What you Must Know to Sell More

I was about a month in the training business when I had one of the most impacting sales calls I think I have ever had.

My job at the time was to call on businesses, try to have a conversation with the manager to assess if there was anything at all we could do to help them be more efficient and to work better as a team.

Just walking into this place kind of gave me the willies.? You know how sometimes you can just feel when something wasn’t right? Well this was one of them. The whole place was darkish, something in the eyes of the employees gave me the feeling that they were afraid of something, and it was eerily quiet.

So, Me, in my ignorance, brimming with bravado, walked up to the reception desk and asked for the manager.

‘He can’t see you now.”

“When is a good time?” I queried.

Then from out of nowhere I heard a booming voice “Who is it Janet?”

“Just some kid with a briefcase, probably a salesman.” She shouted back

“What’s he want?” He shouted back.

“Nothing, I was just sending him away.”

“Find out what he wants first.”

She turned to me and asked, “Okay what do you want?”

I gave her my name and company and was just getting to the purpose of my visit when she cut me off, “I don’t care about your name, I just want to know what you want.”

“As I was saying,” I started again, and she cut me off again.

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“But I wasn’t…”

“What do you want with Mr. Daniels?”

“Well, we’ve been doing some work with companies just like yours and getting really good results, I thought I’d see if he had a few minutes to talk about growing his company and building a positive work environment.”

“We’re not interested.”

“How do you know?? You haven’t asked him yet.”

“I decide who sees him and who doesn’t, and he’s not going to be interested.”

“How do you know?”

Then that booming voice interrupted, “Well, what’s he want?”

“I was right, he is a salesman.”

“What’s he selling?”

“Some kind of training, I think.”

Thinking that I didn’t have a shot at anything anyway, I decided to join in on the shouting and said “I can help you raise production and build communications.”

Silence.

Icy daggers behind horn rimmed cat glasses stared at me, piercing a hole right through me.?

I don’t think anyone ever did what I just did before and they were taken off guard.

“Well, come in then.”

And we talked for about an hour about the company, the vision that they didn’t have, the unengaged employees and the results they were getting.

And I walked out of there with nothing.

Nada.

Zippo.

Goose egg

Nix.

Well, I did learn one thing: Just because people are stagnant, not wanting to grow or improve, doesn’t mean that you can motivate them to do so.? They’ve got to want to, and in order to make that happen, you must find out their why and then their what.? Because when you talk to people about what they are interested in and not what you want to talk to them about, they will talk to you for hours.

I was trying to sell them something. A better way of operating.

They were happy with the way things were.

I also learned that where there is no gap between what people want and what they already have, there is no room for any kind of motivation or movement.

Find out who they are first and what they want, and then in the immortal words of the great Zig Ziglar “You can get everything you want in life if you’ll help enough other people get what they want.”

Make an Impact today!