I really want to throw something at you. If you're in business development, I know that there's a lot of pressure and there's that old phrase, ABC, Always Be Closing. And there's a lot of pressure, a lot of people that maybe your managers, your mentors, even the people you respect the most, that are saying, "you've got to learn how to close, you should always learn how to close, always be closing, a lot of pressure to close, get that decision, close the deal".
Sam has been in sales for her entire career. She knows she does well enough as she has climbed the ranks through various companies, but she tends to plateau with medium accounts. Sam has yet to earn some of the major accounts and or territories that make salespeople’s careers. She has always been one to read all the top business books, listen to podcasts every chance she got, attends conferences, and even enrolled in a few training classes that promised to help her reach the next level, but nothing ever changed, despite putting all the things she learned into practice immediately. Sam felt ready to make some significant life changes on her own and earning more commissions would make it all possible. Now, she really wanted to see if it was her turn to be one of the big-time players.
Hey, welcome back. Here's another one, Friday fast tip. I know everybody, everybody seems to be really busy lately. I know I'm busy. I know Sarah's busy here in the office. I know Matt, who does our IT and social media stuff, I know he's busy. And I'll bet you're busy too.
Do you prefer hotdogs or steak? I bet you said steak.
In this episode of Fast Tip Friday, Charlie talks about the analogy of Steak and Hotdogs to encourage your sales efforts.
Recently Charlie and I were talking about work I was doing with interviews for a client. As I was reviewing profiles and setting up my standard interview questions, he suggested a list of questions that I must ask all candidates. I had a few on my list already but this one is one I never would have thought to ask, but it surely is something everyone can relate to.
After a long sales process finally appeared to be coming to a successful conclusion, Paul was breathing a sigh of relief until his client decided he wanted to extract some sweat from Paul for the win. Just when he thought it was over and done, the regional vice president chimed in with one last contract change that he claimed was a deal breaker if it wasn't accommodated. Once the shock and anger had subsided, Paul collected his thoughts and recalled his training that brought this exact situation up in a role play scenario. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me" was the sound echoing through his brain as Paul was sure not to be the fool another time.
“Here we go again,” Jim thought as he walked into his last call of the day. He always scheduled this monthly call to be the last of his day as it left him annoyed, angry, and confused when he walked out the door. Jim just could not create the type of relationship with this business owner that he felt was key to his success with other clients. There were never issues with products, pricing, or communications from Jim, his agency, or the manufacturers, but these monthly update and prospecting meetings always ended up making Jim feel like a complete failure. Jim’s positive, enthusiastic, and lighthearted approach obviously missed the mark with this client, and Jim was sure the client disliked the meetings as much as he did.
Lauren hated watching the network news or seeing the latest news flashing on her phone. It seemed like the "Big Story" everywhere was another mass shooting, a political meltdown, a plane crash or other sad story. The positive outlook Lauren typically brought to each day had always kept her going no matter what she encountered in her business development activities. But now, so many people she spoke with apparently felt like there was so little certainty left in the world, and some of them wanted her to join in their negativity. Looking at how hard she was working just to maintain some positive momentum, Lauren began to have some doubts of her own about the future.
