Archive | April 2016

Value, Price and Cost – Not Always the Same

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The Price and Cost of Value:

            In the process of bringing others into our dreams, we often end up taking the position of a salesperson. We are attempting to show the people we speak to the Value of what we have to offer, but what does that really mean? What is Value and how do we judge if we are succeeding at showing the Value of what we have to offer? First, we have to understand 3 key concepts about how people think about something when they are deciding if they should purchase it.

            First, we must understand Price. This is the simplest of the concept to keep in mind as it is something that everyone of us deals with on a daily basis. Price is simply the amount of money that is needed to get the product, good or service. It can be $1.79 for a loaf of bread.

            The second concept is Cost. Most people would look at you like you grew a second head when you told them that the Price of something and the Cost of something where very different things.  In our modern world, the most common usage of these words are the same, cost is price and price is cost, but that isn’t what we need to be thinking of. Cost is those intangible things that might occur if the person does or does not purchase the product. They are things like the security of knowing that you purchased something worthwhile (like being able to feed your family or take trips), or the amount of time that is required to fulfill the needs of what they have bought. A good example of cost can be seen in auto insurance. On the surface, every company offers pretty much the same thing at competitive prices, but the way that the companies handle a claim can be drastically different. The Cost of choosing one over the other might be the pain and trouble that is involved with dealing with a claim from one company to the next.

            The Last point is Value. This is simply the result when you add the price and cost together and subtract it from the benefits that the customer is getting from purchasing the product. It is a very subjective measurement since the benefits are going to be different from person to person as are the costs. The real key here is to show the benefits, the reasons that the products solves problems and improves the person’s life.  This will help make them comfortable with the Costs to minimize their impact. If you do these things, then the Value will be sufficient to have the customer buy your product or services.

            A good exercise here is to sit and think about your product, service or dream. What are some of the Costs that people might have in connection to it and how can you help to alleviate or reduce those Costs? What is the Value it offers?  How can you present these to people so that the value outweighs the cost?  Let me know some thoughts that you might have!


Life’s too Short to Have Bad Days! What are YOU doing to Make Today Fantastic?


A Grimm Day in the City – Part 5

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There, standing in the gloom cast by the dingy streetlamps was a monstrous shape, its thick frame hunched over and it right arm horribly distended and dragging on the ground. The snow falling from the sky increased in intensity and worked to hide the figure’s face, but the pipes extending towards the sky from the thing’s back and belching a combination of black smoke and steam told Grim that he had found his mark. The chemicals that had been injected into the poor man’s body had swollen his muscles, making him a hulking caricature.

The unbroken tirade from Miss Wessex cut off abruptly as the Aberrent moved towards the two, the sound of metal scraping on cobblestones coming from the things altered arm as it was dragged behind. Grimm glanced away from the beast long enough to assure himself that the girl had started to run away, but to his surprise, she had done nothing of the sort. With a speed that could only come from experience, she pulled two highly decorative and modified derringers from the depths of her cloak and fired at the advancing Aberrent.

Grimm watched as the precision strikes from the super-charged pistols tore into the meaty throat and chest of the creature, causing it to stagger. With a shudder the creature began to move forward again, seeming to ignore the large holes the little weapons had created, holes that were oozing a sickly dark fluid.

Shaking his head at the incongruity of it all, Grimm pulled the heirloom short sword from its scabbard and moved to place himself in the way of the coming creature. With a howl of murderous rage, the beast threw itself at Grimm, a face filled with terror, pain, insanity and grief emerging from the cover of the falling snow as it came close. A fast twist of its body sent the bulging, modified arm towards Grimm and he found out the cause of the victims wounds. Three metal blades had been affixed to the bones of the arm, a deadly parody of the fingers that should have been there, pistons driven by the power plant incased within the monster’s torso added power and speed to its attack.

