“Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non performance can always be explained away.”
-Harold S. Geneen

Tuesday while driving home from family vacation I spotted a diamond behind the counter of a gas station register. While I walked into the 15×15 ft tiny room that held only a cooler and two racks full of snacks and candy bars, that “diamond” (otherwise knows as Jack according to his name tag) was delivering a dazzling performance. He leaned over a small microphone that could be heard through the speakers at the gas pumps and enthusiastically announced, “Hope your day is going great! For the next 10 minutes ONLY we have a buy two candy bars get one free special! Come on inside and treat yourself!”

Then as I approached the counter to pay for my daughter’s bag of pretzels he smiled and said to me, “Those pretzels might make you thirsty. Right now you can get two 16 oz Cokes for only $2.22.” I walked out of that store spending slightly more than I had planned but got an opportunity to watch a top performer in action. I had never seen somebody work a cash register and a mic with such passion. As I walked away, I wondered how many additional sales he created each day, month, or year just by LOOKING for additional sales opportunities with EVERY customer. Is there any doubt this sales HABIT will produce significant and sustainable results? Of course not!

So this week, be like Jack! Let NO prospect leave you without you having tried to sell and serve them more. So go for the add-on sale! Ask for the referral! And make it a HABIT. Because the only difference between Jack and the average “non-performing” salesperson is he knows the formula to becoming a Diamond. It’s to LOOK for diamonds in every prospect he sees.

“But wait, there’s more…”
Billy Mays

This week the sales world lost one of its great Pitchmen, Billy Mays. His ability to create millions of dollars in sales by pitching common household products landed him on his own Discovery Channel show known as Pitchmen. So what can we learn from Billy that will make us a top Pitchmen or Pitchwomen? Well there are many lessons, but perhaps the biggest one that stands out is Billy’s ability to make common products seem uncommon. To do this, he made his demonstrations fun. They never got stale or boring. He was able to get more done in a two-minute commercial than most “professional” salespeople can get done in 60 minutes.

So this week, pick your favorite product to sell. Then sit down and write a short two-minute commercial on what makes that product so special. It should include

•    An introduction,
o    “Hi, I’m Billy Mays here for What Odor.”
•    Heavy on Benefits
o    “Eliminates Embarrassing Odors with One Spray.”
•    The Secret to How it Works
o    “Non-Toxic, All Natural Formulation of 41 Oils.”
•    Where to Use it
o    Sour Milk, Moldy Rotten Cheese, the Litter Box
•    Wow Examples
o    “Can eliminate a Skunk’s Odor”
•    Call to Action with UREGENCY
o    “Order now and we will add a second bottle.”

By taking time to think like Billy Mays, you will have developed the essential ingredients of what will become your greatest sales presentation. So thanks Billy, for teaching us how passion, energy and an occasional loud voice are essential tools to not only getting prospects interested, but committed.

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.
-Walt Disney

The definition of entertainment is: an activity that is diverting and that holds the attention. So when delivering your product presentation, do something that diverts your prospect’s mind to keep your message interesting. If you are a team leader holding a meeting, do something entertaining to make your audience want to listen to your vision. Below is a list of some entertaining things you can do to spice up your delivery:

•    Smile and laugh more frequently. When your audience sees you loosening up, so too will they. And when their mouths are open with laughter, so too are their ears…and their wallets!
•    Tell a story that illuminates your message. As you paint the picture, their imagination brings them closer to your words. Stories are salespeople’s most effective yet most underused sales tool.
•    Use images, audio and even video to stir the senses. These can be used in email, voicemails, PowerPoints or any other place you make customer contact.

In short, have a BLAST when selling or presenting, by adding entertainment to every contact you make. Because the Sales Business can be just like Show Business. And there’s no business like it! So let YOUR Show begin!

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
-Albert Einstein

Quick question. Can you make something out of nothing? For instance, if I handed you a stack of Post It Notes™, told you to get with six of your closest friends, then gave you six days to CREATE something of value using only the Post It Notes™, what would you create? Well that is what groups of aspiring young entrepreneurs from around the globe were forced to do as part of Entrepreneurial Week sponsored by Stanford University. And the ideas that came back six days later proved that imagination is truly the gasoline of progress. To see what they came up with view the YouTube video below.

So what are the lessons learned from an exercise like this? For one, it teaches how imagination is vital to creating value from minimal resources. For instance, you may have a new sales territory with few established customers. So what!  Stop thinking the way you are thinking now. Your imagination can help you make something from nothing. Or perhaps you are a corporate executive trying to put together a plan to take market share away from your biggest competitor. If so, stop thinking like every other executive and start using your imagination. Or perhaps you are an operations manager facing exploding costs that are ruining your balance sheet. If so, it’s time to let your mind go “Post-al.”  Because the sooner you realize that your imagination is more important than your Excel spreadsheet, the sooner you can create the well-oiled company that you always dreamed of.

So here is this week’s exercise. I want you to assemble with one or more people on your team or in your company and engage in an imagination exercise. You may choose to grab some Post It Notes ™ and take 20 minutes of pure imagination time to create something of value using the notes. Or pick a business related challenge that your company can’t seem to overcome and ask everybody to come up with the wackiest ideas they can to overcome it. Then open your mind to the possibility that one of those crazy ideas might just be the solution to make you and your company famous in your industry.

