The Lazy Salesman
The Lazy Salesman in Jan 2002, The Worst
Customers I Ever Had, Fill the Funnel, Negotiation, Collecting NOs, Thinking Time,
Number 76 of my Selling Manifesto, Change Now!, Sales Job Interviews, Fail,
Cluetrain, Action, The Perfect Customer, Integrity, Closing, Objection
Handling, Summarising, Objectives, Rapport, Networking, Decisiveness,
Qualifying.
The Lazy Salesman in Feb 2002, Thinking Aloud, Positioning, Honesty, Move On,
Practising what I Preach?, Doing the Business – Networking, Issues and Personal
Wins, Small Acorns, 4:2 Rule, Conscious Competence, Question, Listen, and
Summarise, Sales Teams, Hunters and Farmers, The Competition, The Truth about
Selling!, What’s in it for Me? (WIIFM), The Best Salespeople I know,
Presenting, Calling High, Networking Again, Birthday – Ghost Story, Little
Things make a Big Difference, Difficult Customers, Prospecting, Hot (Cheesy)
Tips, What Irritates me as a Client.
The Lazy Salesman in March 2002; Who Wouldn’t I Work For?, Sex Sells, End Users, Cheesy Closes,
High Risk or Low Risk, High Level Contacts, The Hook, Contact K.I.T., Pricing,
Risk, Contracts, Selling Something You Don’t Believe In, Corporate DNA, Good
News, Rejection, Calling High Level Contacts, Good Days and Bad Days, In the
Client’s Shoes (The Observers learn the most), Advance not Continuation.
The Lazy Salesman in April 2002; Wait and They Did Come!!,
Persist or Walk Away, Prospecting from Cold, Wait and They will come!, Stamina,
Involve the Audience, One Thing Each Day, Luck, Good Selling Organisations, Be
your Word, Be Honest with Yourself, More Corporate DNA and Zipf’s Law, Smile,
Exceed Expectation, Shut Up Tony, Cardbox, Grassroots Selling, Persist and Have
a Dream, Pick an Onerous Task, Guilt, Style,
Good Will, Mind Expanding Questions!, Tenacity and Lunch, Recovering Lost
Momentum, Competing Customers, Selling Pranks.
The Lazy Salesman in May 2002: Contact, Resource Availability
Close, Hardware Store, SPACER, My own Call Reluctance, Greetings and
Handshakes, How much to you care?, Advancing after a Good Meeting, What Goes
Around Comes Around, Concept to Cash, The Perfect Supplier, Follow-Up, All Talk
and No Product, Elio the Photographer, Battles and Wars, Dissatisfied Customer,
Crooks, Exhibition Leads, Small Acorns Conversations, The P.A font of all
Knowledge, Practising What I Preach, Don’t Let Things Drift, Human Touch,
Dreams Really Do Come True, Find Your Market.
The Lazy Salesman in June 2002: Lost Leaders, Loss Leaders, My
Sales Call Reluctance, Can you talk?, Cover your bases, Selling Should be
Effortless, 9 out of 10 people just
aren’t interested, Selling Picks and Shovels, Tony the Café Owner, Playing 2
games of chess, Selling Ratios, Professionals Sort, Amateurs Convince, Onerous
Tasks, Marketing your website, Internet Marketing, Struggling On, Time, where
does it go to?, Prospecting is Non-Urgent and Important, Sell Better or Qualify
Out!, Easy to do business with, Is
Selling Manipulating?, Big Coincidence, Revenge Referrals, Engaging, Can you
help me?, Trial Close.
The Lazy Salesman
in July 2002: Small
Things, Hang
in There, Selling Motivation, Stick at It, Gap in the
Market, More
Contact, Anticipation.
Coming Soon: Leaving a message, P.A advice and ownership.
Friday 26th July 2002
Small
things can make a difference.
Someone this week suggested that knowing how people have their coffee or tea, can make a big difference. He’s right. Knowing what you’re client or supplier, friend, family member or partner takes, is a nice touch and makes a difference.
I’m
not saying I practise what I preach, because I have the memory of a goldfish.
Yet
again, some business has come my way by being patient.
But
I can also see the funnel drying up soon so I’ll have to introduce some new
prospects. And write an overview of
what I do!
I
noticed this week that a group of people I was training were running out of
energy at the end of the day.
One
of the theories of motivation is that motivation is purely physical energy.
What
I noticed is that this non-sales group doing a selling exercise were losing it.
And
yet a selling group in a similar situation wouldn’t be losing energy, or at
least if they were they’d stick with it.
I
put it down to motivation and directed energy.
A
salesgroup, especially new salespeople keen and motivated would stick with it.
A
non-sales group seem to have less desire to direct their energy to selling.
And
why would they.
But
what I realised, is that if I’d given this group a technical problem to solve
they would have stuck with it until the following morning.
Horses
for courses.
I
guess the secret of success with training non-salespeople is to reframe selling
into problem solving for non-salespeople.
Sunday 14th July 2002
I have some
business coming in tomorrow which I’ve stuck at for over a year.
To my amazement
it’s now happening and very quickly.
Sometimes you
have to hang in there.
Sometimes you
have to qualify out, let go and move on.
But it’s always
good to stay in touch.
You never know,
and in this case I caught them and bumped into them at the right time.
Thursday 11th July 2002
I’ve spotted a
gap in the market for Sales Training, and hopefully I’m working on it, so watch
this space.
I’ll have to come
up with loads of original material on Selling!
That’s a
challenge!!
But that’s what
it’s about isn’t it.
Finding a market
and then supplying something of value that meets the market demand.
And it’s usually
that way round, finding the demand first and then fulfilling it.
Let’s hope that’s
what I’ve found.
Monday 8th July 2002
Most customers don’t get enough contact from salespeople.
Salespeople fear too much contact, and don’t contact people as much as
they should.
I was talking about it today, that every year I look back and I always
have at least one regret of a client or people that I didn’t Keep in Touch with
that may have resulted in lost business.
Mind you I had feedback last week that someone felt I was pestering
them!!
I’ve never had that said before, I normally don’t contact people enough,
I let it go too quiet too often.
But pestering? No way! It’s not as though I’ve spoken to this
person yet.
I’ve had this feeling before where, you’re told they don’t need to talk
to you and then weeks or months later you lose the business.
Better to lose it for too much contact than not enough.
Thursday 4th July 2002
I’m not sure it’s
something you can train or teach, but anticipation of what’s likely to go right
and what’s likely to go wrong comes with experience.
Even before
anything has happened, I seemed to know that new business was going to come
from where it did come from.
And I did very
littlie to influence it.
I’ve also had a
gut feel about some other business beginning to fade off quickly, and alas
that’s beginning to happen as well.
Anticipated but
nevertheless disappointing.
At least I knew
it was going to happen.
Putting all your
eggs in one basket can be a dangerous thing.
You have to plan
to win another big one, even before you lose the current big one you have.
Easier said than
done because the current one is the “Big and Easy” business you should be
mainly concentrating on.
Keeping a client
is the most important thing, but what if you lose that client.
I can’t believe
that in the space of 2 months my best client has become my most distant,
through a change in personnel.
I try to cover
the bases, but it sure is hard sometimes.