Greg's Right FIT #378

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Selling
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Selling

• New concepts take time for people to absorb. Give them time to do it, but come armed with analogies and metaphors to speed things along. Connect to what they already know.
• Trust takes time to build. An element of trust is consistency. Helping a prospect connect to your past or your company's past demonstrates consistency, speeding up the process.
• Personalities are hard to change. Behaviors, less so. It's why we are told to "focus on the message, not the messenger." For sellers, remember prospects struggle with this as much as we do. Don't rely on a perfect message to do it all.
• Talking about trust and communication is great. But more sales are lost because the seller isn't talking to a buyer than through lack of trust or bad communication. Asking "Am I talking to a Buyer? Can this person prioritize funds, or will they have to ask permission to spend?" does wonders.

Being Human - Earning trust and new business

An old post from my website. I still work with this guy! He and others in their firm are doing a much better job of not "relying on the firm's reputation" for winning new business.

Immediately after the call

“I don’t think they believed me,” he said while we waited for the elevator to arrive. “What do you think?”

“I agree,” I said.

“Well, what would you do differently?”

The elevator arrived, we walked in, and punched “G” which triggered the doors to close.

“I wouldn’t do anything different. You did well.”

“But I didn’t get anything.” He blew air from his nose. “It’s just like always. I get an appointment, we have a nice conversation and nothing happens. You’re supposed to help, aren’t you? You’re the guru.” He let that hang while the doors opened to the garage. “What am I doing wrong?”

It's a great question. Boiling over with hundreds of assumptions and thousands of days of life experiences from a man who, from the outside, has everything going for him. Except a stable of new clients banging down the door to do business with him. His firm’s essential requirement for advancement. He is stressed.

“Let’s talk about this tomorrow. I have an idea that will work for you, but I don’t have time to go into it right now. How about I meet you early for coffee?” It sounds like a stall, and it is. I need to meet his managing partner for drinks, but announcing this might send him into a barricade at ninety miles and hour with no skid marks.

“Fine. I’ll meet you in the lobby at 6:30.”

Man, these guys get up early, I think.

The next day

He has coffee waiting for me at a window table, punctual as always. A serious look on his face. Someone not used to having problems that he can't solve on his own.

“What do you have for me?” Straight to the point.

I pull my notebook out and set it on the table. “First, let me ask you this. Was the woman we met yesterday, familiar with your firm?”

“Yes. Everyone knows us. That’s part of the problem as I see it. . .”

I held up a finger.

“Before we talk about that, I have one more question for you. Did she know you?”

...

(if you want to read the rest, click here)

Random Stuff

“The youth who follows his appetites too soon, seizes the cup before it has received its best ingredients, and by anticipating his pleasures, robs the remaining parts of his life of their share, so that his eagerness only produces a manhood of imbecility and an age of pain." – Oliver Goldsmith, (I feel seen)

A package arrived a few weeks ago. Girl Scout Cookies.

A classmate, who started a family later in life, said his little girl joined a troop, one thing led to another, and I found myself looking at an order sheet. I support the brave scouts that make it to my front door with orders of whatever they happen to be selling. I remember trying to push raffle tickets on the neighbors, but that's not why I buy. I buy because I am secretly critiquing their little sales pitches, comparing them to my memory.

I'm very judgy.

To make up for my critical thoughts I buy stuff. Usually just one or two things. Enough to help them and their parents with quota. 

When you order online, it's different. There is a minimum order size. I think it was 6 boxes. Six dollars each. No big deal. I pick one of each available flavor. Then I get to the shipping. 

$12!

I catch myself being a curmudgeon again, remind myself part of the money goes to a good cause, and plunge ahead. A few weeks later my $50 worth of cookies arrives. A few days after that the last box of cookies disappears.

I have no self-control.

One of the first boxes I tore into is a new flavor, Raspberry Rally. A Thin Mint without the mint cookie. It was ok, I think. It all happened pretty fast. A week after the cookies were out of my life I find out people are selling boxes of Raspberry Rally for as much as $200 on eBay. 

Fudge. 

A little patience and I might have been able to make the sting from shipping go away.