Turning his body into the attack, Grimm brought his sword up to block the claws and braced his back leg to absorb the shock. The precautions proved almost useless as the power of the blow picked him up and threw him, with bone breaking force, into the facade of a nearby building, brick shattering under Grimm’s body as he hit. With a grunt of surprise and pain, he dropped to his knees, his head bowed.

Twin cracks of thunder told the dazed Grimm that the girl had still not run, but had reloaded her pistols and continued the fight. Shaking his head in disbelief as much as to clear the daze, he pushed himself to his feet unsteadily and threw himself into melee with the demon. The thing’s attention had been pulled to the pistol wielding girl and Grimm took the opportunity to land a brutal blow with his short sword on the brute’s back. Sparks flew as his sword rode down one of the exhaust pipes and sunk into the fiend’s flesh, a flesh that felt somehow unusually spongy and resilient. A long gash opened up where the sword bit in and the same dark ooze poured out of it as had dripped from the earlier bullet wounds. Hopping back from the attack, Grimm narrowly dodged getting backhanded by the Aberrent’s arm, the thing moving with a speed that seemed unnatural in something so large and lumbering.

Grimm began to dance with the beast in the snow slicked street as the Lady Wessex moved to the mouth of the alley and continued to reload her weapons with an eerie calm that was only countered by the excited glint in her eyes. Only Grimm’s fast footwork and long years of fighting experience kept him outside the creature’s attacks, the speed and ferocity of the onslaught pushing Grimm to his limits. As the fight began to draw out, the demon began to emit a whine of rage that soon became a howling barrage of madness. The sounds of pistons churning and the gears that made up the joints of the Freak’s right arm added to the cacophony that it was creating.

Lady Wessex opened the breach of her first pistol as she watched the hunter and hunted fight, the smoking cartridge of the spent round hissing as it jumped from the gun and fell onto the wet street. Her heart racing with an insane fervor since the combat’s had started and she could feel the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, protected below her respirator. The thrill that was sending tingles through her frame was a hundred times more intense than the ones she felt when she trained with the pistols she had one of her father’s scientists custom make for her. This was real and awakening, nothing like the charade of balls and high society she found herself trapped in day after day.

Out of the corner of his eye, Grim saw Lady Wessex finish loading her guns and take aim. Just as she began to pull the trigger, Grimm made a feint towards the monster’s left side. As the beast whirled to attack with its right arm, Grimm ducked under the attacking arm as the crash of the girl’s gunfire slammed into it. The mutant paused from the pain long enough for Grimm to come out behind its right side and with all his strength he drove the point of his blade into the gear mechanisms in its altered shoulder, jamming the gears.

The creature began to flail, its right arm not responding. With even louder howls of fear and rage. it began to throw itself around on the cobblestones of the street. Grimm jumped back away from the maddened Horror and watched. He was certain that the jam would cause something in the beast to break and give him the edge he needed to finish it off. It just didn’t seem to be taking any real damage from his sword slashes or the lady’s bullets.


The Myth of Rick Quick scemes

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Massive change is nothing so much as a process of time. The things that radically can change our lives in a macro sense do not happen all at once, or over the course of a few weeks, rather they are things that take a lot of time to develop. The key here is to realize that fact and then create habits that utilize that idea. These are little changes that we make now so that when the time rolls past and we look back we see a massive change in our lives. When we look back at the dramatic and drastic events that happened in our lives, rarely will you see a profound and lasting effect on your life from them, but when we look at a small behavior we changed and stuck with, you will see a life changing alteration when you look back.

A great example of this is the Magic Penny idea. Perhaps you have heard of it. The essence of it is a choice between being given 3 million dollars or a single penny that doubles every day. Which do you choose?  It turns out that it only takes 31 days for that penny to turn into a little over 10 million dollars. This is the same concept that we are driving at here when it comes to choices. We can choose to make a very large and dramatic change in our lives and get that done(picking the 3 million), but if we instead choose to make a small but profound change, over time that small change will make the massive change look like nothing more than a stepping stone(the penny).

