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April 28, 2009

The Sales Profession: Attention Must Still Be Paid

Ben Stein

Aside from some gardening and baby-sitting in my neighborhood when I was a child, my first summer job was in the summer of 1962, just before my first year of college. It was at Shoe Giant, a large discount shoe store in Langley Park, in Prince George’s County of Maryland, and I got the job thanks to a high school pal who also worked there.

The job entailed selling shoes. The shoes were tossed about in giant bins and some were stored in boxes. Once the customers had picked out the kind of shoes they wanted, my task was to find the right size, close the sale, write up a receipt with my sales clerk number on it and escort the customer to the cashier. A pair of shoes there was rarely more than $10 – and was often less.

I made not much more than a dollar an hour, as well as a small commission. I recall that my first week’s paycheck was about $70.

When are Objections Not Objections

Most objections revolve around a few central themes: the goodness of fit between the product or service and the prospect’s needs or wants; the investments necessary to obtain the product or service; and an adequate demonstration/explanation of how the product or service will deliver the desired result. Let’s look at a couple of simple examples:

A prospective customer is looking for light oak bookcases for her den. She wants light oak so the bookcases will match her other furniture. The salesman shows her bookcases of the appropriate height and width constructed of teak. The prospect says, “These are beautiful bookcases and would fit perfectly in my room, but I want light oak, not teak.” That’s a legitimate objection.

An insurance company has a $22K budget to overhaul their internal computer network. An IT firm competing for the business presents a $27K proposal. The insurance company’s CFO informs the IT firm that he is impressed with the proposal except for the fact that it is several thousand dollars more than they are prepared to spend. Again, another legitimate objection.

Are You A Trekkie?

Melissa Smurdon

Are you a Trekkie? I’m not, but I watched my share of episodes as a kid. Flipping through the hundreds of cable channels the other day, I caught a glimpse of an old episode of Star Trek. For some reason, it called to mind the symbol Spock used for the Vulcan blessing “Live long and prosper.” My next thought was “why do we have so much trouble with the prosper part?”

The same scenario unfolds with clients in session after session of Head Trash Kinesiology (a.k.a. PSYCH-K). The other day, a client and I were talking about his desire to succeed and make money at the work he enjoys. Something always seems to be holding him back. After doing some digging using lots of curiosity, we uncovered a belief he holds that money is evil and those who have lots of it do evil things.

Very few of us grew up with healthy beliefs about money. Maybe you got the message loud and clear “Jimmy, you just can’t have everything you want.” Or maybe you heard “Yes, Suzy, we can afford that new car but that would just be showing off.” No matter what the message you heard as a child, you likely carry that very same message today. And you are probably passing it along to your own kids!

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