Sales - 6 Things I Wish I Had Known

I was thinking about this the other day and several things jumped in my mind. Things that I wish I'd known would have really given me a better sanity about starting a new career. I wish that I had known when I started. When you know, the more you know about how winning goes, it allows you to. It gives you a toughness, it gives you stay in power. You realize the process that you're in. Rather than immediately interpreting known when I started immediately interpreting everything, that I'm not good enough. Oh no, I'm not good enough. If I can't do that, this is taking too long, too hard. I shouldn't be having these problems. So if you know certain things, if you know how the process goes, you don't do that to yourself. That can cause you to quit early and miss out on the life you want. So let's just go through some of them. First of all, I'll do it like this. And this would come in down to that. It's. These would come down that it's a process. You know, I would say let's just say it's a process. So let's get going. First of all, it's not how gifted, it's not about being gifted. See, I was always wondering, am I good enough? Am I good enough? Am I good enough? But it's not about that. It is about something else. What do you think it is? What do you think it is? It's about how hard will you work? Yep. See, when I came in, will you make that a you work? When I came in, I thought it was a matter of how clever I could be. And this other. I did realize no matter how clever you are, you got to put in the hours. And as you put in the hours, you get good at all the things you're not, you're not good at because nobody's good at everything. And so everybody's got to work in some aspect to get better or not. So it eventually I realized these people, sure they were gifted, it was because they'd worked hard. And if I would work hard, I could catch them. The other thing is I had them to learn from so I could accelerate my development by learning from the gifted people, asking them questions, observing them this, that, the other. So here's the thing. When you see people doing great things, it's not about how great they are. It's whether or not you can reach their level. It's how hard will you be willing to work. Well, most of us have had to grind around and we're used to working, you know, we're not used to being pampered, so we don't mind working. So if that sounds like you, that's good news for you. I wish I'd known that. I wish somebody pointed that out to me more clearly early on. It would have been a great encouragement to me. Second thing is everything. Let's do this. Everything is a sale. Everything that you want to get done is a sale. Everything involves moving people, getting them to do something or to buy something or interested in something they're not interested in. From everything, meaning everything you do in life where you get up and you want to impact the world and you see things that need to be fixed, changed or whatever, you've got to involve other people and it's a sale. If you're a parent, you can yell at your kids, you can beat your kids, but if you want to have real success, you're going to get your kids to see why this is to their advantage. Now, it may take 15 years, but eventually you've got to get it in their mind that this pays off for them. Doing it this way, if you're a coach, you can yell at your kids, you can boss them around, but you know, a lot of those kids can quit too. But what you want to do is tap into them and let them realize the special things on the table they can accomplish. Everything's a sale. You've got to tap in and get their want to button going. And of course, if you're teaching, if you're doing any kind of leading, you have a company, you have employees, any kind of Everything's a sale. And when another thing, everything's a sale. Every step of the way is a sale. Getting people attention, getting them to calm down for a minute and give you, you've got to give them a reason to be still for a minute. We got to go talk. You got to, you know, you've got to have, give them reasons. You can't dictator your way around through life. You have to entice, you have to interest, you have to give people reasons to work with you. So it's. Everything's a sale. Okay, three. What's three? What's another one? Well, another one is even recruiting. If you want to build it. You know, you'd think recruiting would be different. Hiring people, adding them to your team. No, even recruiting. Every step of it is a sales process. And I could do more of that later, but it's a step by step thing. And you'll see, once we get get down in some of these, you'll see how that works a little later, but now another one is most people don't care. Whatever it is that you're involved in that you want them to care about, most people don't care. And you cannot let that discourage you because there's a whole lot going on in the world. There's a whole lot for people to get interested in and to be consumed with and have pressures. But most of the people, either from timing, interest level, ability, whatever, they just not going to care about what you're doing. They're certainly rarely going to care as much as you see your job. This goes back to everything as a sale is to get them to care at least enough to cooperate with you for what you're trying to accomplish with them. Now they, even though most people don't care, they won't all be oblivious or whatever. Some will. Your job is to find the some will. What we do is we go out and we talk with people who are overwhelmed. Most people are a bunch of idiots. Most people, I can't get their attention. Most people, they say they'll do something, but they won't. Well, most people don't care about whatever it is you care about, but some will. So you can't stall out worrying about the people that don't, because that's going to be most people. Because you don't need the whole world, you just need a few. So some will. All right. I wish I'd known that. Another thing I wish I'd known. Let's see how many. We can probably have about six or seven of these things. Sales. When you want to make a sale, getting people to agree with you, to cooperate with you, to get on board, it's not. You don't get there by beating them over the head with details. Sales is an emotional thing. You, you got to get them to care about it. You've got to get them to want it. You've got to get them to where they see how this is beneficial to them. You got to show them why you're excited about it and then get them excited about it for themselves. In other words, you're excited about it because of how it impacts you, what it could mean to you. It makes a difference. This is something special, something they need in their life, a change that you need to make. Something along those lines. Oh, and this is something that they need as well, because bang, zoom, look at all the things it could do for them. So it's not a matter. You're not going to get them to that emotional point. We won't go into all of the sales thing. But the thing is you're not going to get them by just boringly going through a checklist of details. You