The key here to decide on a couple things that you want to change in your life. Maybe you want to put money away each paycheck so that you can create a savings or retirement, or maybe you want to lose weight. Instead of binging on these choices, trying to put away every extra penny you earn each month of running an extra 10 miles a day, making small sustainable changes will get us to our goals  in a little longer time. It doesn’t do your life any real good to run 10 miles extra a day for a week and then giving up on it since it is too hard. Rather, making a small change, running an extra 10 minutes every day, is change that you can sustain and turn into a habit. Then, after a bit of time, you will see that those 10 minutes have you had you run far more miles than the 70 extra you did over that one week.

Focusing on a short term goal isn’t a bad thing, but it needs to be done in its place and for its reason, getting something done on a deadline. The major changes in your life, the things that are going to carry forward into the rest of your days are not these short term binges. They are the small changes that we have made habit and live with every day, building every day on the pile we added to all those days before.

For me, I am going to take the proverbial penny and look back at the life I left behind with wonder and awe at how far I have come and for how little effort. Will you take the penny as well?

4 Life Hacks for Easier Sales

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When we look at the selling process, there is a lot of thought about our product and how we can show others the value of that product. A lot of thought about the customer and how to fulfill the needs that they have and the to solve the problems that they face. Sometimes we get so focused on our customers needs  that we do not take the time or effort to really invest in our own growth so that we can achieve our goals in concerns to selling with less effort and better results. To that end, here are four traits that we should develop within ourselves that will enhance the process and make it more efficient.

First: there is developing strong goal clarity. This is something that we have been talking about quite a bit here, the ability to create goals that are clear and precise and steps to achieve those goals. In the selling process, we want to apply those same concepts. Before we ever sit down with our customer, we want to create goals for the interaction, things that we hope to convey and information we are looking for to better help our customers. This step allows us to have a game plan for the interaction and keep us on track, just as our own goals lay out the road that we will travel to our personal dreams. This is just a more finite example of the strength that clear goals can give us.

Second: creating  a high achievement drive. This is the motivation behind the goals. This is the Why for us. In our life goals, this needs to be something powerful and integral to our lives, but in the selling process, it needs to be something that will allow us to resonate with the person we are talking to. The best idea here is to have your Why be the drive to help out someone else, to better someone else’s life. This will create a connection between you and the customer that will build trust and respect, vital keys to our process.

Third: developing emotional intelligence. This is twofold, the first of which is to understand our own emotions and how they affect our behavior and our impact on others. We need to understand ourselves before we can hope to understand other well. So take some time in your life over the next week or so and watch your emotions and how they affect those around you. Are those the impacts that you want to have? If not, how can you adjust the display of your emotions to better achieve the goals you want? The other side of this coin is to be able to recognize other’s emotions and how they might be affecting that person. Reading the other person can be a great instrument in allowing us to connect on a deeper level than we would have otherwise.

Fourth:  Improving our communication skills. This isn’t just learning how to convey information or concepts  well, though that is a part of it. Instead, this is learning to recognize how the person across the table from you or on the other end of the phone acts and what style of communication works best for them. Are they the sort of person that just wants the pertinent details and then to make an immediate decision? Or are they the sort of person that wants few details on the product, but wants a long conversation with you to build connection and trust? Maybe they want all the nitty gritty details and then to be left alone to pour over them to come to a decision. Being able to recognize these behaviors styles and cater to them well will build trust and respect with your customer and allow them to come to the decision on their terms. In fact, if we can present our product to solve the problems in their lives in a method that caters to their behavior style, we don’t actually need to “sell” our product.

Taking time to hone our own skills and to grow into adept communicators will enhance the selling process  and our lives far more than just learning our products inside and out. So take some time and harness your inner abilities and tell me how they do over the next few weeks!


Building Trust

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Once a conversation has occurred between us and our customers, the need is still there to reinforce the trust that we have been building during previous conversations.. No matter how good the product is, or how sincere we really are, the customer will not buy if they do not have sufficient trust in us. There is a step before we actually ask for the close that gives us an opportunity to reinforce the trust that we have been building during this entire process and that is where we validate the customer’s concerns and translate cost into value.

