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Welcome to the Sell or Die podcast.
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I m your host, Jeffrey Gittimer.
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And I m your host, Jen Gittimer.
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Well, in this podcast, we re going to help you attract more qualified, unbelievable, ready-to-buy clients.
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We re going to help you build loyal relationships.
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And the one thing you re hoping for, close more deals.
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Let s get into it.
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It s time to sell or die.
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Welcome back, Diehard.
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Welcome back, Diehard.
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Have you ever heard somebody say, wow, that was a great idea?
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Sure you have, all the time.
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Have you ever heard anybody say, wow, that was a great deck of slides?
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Pretty much never.
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And so you have to decide if you re going to be a salesperson who uses slides or a salesperson who creates ideas.
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Those are two distinct kinds of salespeople.
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And you can tell me, well, Jeffrey, it s real easy for you.
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You re a creative person.
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I know I m creative because I learned how to be creative.
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It s a science.
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You can learn it.
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And if you come to my library, you ll find 30 books on creativity.
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that I have either read cover to cover or read chapters in and I m going to share with you two so we can sort of program act correctly and recognize I m not just a creative person I m a student of creativity so I m going to share with you Michael my house book.
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on creativity called Thinker Toys.
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This is the second edition.
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It s a wonderful, wonderful book.
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And the grandfather of creativity in America, Edward de Bono, who passed on recently, but his wisdom will live literally forever.
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And this is a book called Serious Creativity, which basically takes a compendium of all his stuff and puts it into one book and you need to read it.
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I actually know you need to study it.
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And so you re looking at yourself from a standpoint of I need to be more creative and you re watching Netflix and thinking that s going to help you.
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put a book next to your head and go, I can just give myself the Vulcan mind meld, I ll be okay.
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No, you have to study the book and then think about what your customer really needs.
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What is that person looking for?
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And sometimes it can be a simple thing.
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It can be a simple thing.
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Sometimes it s more complicated.
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It sounds like what you re saying to me is that there s a difference between the creative salesperson and the competitive salesperson.
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Correct.
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And that the creative salesperson wins way more often than the competitive one, which is contrary to popular belief, because most people believe, well, if I was just the competitive person, if I just did a little bit more, competed harder or pushed more, I would win.
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And to me, that is when you re focused on being competitive, you re focused on yourself.
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When you re focused on being creative, you re focused on your customer.
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Excellent point.
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And put yourself in the position of the competitive salesperson is willing to cut his or her price in order to get the deal.
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Why are you giving away your profit to somebody else?
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When an idea can actually enhance the process, can enhance the relationship, can enhance the value of what you re conveying to somebody else in a way where they want to buy from you.
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They don t want to miss out on the opportunity.
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Totally 100% up to you.
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But let me throw a couple of things at you so you can have an understanding of creativity.
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I gave a talk at the Burbank Hilton Hotel in Burbank, California.
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And instead of giving me a fruit basket, they gave me this baseball signed by the staff of the hotel.
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Now, I ve only kept it for 20 years.
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So I m not 100% positive if it ll still stay on my desk for 20 more years.
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But I think you get the idea.
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It s a very low cost.
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but very high impact item.
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And all of these things reflect who you are as a person.
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Somebody sent me a fig pin of Bugs Bunny, my all time favorite human being.
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It was non-human.
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And they followed it up with a fig pin of Angus Young, my all time favorite guitar player.
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Now, total cost of this is probably $30.
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What s the value of it being on my desk for every single day and then thinking of Taylor every time I look at him?
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And so, if you want to stay top of mind, which every salesperson does, then find something personal and do something memorable.
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Find something personal and do something memorable.
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And it s not that hard to do.
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It literally is not that hard to do.
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You make the determination.
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Literally, you make the determination.
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So many people think that you have to send them something expensive and actually it could cost five or ten dollars, but be meaningful.
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My mom had a client who loved the flower, the purple flower that is called a pansy.
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And every time she was anywhere where they had note cards with a pansy or
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a magnet that looked like one or whatever, she would buy it and send it to Mrs. Krieger and say, oh, I was thinking of you, saw this, made me think of you, boom, right?
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And it happened like my, I even knew when I was a child, I knew to look for it.
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You know, like, oh, look, they have flowers here.
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Let s see if they have the flowers she likes, like because this woman was obsessed with them.
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And so it s not an expensive thing.
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It s more about being thoughtful.
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And how do you become thoughtful?
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You have to ask the right questions because you re not a mind reader.
