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Opportunities Abound -- Seize The Day

I've recently heard a variety of comments about the economic climate and how stuff isn't selling:

• "Nobody is buying anymore."
• "Our customers are cutting back."
• "No one will take my call."

I'm sorry, but I cry BULL$#!+

All change -- especially big change -- is accompanied by huge sales opportunities. If, that is, you ignore the forest and seek the trees.

I started a residential remodeling company in 1978 -- the throws of the greatest recession since WWII ... until now. Imagine the roadblocks to starting a brand new remodeling company today, then add to those roadblocks the total lack of credibility of being only 18 years old when you started it.

That was the situation I faced, and here is how I thrived.

In the residential remodeling business, your best target customer is the husband and wife who buy a house right after getting married and fully intend to be carted from that house in a tandem body bag. These people upgrade their quality of life by changing their existing home repeatedly. Over a 30-year period they generally average one major remodel every five years. And if you do good work on the first job, you will be the only contractor they ever call.

These perfect customers, however, go immediately into hunker mode whenever the economy does a nose dive. They simply stop spending money on remodeling in favor of riding out the storm.

Had I not understood that (well, had Dad not understood it or not told me is more accurate), I'd have spent my days trying to sell to people who would absolutely not buy until the economy stabilized.

And I'd have found myself uttering the same dismal comments quoted above.

In the real estate business, your best target customer is the husband and wife who are visualizing their next home as they're buying the current one. These people love to upgrade their quality of life by moving every five years or so. But when the economy changes, they go into hunker-down mode when it comes to new home purchases, because they're afraid of trying to sell their existing home.

Both of these groups have one major thing in common when the economy falls -- they lose control of their ability to upgrade their quality of life in their normal fashion.

The lesson Dad taught me is this. Just because your current target customer isn't buying that doesn't mean a previously bad target customer won't start.

The lifetime homeowner still wants to increase their quality of life, but isn't prepared to do it through major remodeling. But that doesn't mean these people won't buy new furniture, buy a new car or buy some other "pamper myself a bit" item right now.

The lifetime home buyer/seller still wants to increase their quality of life, but isn't prepared to sell and buy while the economy is in the toilet. But guess what these people will buy instead of a new home ... they'll buy changes to their existing home (and that's exactly the market we penetrated in the late '70s and early '80s).

Yes, maybe the people to whom you normally sell aren't buying from you right now. But someone else is out there ready to write you a check.

People who used to buy sales training from me aren't buying it anymore, because their pain isn't related to improving the skills of their salespeople.

But people I never would have sold to before -- the folks without sales teams -- are buying my Economic Sales Opportunity Audits (http://honestselling.com/opportunityaudit), because their issue isn't training, it's finding the trees in the forest.

The good new is that your stuff will certainly still sell.

The bad news is you must sell it to a totally new group of people and, usually, for totally different reasons.

And the hard part is figuring out what to change, which is why guys like me exist.

Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association

The Rise to the Top

I met David Garland at a Yellow-Tie event a bit less than a year ago and was immediately struck by how engaging and energizing he is. The guy just oozes passion for entrepreneurship and I new straight away he would rise to the top.

Of course, part of that realization might have been his company name -- The Rise to the Top -- and his mission of putting together a television show for young entrepreneurs.

But I think the part that struck me most was the sly smirk in his eyes as he related his "No pleated pants" and "This is not your grandfather's business show" taglines.

Ya gotta love a guy who is having that much fun.

Anyway, I've been following David's show through all its episodes since November, and had the distinct pleasure to experience his high-energy interview style myself last month. For those of you who missed the show on KDNL the past two weeks, you can get the full deal now on The Rise to the Top.

Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association

Natural Flow

"Everything in life has a natural flow. So to get something done, you must look for the flow and match it as best you can." -- Dad

"You can stand in the river and fight the current, or you can sit in the inner tube and enjoy the ride." -- Mom

"Sell with manipulation and the world is your battlefield. Sell with honesty and the world is your playground." -- Me

First, a huge thanks to Mom and Dad for the natural-flow wisdom that created my philosophy about sales and selling and relationships and life.

Second, while today's message is about selling, it is not about selling what you might think.

Allow me to explain ...

About 10 percent of the hands I shake are owned by people who have been downsized, golden handshook or early retired, and who are, quote, "On the hunt for a new job."

STOP RIGHT THERE!

As Mom and Dad said, life has a flow and to get the most out of life you've got to find the flow and follow it to your destination, instead of fighting against that flow in an attempt to reach your destination.

Hunting for a job is fighting the flow ... there is nothing natural about it. Unless, of course, all you want is a place where you can trade some of your time for money and you don't care how the company spends the time you've sold them.

There is, however, a natural career flow for every person. It's where passion and function merge, and here's how you find that flow.

You must "sell yourself" to three different entities:

Entity One: First, YOU must be sold on You.

Let's call this your personal flow.

I've had more than 100 be-useful meetings with people on the job hunt in the past six months. Despite the fact that I've enjoyed every conversation, every resume they showed me SCREAMED boring. (Unfortunately, half these people are using career counseling services and have invested thousands of dollars and countless hours in producing this boring crap.)