During our initial conversation, we have already determined the needs or problems that the customer is attempting to solve by looking into our product. We have taken the time to understand those accurately and demonstrate how our product can meet these issues for the customer; now, we need take that one step further and validate the customer’s concerns. Show the customer that you understand their problems and that you are sympathetic about them; that you are working with them to solve the problems. This step helps to strengthen the trust you are building because it shows that you are concerned for your customer, that you care about them, rather than  just the sale.

After the demonstration is the time to learn how the customer defines value. Is value for them a cheap price, a well made product, or maybe it is the customer service that comes with the product? These are all values to your customers and they will likely have many different ways to define value based off their lives and needs at that time. We need to understand what they consider value so that we can show them how our product gives that value. If we keep harping on how cheap the product is, that might be detrimental to the process if the customer values high end manufacture and associates cheap products with badly made ones. That doesn’t address their concepts of value, so understanding what creates value for them is crucial to this next step.

Now we need to translate the cost, the resources of money and time, service, which our product has into value for the customer. In the example above, we can work to address how well made our product is, translating the cost of the product into the value that our customer is most concerned with. Just by this simple translation, we show that we are taking the effort to understand our customer and their needs which, again, goes to strengthen the trust that we have built in the rest of the process. We are also cutting past possible objections by addressing the product values of the person we are talking to. Remember that everyone will have a different view of what is valuable enough to accept the costs of something. Here is where you preparation comes in handy as you need to have examples and proof of the value that you are creating for your customers so that they can indulge in embracing their trust of you.

Taking the time to understand how our customer’s view of value is another vital step in turning that “maybe” answer to our closing request into a “yes” and is something that you should do with everyone. What sorts of questions are you going to use to develop your customer’s views of value so that you can really develop that growing trust?

If you would like to do a 30 minute skype with us about how you can do that, we offer it for $50.  Just message us and we will schedule time to skype with you and coach you personally.  

Small steps for HUGE Benefits

Minimal Effort for Maximum Gain:

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For many of us, the world has taught us that we either deserve everything we want as a matter of fact or that we must sacrifice everything we want to achieve our goals. These are two very common mindsets in our culture. Our schools teach us that we are all special and that everyone deserves to be the best and the brightest whereas our legends and myths teach us that only by sacrificing everything that we want in life will we achieve our dreams. On the one hand, this has bred a culture where individuals  believe they are entitled to what they want and if it doesn’t get it, that the world has slighted them, that they are being oppressed in one way or another. On the other hand. it bred the life of driving ourselves to be overworked, over-stressed and never living the life that we have been given. There is a middle road, a road that actually reaches our dreams in a way that allows us to live them but how do we find it?

The trick to living this balanced life is to understand that the little things that we can change in our lives create massive change in the future for us. The little habits that we can develop without much effort compound into change that can be startling as long as we stick with those little changes.  Eat only 100 calories less a day and weight will start to melt off you.  That can be a simple as ordering one size smaller of coffee at your coffee.  The effects will not be immediate and life changing out the outset, but the eventual effect will be nothing short of magical.

Let’s take an example that we all face most every day. We all go to work or stores and need to find a parking spot before we go inside. We have all be trained to look for the closest parking spot because it is ‘convenient’, even to the point of circling the parking lot half a dozen times in hopes of just getting a little closer. How does this really help us in our life? If we spend effort searching for a parking spot, we are not saving any time and only exchanging the physical effort of walking for the mental effort of trying to find the right spot. What would be the downfall of taking the first parking spot we found? In the scheme of our lives, there would be no downfall, but we ignore that because of our training. Now, what would be benefit of taking that spot further out away from the other circling cars? We would walk more in our daily lives which is good for our overall health. We would also avoid the stress of trying to find a parking spot, which will likely lower our blood pressure, also good for our overall health. In one simple move, we have removed a habit that is detrimental to both our physical and mental health and gained a slight improvement to both. How would that look over the course of a year if we did it every time, every day? We would be healthier and happier than we are today with this minor change in our habits. Now take that one step further and park in the back of the parking lot. There are always empty spaces there so the stress will be reduced even more and the longer walk will help up physically even more as well.  These positive effects will get compounded over that course of the year.

