the really big person display the capacity for even larger enterprise, and scupulously avoid anything that suggests a faint heart.

“All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right about face which turns us from failure to success.” – Dorothea Brande