Are you boring?

Then why is your resume a shopping list?

Unless you actually are boring, your resume should shout "THIS IS WHO I AM!" "THIS IS WHAT I LOVE!" "THIS IS WHAT I BELIEVE!" "THIS IS WHAT I VALUE!"

Save the shopping list for the grocery store. Your resume must reflect who you are, not what you've done, because people buy people, not resumes.

Entity Two: Second, "they" must be sold on You.

"They" are your network. Let's call this network flow.

You've heard it a thousand times. If you want to find the perfect position, you must network your way to success.

They are the myriad people in your network -- everyone from your spouse to your proctologist. And if they aren't sold on you, they won't help sell you to someone else.

Of the 100 job hunters with whom I've recently met, only a handful offered to help me with anything, while the rest asked me for my help.

Ask for help from 100 people and you'll receive real help from a handful.

Offer real help to a handful of people and you'll receive help from 100.

That's the nature of network flow. You must feed it to get it moving.

Entity Three: Finally, He or She must be sold on You.

He or she is the person responsible for filling the position that perfectly matches your passion. If you build the personal and network flow I described above, he or she is the destination at which you will naturally arrive.

That's the beauty of finding your natural flow -- it takes you where you wanted to go anyway.

Speaking Of Natural Flow

Sometimes natural flow finds you. That's another aspect of flow -- you've got to have your eyes and ears open to spot the right fork.

Dixie Gillaspie and I are not career counselors, are not headhunters, are not resume perfectionists and are not transitional consultants.

But with Dixie's natural ability to help people find and articulate their passion, and my natural ability to turn passion into closed deals, we have a natural energy, synergy and harmony at helping people find the flow to their dream careers.

We realized this only yesterday as our dogs romped in my back yard. So starting with this post (unless Dix beat me to it on Twitter or Facebook) we're now offering a new coaching program for anyone who wants to find his or her passion career.

We'll help you find the flow -- you've got to jump in the tube and ride the current. (The river starts here.)

Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association

Why the Baseball Analogy Doesn’t Work Anymore

Guest Article By: Steven W. Smith, President, M.I.S. Corporation

My first boss was an old-school sales manager who often used this timeworn “motivational technique” on me and the other salespeople in the company: “A good baseball player has a lifetime batting average of .333,” he’d say, “that means that he fails 66 percent of the time he steps up to the plate. But he keeps on trying and makes millions of dollars!”

I have heard similar analogies from other sales managers in the years since – I guess they think the analogy would motivate salespeople to keep trying, keep knocking on doors, keep picking up the phone, etc.

I don’t think it works anymore. In fact, I don’t think it ever did.

Unlike baseball players, salespeople are not paid 100 percent of the time; they are paid on only the percentage of deals they close. They do not have the luxury of failing countless times and still getting paid. They understand all too clearly that a failure does not earn them any money – only success does.

Does that mean they should give up? Of course not! I just want those “motivators” to stop using the baseball player analogy, because it is not relevant.

Let’s focus on what does work, and that is providing more perceived value than the dollars spent.

If you are going to spend prospects’ time, as well as your own, then make the most of it. Show value from the very beginning. Give them something they don’t already have. Relate a bit of news about their industries, for example. Or provide tips to make their lives easier, either at the office or at home.

To do this, you need to do your homework. You need to know as much as possible about your prospects, their industries, their clients and their competitors. Researching, networking and spending face time with company insiders can help you learn what you need to know to add value – and not just when the prospect has bought what you sell, but from the first meeting. If you add value up front, prospects will know just how valuable you are before you even mention your product or service.

And who knows, maybe baseball players’ averages would increase if they got paid only when they hit the ball.

Lessons From Dad: Mistakes

"It's not whether you make a mistake that counts," Dad always said. "The true measure of a man is how you handle the mistake once you realize you've made it."

In my post titled "Taking On Bad Buyers," I wrote about the actions of Mike Mullin, the Director of PR and Media Relations at Smurfit-Stone -- how he hired my wife to improve the image of Smurfit's corporate officers in preparation for bankruptcy, knowing full well her invoice would not get paid before the Chapter 11 was filed.

Yesterday, Cindy received some legalese from Smurfit-Stone about pre-petition claims. The plain English version basically says, "If you'll agree to continue to do business with Smurfit-Stone, we'll pay you everything we owe you within five days."

I have no proof the post I wrote, or the assistance I received from people who read and forwarded it, had anything whatsoever to do with Smurfit agreeing to pay Cindy in full. But I do know that at least four of the corporate officers whose bios were copyedited were informed of my post -- and actually took the time to read it.

And I do know that when Cindy spoke to the Smurfit representative who is handling pre-petition claims, he was said, "I can't believe you're being offered the full payment. Everyone else is getting offers of 30 percent."

But just because I don't know what actually happened, that doesn't mean I can't choose to believe the best.

Therefore, I choose to believe that at least one of the corporate officers at Smurfit-Stone read my post, said some form of "this is crap" and decided to do the right thing.

Whoever you are, you've earned this man's respect.

Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association