This idea can be applied to most everything in life, finding little things that we can do to improve the impact of our activities over the long run. We don’t need to sacrifice our dreams to get where we want to be, nor do we deserve to be there without any effort on our part. Instead, we can go about these changes intelligently and maximize the effects of minor changes in our lives.

What little things like this can you do to improve your life every day without feeling entitled or sacrificing your dreams? What little things can you change to better your life? Are there some things you can do to even get closer to those dreams?

Standing Tall

Posture Power:

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What we say while we are talking to people are only part of the story that we are telling them and it isn’t not even be the most important part of the story. Since one of the key factors to our success is that we create that sense of trust with the people we speak with, we have to be hypersensitive about the methods that we may be using to create that trust or damage that trust. Our posture is one of the top things that can influence this.

There are many aspects to posture as I am referring to it. It is more than just sitting up straight and being attentive to the person that we are talking to, though those are part of it. I am also talking about the attitude that we display outwardly and the tone and conviction of our voice. Let’s take a more in depth look at these aspects of our posture.

The first portion is our physical body language, the way that we walk, sit and generally are in a physical sense. Are we building trust by wearing a ratty hoody and jeans with holes in them or is that a method to damage any trust? Are we hunched in on ourselves and not making eye contact with the person we are talking to? These are ways that our physical posture can affect the conversation and our ability to make that trusting connection. Instead, we need to be upright and attentive, looking our customer in the eyes and portraying the image of someone trustworthy. Even if you are working from home, take time to dress for success before making that phone call.  The person on the other end of the phone may never see you but the tone of your voice will vary if you are dressed professionally or if you are still in your PJs.

Next up: verbal communication styles. We need to be sensitive to how our tone and verbiage affects those around us. We need to use tones that convey our passion and excitement without bowling the other person over with volume. We need to take careful stock of the words we use and how we use them. For one person, using everyday slang may make them more comfortable with you while another person might think it demeaning and damaging to the trust you are trying to build. We need to gauge our customer and what styles of verbal communication will work best for them. The behavior types are a great way to get an idea of how to speak with someone.

Finally, we need to be cognizant of our emotional posture. We need to be in the moment and concerned with the person that we are talking to. If we are somewhere else rather than with the person we are speaking with, that will be noticed and damage that trust we are building. Understanding our emotions and how we communicate them is vital to creating the trust that we are seeking in our endeavors. If you are mentally creating your shopping list while talking to someone, they will notice your lack of engagement.  If you are worried about your child or pet, this will affect your communications as well.  Be present and connect with them rather than distracted and disengaged.

All of these things add up to be our posture and that is vitally important to our endeavors. Studies have shown that most of human communication is nonverbal, so ignoring the conversation we our having while we are not talking is akin to ignoring most of the conversation and that will damage any trust that we are building. Trust needed to actually do our jobs as well as needed to be comfortable with ourselves.  

Take some time today as you go about your life and pay attention to your posture. Where can you improve it to be more fully engaged with the people you are interacting with?

A Grimm Day in the City Part 4

The filthy snow continued to fall all that night and for the next few days as Grim began to move through the slums of the city in hunt of his prey. As he had told the rich fool, the quarry was much harder to pin down than it would have been if it had been a half-crazed Aberrent native to the slums. This one was leaving a gruesome trail of mutilated bodies in its wake and moving on mere minutes before Grim arrived upon the scene. As such Grimm had been witness to the dying breaths of a dozen victims in the past three days as the last of their ruby blood flowed out from their torn and sundered bodies into the already filthy snow and ash they lay in.