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.
-WALT DISNEY

Spring Break is here and a ton of folks will be heading to Disney World for the “experience.” In fact, about 44,000 people each day or about 16 million people each year will trek to Orlando. An even more impressive number is that almost 80% are REPEAT customers. So what did Walt Disney create that that we too can create in our own businesses? The two words that come to mind are FUN and REFERRALS. And what can those two words do for your business?

• Fun is innovation, creativity, and adrenaline. It produces productivity, loyalty and morale. Fun creates communication, teamwork and reduces conflict. Fun creates a profitable culture, increased sales and retained customers and employees. And fun fulfills our basic human need to be happy. So with all these benefits of FUN, why don’t more salespeople and companies use it? Some have.

Companies like Disney and Southwest airlines have harnessed the power of FUN to create loyal and repeat customers, and so can you.  But you have to schedule time to think of ways to add fun to your job. For 15 minutes each week, step away from email, get off the voicemail, and put your creative energy to work by thinking of innovative ways to create a customer experience. Then go do it. Do it just for the fun of it, or do it only because it works! Either way, a company or a salesperson that doesn’t “bring it” better be prepared to lose business to the competitors that do.

• Referrals- Surprise people with a fun customer experience (internal and external) and they will tell their friends. But don’t just stop at fun. If you are making your customers smile while providing big value, you need to ASK them for referrals. It’s a nice little game of give and take. I make you smile…you give me the name of three friends who would also like positively outrageous service.

So this week, find ways to add fun to your customer’s day. By doing so, you will have earned the right to ask for referrals. Make it a habit, and you will learn just how fun it is to cash your commission check, build a top performing team, and bury the competition. Let the fun begin!

This week, Brian interviewed author T Scott Gross on his weekly radio show. Scott wrote the book “Positively Outrageous Customer Service,” and shares tips on how you can use FUN to get to the TOP.   Go to www.preciseselling.com/Radioaccess.htm to listen to the interview. To find out more about Brian’s sales and leadership programs, visit him at www.preciseselling.com or email Brian at bsullivan@preciseselling.com.

“Diamonds are only lumps of coal that stuck to their jobs.”

B.C. Forbes (1880–1954)
Scottish journalist and founder of Forbes Magazine

There are only three ways to become a diamond in your career. If you are a professional salesperson, the formula is easy:

1. Become smarter and more skilled than the average rep

2. Make more prospecting calls than the competition

3. Be smarter, more skilled AND outwork the competition

And you know what is so great about this formula? You have total control over it. So if you are unhappy with your sales results at this point in the year, take a close look at that list above and decide which one you are going to work on. If you chose option #1, then here is your mission. Buy a business book, sign up for a sales seminar, or schedule time each week to get on the phone with a respected mentor. If you are the option #2 type, increase the number of prospecting calls you make by at least 20% this quarter. And these 20% don’t all need to be cold calls. In fact, just by turning a portion of your current account “order-taking,” follow-up, and service calls into SALES calls, you will find it easy to get to that 20% number.

And lastly, if you are looking to become a 5 Star Quota Busting Diamond, choose option #3 and do both! Because if you dedicate yourself to both mastering your great profession through consistent education as well as increase your activity level, the only thing that will be lumpy at the end of the year will be the wad of extra cash in your wallet!

To learn more lessons about getting to the TOP, listen to Brian interview some of the nation’s premier business and motivational minds on his weekly radio show by going to www.preciseselling.com/Radioaccess.htm. President of Kansas City-based PRECISE Selling, Brian delivers seminars and internet training programs on sales, customer service, leadership and presentation skills to companies of all sizes. To find out more, visit him at www.preciseselling.com or email Brian at bsullivan@preciseselling.com.

Promise only what you can deliver.
Then deliver more than you promise.
~Author Unknown

October 1, 2008

Do you know anybody who makes a habit of breaking promises? And as you think about that person right now, what does your face look like? I bet you squinted your eyes, tightened your upper lip and felt a moderate surge of frustration. But don’t let it get you. In fact, feel that pain in your gut and make a promise right now to never make anybody feel like you do right now. Because if you go to the “promise breaking dark side,” you will have given up perhaps the greatest gift given to you…the ability to use words to consistently and positively influence others.

But living with integrity not only delivers what some might consider “touchy/feely” benefits. It also yields top individual and team performance which usually translates into more sales, more profits and more success. In his book, The Integrity Dividend, Leading by the Power of Your Word, author Tony Simons did a study of 76 Holiday Inn Hotels. The study showed that the average employee’s perception of how much the employee ‘s manager kept promises and lived by stated values, drove hotel profitability more strongly than employee trust, sense of fairness, commitment, or satisfaction. In short, keeping promises results in higher profits. And in the case of individual Holiday Inns, that meant an additional $250,000 annually!

So this week, whether you lead internal or external customers, keep your promises. Your customers and associates will trust you more. And when they trust you more they will become more emotionally attached to you and your company. And that attachment will translate into a very profitable Integrity Dividend” for years to come.

To learn more about The Integrity Dividend, listen to Brian interview author Dr. Tony Simons on his weekly radio program by going to www.preciseselling.com/Radioaccess.htm. As President of Kansas City-based PRECISE Selling, Brian delivers seminars, podcasts and internet training programs on sales, customer service, leadership and presentation skills to companies of all sizes. To find out more, visit him at www.preciseselling.com or email Brian at bsullivan@preciseselling.com.