know, the new car has 2018 inch tires of radial Michelin. And you know, we've got, okay, we have, you know, we have this kind of steering wheel and they've re engineered the drivetrain and we have leather in the seats. And you know, that's not what's going to cause them to buy the car. They buy the car. If they get excited about the car. They see themselves and they go for a test drive and they see that thing sitting in the driveway and they got, you know, they get it and it makes them smile. See, that's how sales are made. It's not the detail. I spent so much time worrying about details. It just wore my. I wore myself out. And then when I go make sales, I try to make sales, but I'd be wearing them out too. So now what is number. And here's another aspect. This explains why some of the dumbest people in any sales organization can rise to the top. They may not know everything. You're sitting over there and say they don't even know this. They don't know that. Yeah. But what they do know about it, they're excited about. And they can get other people excited about it. All right, let's go over to six. And the six would be that everything is a sale, but every sale is like climbing a mountain. All right, you're going to have, it's a process. Point six is this. When you go see, what I thought here is my mistaken idea. I thought, okay, Larry, you learn the presentation, you learn it, you find someone, you say it and then you go through the whole presentation and they buy it. Unbelievable. I'm so excited because I talk to them, they might ask a question or two. Very smoothly. They buy. They said when it was over, in other words, they said, wow, this is great, sign me up. It's the same thing like in recruiting. You know, you offer them the chance, you explain it to them, they go, bam, I'm in. That's not it. It's like you're starting a relationship. It's not a relationship they're going to have with you, but a relationship they're going to have with that product. They're bringing that into their world. So it's like a mountain down here, you know, you're going to have. If you ever climb a mountain. Now these might, some of them might be hills, you know, might be this high. Some of them Bite like this. But some of them may be monstrously high and you might have to go up and down in a valley. And then we got to go around this way. You know, it's like climbing to the top of the Himalayas. You know, you can't go straight to the top all the time. So. See, I always thought you started here and you got the presentation going and the presentation was so incredibly powerful. It was like the snowball thing. It was like once you started that presentation, bang, zoom. This thing just went down the hill with excitement. And they said, I want it. And that was how sales worked. No lumps. They wanted it or they didn't. And if I did it right, they would want it. And I'd hear people say things like no. The first time they say no. No doesn't mean no. And I think, well, you're just harassing them. You hear these horror stories of people who stay around for 10 hours, you know, brow beating people in a binary. I don't really do that. They say, you don't want it, don't want it. I'm out of here. I'm not going to force them. I'm not going to be unpleasant, I'm not going to be annoying. Well, the thing is, it's like, think of it like this. You get up to a certain point they might be with you, you start talking about it. Then they come into something, something you say or something about it, or something happens. Cause them say, oh, I don't like that so much. I'm not quite as, you know, that might remind them of something in their past or something that came up before, whatever. And all of a sudden they're not as happy with you, not happy with that. And so, no, I'm not interested. So you're losing. Well, what I would do before is, okay, party's over, pack up, get out. Somehow it didn't work. Magic didn't happen. You know, I'd be like trying to light a birthday candles at a birthday on a birthday cake. And the first match goes out. I'd say, okay, party over. I guess we're not gonna be able to have birthday this time. No, you light another match, you idiot. You know, you sit there, you know, give them time, start talking about something else. It's just like if you're trying to make friends with, with a someone of the opposite sex and you get on there, all of a sudden it's not going so great. Well, talk about something else. You don't pack up and leave. You know, it's like, see what they Think on this. Mention something else, and then you can kind of come back. And then when the time is right, get back on track and you move around here. But they're going to have an objection and they're going to say they're going to decide. Definitely, I don't want to, you know, definitely. Anybody's ever got married probably had times, right? During the courtship, they said, this is over, this is not going to work. Forget it. That's not the one for me. Then something happens and you get back together and you get back on track. See a little bit of a winding road up and down, run into peaks and valleys. Things have got to be cleared up. Edges got to get knocked out, folks. Sales is like that. Sales is not perfect. It's there starts and stops. You might have some rocky moments in there. The first time they say no, or the second or third time, it could be just simply because they understand it at that point or under those conditions which they understand incorrectly. No, they're not going to do it. But give it some time, relax, talk about something else, then come back and get around it. Give them time to vent, Give them time to get there, to let off steam. If they've got a bad idea, don't interrupt them. Let them run. Give them time to ask questions. Give them time to get comfortable with it. Get them time to build a relationship with the idea of having this product, having this thing, having this service. You don't get that by ramming it down their throat or by making the miracle presentation and shortest period of time very efficiently, like a snowball going downhill, and it just bam, happens. No, it's always a little bit of a winding road. And that's why salespeople are made so much money in the economy, because you can't teach sales. You can teach about 10% of sales in one of these weekend training classes that people put on. You can learn some of the basics in sales, but sales is getting to know people and getting them comfortable with something new. So that's some ideas for I Wish I Knew It. And when you run, Let me just say this. When you run into a sticking point in here, get them talking. Don't you keep talking. You shut up and you ask them a question and let them talk to you. You want to get back on track. When it looks like a sale has gone sour, you shut up and you get them talking. And as they talk, that'll bring them back into line and you'll find the moment will come to where you can get back on track and start moving forward again. I wish. Those are things. Those are sick things. I wish I'd known when I got started. You like those. And I think we could cut that down to pretty thin.