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Right.
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How did how did Taylor know that you like Angus Young?
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Right.
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He conversation through conversation and questions.
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Right now, there s a secret to this.
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And the secret is them, not you.
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What do they want?
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What would they treasure versus what would you want to give them to make them think about you?
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This is something that I keep on my desk all the time.
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This is, I don t know, a glitterfied Gittermer logo in a nine by nine frame.
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And
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sent by Kellen Fisher.
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And Kellen is the master at this.
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But she didn t send me her logo.
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She sent me my logo.
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She sends everybody their logo.
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Because she knows that s what they re going to keep.
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And who knows what it s going to cost?
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I mean, it can t cost 50 bucks.
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to probably less.
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But the bottom line is, it s been on my desk for three years.
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And what s the value of that occupying that geography.
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So I want you to think about how you don t give me a gift with a pen with your name on it.
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I m going to toss it or pack a post it notes with your name on it or even koozie cups with your name on it.
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That s stupid.
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It s just ridiculous.
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It s not.
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It s not going to win anything.
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It doesn t make you
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Stand out or be remembered.
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The whole point of this is to stand out and be remembered.
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It s expedient and it s worthless.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And so if you re looking for creative ways to, let s talk about when you could use creativity throughout the sales process.
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Okay, the first thing I want to do is I m going to ask this person a ton of questions about them, where they were raised, where they went to school, what their favorite teams are, everything that will give me the ability to reach into my CRM, pipe drive, and document all the stuff that I do, all the stuff that they have told me.
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That will spark an idea.
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Guaranteed it will spark an idea.
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And all I have to do is execute and I m going to win.
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I m going to win.
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And it doesn t have to be extravagant.
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It only has to be personal.
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It only has to touch them in their heart, not their head.
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That s what I m going with, Jen.
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Yeah, I mean, so after you have a discovery call, after you have your first meeting, you can follow up with something that helps you stand out.
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You can do it even prior.
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You can, if they ve ghosted you, you can send them something to get un-ghosted, right?
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Because if you send them something about you, it s easy to ignore.
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If you send them something about them, way harder to ignore.
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Guilt sets in.
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This is not sales by guilt, but it s very close.
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You know, after you score the deal, you can send a thank you.
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And again, this is not, you re not buying the deal.
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Okay.
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That defeats the purpose.
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You re sending them something to strengthen the relationship.
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You re sending them something to show that you care about them.
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When, when someone joins my mastermind, I send them one of their logo.
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I send them their logo in a frame.
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Yes.
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I pay Kellen and her business to make that logo.
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And guess what?
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They ll show me how they ve hung it up behind their desk.
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Then I start to see it in their videos.
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They look at it all the time, okay?
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That s a standard gift I send every single time one of my high-end clients joins the Mastermind, right?
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I have a membership.
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Well, guess what?
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I m putting together a membership gift right now.
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And it s a lower ticket item, so it s not gonna be as much about them, but it is gonna be about their success.
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Okay, what I mean by that is it s not going to be customized because if you re paying $37 a month, it s hard for me to customize something for you.
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However, it s going to be customized to their success, customized to the program that they ve joined so that they know that they ve done the right thing.
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People love receiving things in the mail.
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Of course they do.
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But the key is receiving.
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It blows me away that people ask for referrals.
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Referrals are a gift.
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You receive gifts.
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You don t ask for gifts.
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Hey, could you give me another referral, please?
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Because I really need them.
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You know, these are things that you earn.
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And when you touch someone personally, you build up your earning points.
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Very important for you to understand that.
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So there s lots of different times throughout the sales process that you can be creative and use your creativity to stand out from your competition and to strengthen your relationship with your client.
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Unless you don t ask the right questions at the beginning.
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You need to fill your idea bank with data.
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So if you re ever feeling stuck in the sale, well, then it s possible you re just not being creative enough.
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If you ever feel like the sale is at a halt, you know what the best thing that you can do is give them an idea.
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An idea is, is a gift.
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An idea shows your creativity.
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It differentiates you from your competition and it shows how you re going to be able to work with them down the road.
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It also makes you proud to give it.
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And the salesperson has that sense of pride like, man, I did this for this person.
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and it worked, they loved it, I gotta do this again.
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You know, it s incentive to keep doing it, because I can promise you, after 40 years of doing this, it works.
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And it works in a way that you can t even define.
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And what happens is, you give them something, they automatically wanna give you something.
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Like it s an oh yeah.
