Three Rules for Selling in Tough Times
Here are three “rules” to live by during tough times and not so tough times. I developed these as reminders for myself back during the dot.com run up (when times were good from a sales guy's perspective), but now they seem more important than ever.
The first one is to remind myself, “Ain't nothing easy.” This is followed by the corollary, “If it was, every body would be doing it, and we'd be getting minimum wage.” I'm not sure my sales reps liked it the first time one of them brought a tough sales problem up to me, and I spouted this phrase out as naturally as breathing, followed by the comment, “and the last time I checked, you weren't getting minimum wage.” That is real motivation there! I should be a motivational speaker...
As with most sales organizations, our challenges in closing a sale are half the time within our own company, half the time due to the competition, and the other half of the time something to do with the customer. None of my sales reps sits by the fax machine waiting for orders the way I used to do. It is called work for a reason, and as the economic conditions continue to worsen, we'll do better the sooner we realize that. There are very few things that are really easy. It takes work.
The second reminder I have is, “Keep kicking the ball up the hill.” This is a metaphor that seems so vivid to me on how to get things done. You want to get the ball over the hill so you kick it. By the time you've taken two or three steps it is rolling back to you and you have to give it another good kick. It may have gone twenty to thirty feet up the hill with the kick, but in reality it is moving in the same relative speed as you are as you make your way up the hill. You just have to keep kicking it till you finally get it over. A lot of things feel like this at work. While I wish others would pick up the ball and run with it, when it comes down to getting something done that is really important to me, I just have to keep kicking till it's over the top.
The third reminder is to keep telling myself that, “Cool heads win the day.” This is probably the hardest one for me. When things don't go the way I want them to go, I'm reminded of things my Chief Master Sergeant used to say, “I'm gonna rip your lips off!” It's surprising that these outbursts don't have the same effect in the civilian world... People get offended when I tell them if they don't do something I'll rip their lips off. This is something I often remember about five minutes too late. What I need to do more, especially when there is a lot of pressure to perform, is to stop before a meeting or before a concall or hitting the send button, and remind myself that cool heads do in fact win the day. Nobody likes to have their lips ripped off.
Posted at 02:30PM Feb 12, 2009 by George Miller in Personal | Comments[0]