Favorable attention…Jack of all trades…

Favorable attention …And more successes

Remember that awkward high school moment when you were standing next to the girl of your dreams and couldn’t come up with anything better than some lame comment about Friday’s game? Too bad you weren’t able to deliver some witty comment that would have led her to think you might be Mr. Right. Well here we are all these years later but now we’re standing in front of a great prospect and once again find ourselves wishing that we had something better to say than introducing ourselves by name.

But what if we had a ready list of comments or questions that would garner some level of favorable attention from that buyer? Maybe even one that would lead him to think that he might just benefit by listening to you so that he could learn more about what you might be offering? Think of it as being not all that different from that enticing online headline you saw earlier today. You know, the one that piqued your curiosity and got you to click on that link?

There’s a very good reason why earning favorable attention is the first step in the (earn / learn/ match/ explain/ close) sales process. Armed with that foundation we can build a solid sales presentation that has the best possible chance of resulting in the sale. Who knows what might have happened all those years ago if we’d have had a comment that would have gotten us a date rather than a polite brush off?

 

Jack of all trades …Master of one?

Did you ever consider just how challenging your job is? It takes a pretty rare blend of so many skill sets. In the “jack” category you need to be a semi-skilled, plumber, electrician, mechanic, chemist, psychologist, public speaker, bean counter and occasional HR staffer. In the “master” category in addition to many others, you need to be a skilled sales pro and expert operator trainer.

To one degree to another all those varied abilities are essential for success as a soaper. Sure, we’ve all seen one or two associates who didn’t know how to hold a screwdriver and who yet made it because they had extraordinary interpersonal abilities. But in the main, a deficiency in one or two in that long list of skills spells failure sooner rather than later.

People sell cars without much knowledge of how one works, life insurance with no actuarial background, and even computer systems with zero software coding skills. But try succeeding in our business with those sort of knowledge deficits and you wouldn’t make it a month. So the next time you consider the nature of what you do and what it takes to prosper, take a minute to realize just how special you just might be.

Next up: Examining those deficits.