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And you re teaching them how to use that creativity to be able to build a relationship.
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That s the whole deal.
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Build the relationship and you win.
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And it s not about your bottle of whiskey or bottle of wine or any of that kind of crap.
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Anybody can do that.
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Anybody can do that.
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And they do.
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But your job is to be different than the other person who s giving something to them.
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Just that simple.
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It can be more expensive, but.
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Jeffrey, you talked about some of the things that you ve received.
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What s something that you ve given to a client that s helped you score the deal or strengthen the relationship or earn a referral?
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At Walmart, there was a guy who was in charge of this Coca-Cola account, and a big vice president, big shit guy.
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And I found out that he went to Northeastern, which meant he was from Boston.
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And I decided to take a chance and give him a signed picture of Ted Williams.
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And for those of you who are unaware, Ted Williams is arguably the greatest Boston Red Sox player that ever lived.
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And Jen, I gave him I gave him the photograph and he started to cry.
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Wow.
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Ted was the first baseball game he ever went to with his dad.
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And just I mean, you don t know.
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But if you if the gift has personal possibilities, then you give it away.
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You totally give it away.
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One year for my birthday.
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Hillel Presser, the great Hillel Presser, gave me this business card framed.
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It s a Steve Jobs business card.
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I look at it every day.
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I call Hillel once a week to thank him.
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For years.
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Think about what inspires you.
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Think about what you re willing to put on your desk every day and look at.
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And maybe it s something simple as a picture of your grandkids or your kids on a mouse pad.
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Maybe it s something as complex as a Steve Jobs business card.
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But whatever it is, it s personal.
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and meaningful.
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When it s personal and meaningful, you score.
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When it s a bunch of crap about you, no score.
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So why do you think it is that salespeople focus on being competitive versus being creative?
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Because they have never read a book on creativity.
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They have a quota and their job is to meet the quota and their boss has a foot up their ass about meeting the quota.
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Measuring their numbers on CRM instead of measuring their data on CRM.
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That s a great point.
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So I m challenging you diehard.
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You have to stop the stupid stuff.
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If your company has a bunch of shit with your name on it, you use it.
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It s your company.
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But I want stuff with my name on it.
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I want stuff with my company involved in it.
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I want to be able to use this in a way that absolutely works.
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John Rulon, the great John Rulon, gave Jen and I coffee tumblers.
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It could have had his logo on it.
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No, no, I use these to drive back and forth to the beach.
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I think of John rule and all the damn time.
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How s Charlie doing?
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For those of you who can t see Janice Charlie on her lap.
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Yeah, she s good.
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She s just wanting to go outside because we ve been recording for a bit and she doesn t like when I give Zoom all my attention.
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She prefers to have it to herself.
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She gets Zoom envy.
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Do your dogs get Zoom envy?
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If you re listening, let us know.
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She gets total, the minute Zoom comes open, she s like,
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I wonder if dogs could swear.
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I want to make sure that your creative juices are flowing.
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And I recommend that you go out and buy the two books that I showed you earlier, the Thinker Toys books and the Serious Creativity book, Thinker Toys by Michael Mihalko and Serious Creativity by Edward De Bono.
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And I recommend that you get them as fast as you can and don t read them, study them.
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And we have no ax to grind.
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Like we make nothing if you buy these books, but these books have been tremendously helpful in building the business that we have.
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And we re sharing that resource with you because there s so much gold in those books that can help you be creative, more creative for your customers.
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I ll say this one last thing.
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We started off by talking about competitive versus creative.
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When you become creative,
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you re already a step ahead of your competition.
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Every time.
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You re beating your competition without focusing on the competitive part, okay?
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You re beating them because you re in it to help your customer.
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And so what are you going to do?
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Are you going to make this about you or are you going to make this about them?
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Because when are you going to win more when you focus on the customer every single time?
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In 1908, when Arsene Schwedt-Martin said, the world makes way for a man with an idea, 120 years ago, he knew what was going on.
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He knew exactly what was going on.
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And you can learn that very same lesson today, Diard.
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Very same lesson.
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Until next time, I m Jan Gittemer.
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I m Jeffrey Gittemer, challenging you that if you haven t read a book on creativity, you re going to lose to someone who has.
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Thanks for listening to the show.
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Don t forget to like, share.
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Yeah, share with both your friends.
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And subscribe to the podcast.
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And remember, we have a free 22 day sales challenge.
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Just go to gator.com slash sales challenge to start you on your way.