Each time the murder would happen in the depths of a dark alley and Grim was coming to the determination that the beast held the view that what he was doing was not for the public eye, be it for shame of its acts, fear of open reprisal, or just a dislike of being seen in the form that he had been forced into. All the murders had been committed on the outskirts of the city as well, within viewing distance of the dense, foreboding forest that surrounded the town.

The most recent murder had happened in the early predawn light of the fourth day since Grim had taken the job, a time longer than most of his previous hunts, the slight change in light almost unnoticeable in the gray miasma of fog, snow, and ash that covered Grimm’s world. The corpse was that of a young girl, maybe seventeen years old. Yet she was drastically aged due to a hard life she lived in the choking, twisting confines of the poor sectors. Hard lines etched into the stone that her countenance had been forced to become. The body still twitched on occasion as Grim came upon the seen, the splattering of blood that covered the wall the girl had collapsed against glinting wet and viscous against the foul moisture the snow had left behind. Droplets of the crimson fluid would find crevices in the worn brick and drip back down the wall towards the torn corpse. Three huge gashes crossed her body from the left shoulder to her right hip, delivered so deep and with such force that the sternum and ribs had been shattered and the lungs turned into grisly tatters. The look of horror and pain locked into the girls face bespoke of the appearance of the Aberrent, a beast that had developed a fierce reputation among the poor that it preyed on.

A muffled scream tore from the mouth of the alley, setting Grim’s world on edge and throwing him into a spin that saw his blade half drawn from its scabbard, the ornate handle glinting in the feeble light shed by the streetlamp just outside the alley. There, in the mouth of the alley, looking in on the scene torn from brimstone scriptures,  was a pretty woman draped in a deep green cloak with less than pristine white fox fur trimming that covered a neat, if overly ostentatious, fitted jacket and skirt of gold fabric. The tip of the bejeweled breathing apparatus she wore quivering, a delicate, white doeskin gloved hand held to it in shock and revulsion. Her bright green eyes stood open wide in terror, tears moving to the corners, but Grim could see a deep seated wonder hidden behind her reactions to the scene in the alley.

“What in the name of all the demons of hell are you doing here, Miss Wessex?” Grim hissed, the anger rolling out from behind his sturdy leather breathing mask.

“I… I…“ She stammered, the words getting caught in her throat along with the bile rising from her stomach. With an effort of will, she pulled her eyes from the disemboweled girl and looked directly into Grim’s dark eyes. Pulling an ethereal covering of haughty nonchalance around her she answered Grimm’s question. “It has been several days and you haven’t completed your end of the bargain. My father loses business partners daily due to this scandal. He sent me to remind you of your duty and to see that it gets done.”

“Your father is a fool who brought this on himself, and you are more so one for coming out into this death trap.” Grimm hissed, his words quite and vehement, but his mind was not on the conversation any longer. The sound of wet gears and the hissing of steam escaping from a pressure tank had caught his ears, sounds that stood out against the sudden lack of the normal sounds of life in the slums. With careful steps, Grim began to move out of the alley and towards the odd noises, noises that came closer with every heartbeat. The girl launched into a tirade about calling her a fool and was paying no attention to anything but Grimm, as he brushed past her and into the broken cobblestones of the main street.


The Emotional Closet

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If you are around my age or older, and especially if you are male, you have been taught for the majority of your life that emotions are something to be kept as private as absolutely possible. Taught that displays of emotions are outright bad and should not be indulged in any situation. Instead, we are taught that we should replace them with logic and reason and hold to those ideals and leave emotions behind. This attitude is actually stymieing to our efforts to sell anything.

As I have said many times before, humans are herd animals. We long for the companionship of others and for connection to those around us. We need a group of people that we love and that love us to functions on any level. These connections are not rational or logical; they don’t follow paths that make sense to our analytically trained brains. Instead, these connections are made through the sharing of emotions and the closeness that comes out of that sharing. The people that are closest to us in our lives and that we cling to the hardest are those that we have shared our emotions with the most, our parents, our siblings, our lovers. They are that close because of that emotional sharing and they would do anything for us and us for them because of it. This is something we need to remember when speaking with our customers.

When we do sit down with someone new and begin the selling process, we need to balance the dual halves of our personalities. The facts and figures are going to be an important factor in the sale, but conveying our emotions and being aware of our customer’s emotions are going to be the reason for the sale going through or failing. On our side of the table, we need to learn how to effectively convey our feelings to the customer. Not just the feelings of joy and excitement that feel about our product, but the real emotions of pleasure and joy of trying to help someone else. If we are sitting there impassive and emotionless while recounting the facts and figures we miss out on a couple important aspects of the conversation. We miss the opportunity to instill our excitement in the other person, so get them excited and riled up for the product. Additionally, we do not create any sort of closeness to the other person. It is that closeness and trust that you create with them by sharing your emotions that will let them feel comfortable in actually buying the product.

The second step in our emotions is that we need to learn to be cognizant and receptive to the customer’s emotions. It does nobody any good if we try to connect with someone if we are not listening to them first. We know this on a cognitive level, that we need to listen to the answers that they give and help to alleviate their concerns, this is just as important on an emotional level. We need to be able to listen and address the emotions that they are struggling with as well. Are they afraid of taking the step forward and getting the product? That might not come through in their words, but if it isn’t addressed then they will never buy. You have to aware of their emotions or you can never help alleviate the negative ones or bolster the positive ones.

The only way to learn how to read and understand other people’s emotions is to get in touch with our own, to throw off the training from our childhood and come out of the emotional closet! It is time we became a whole person rather than the shadow that we have lived as utilizing only one side of ourselves.

Selling Made Easy

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When I first started in a sales position, I had a lot of trouble with actually making sales. Some of it was due to not believing that I could sell people things, but part of it was also the method that I was using to sell. The belief in my abilities came through experience and more and more time went by and I got more and more sales. The second problem was solved when I took a class on selling. It gave me a strategy to use when selling that I still use today and have found to improve my sales significantly. Today I will share that process with you.

The process that I was introduced to had much more to do with the client then it did with what I was actually selling and it could be condensed into 5 simple steps:


Step #1: Introduction – This is where I meet the customer and start to establish a rapport with them. It sets the tone for the rest of the conversation,

Step #2: Interview -This is the step that I always missed and it hampered my ability to sell for quite some time. In this step, I am asking questions of the customer in order to establish what they are looking for, what problems they are looking to solve or challenges that they are having. This is vital for the rest of the selling process.

Step #3: Demonstrate – This is where I show the customer how the product that I am selling to them will solve their problems or simplify their challenges. It does not have to be a physical demonstration.  

Step #4: Question and Answer – This is a time to ask if there are any questions or blocks that the customer is having that are preventing them from purchasing the product at that time. Once I find out those questions, I go through and work on answering them to the customer’s satisfaction.

Step #5: Asking for the Close – Here is the final step and is again one that I always had trouble with until this training. This step is simply asking the customer to purchase. If you have done the last step correctly, this should be a simple “yes” or “no” answer. I was like most people in that I let things hang after the Q&A section and never actually ask them to purchase the product. As such I didn’t sell  much. This simple step increased my sales almost two-fold and it is so easy to do. Always remember to ask for the close.

Through these steps I learned and became comfortable with selling to people. As I practiced this process over and over again, I became comfortable with it and it started working even better. I have become one of the top salespeople in my office simply from following these few steps. It has also made me more comfortable with the selling process.

When I first got into sales, I had the idea that it was essentially manipulating people into getting something that they didn’t need. I always had the image of the slimy used car salesman in my head. The training on these steps opened my way of thinking greatly. This training taught me that it is more effective to find out what the customer actually needs and then help to find a solution to those problems with the product I was selling. This changed my entire outlook on the process and has resulted in my actually enjoying the selling process as a whole.

I have taken this lesson and use it in my current endeavors as well and I find that they work out in any venue I choose to use them in and I know that you can too! So tell me how these steps will help you in your selling process.