Freezing, frozen…Polishing that pitch…
Freezing, frozen …Forget it!
When it comes to protecting our chemicals from the damaging effects of cold, there’s more than one level of precaution. Aside from the rupture of a container if we allow a pail of detergent to become a complete popsicle, there are three levels of consideration.
First, we have those items labeled (or classified), “Freeze/Thaw Stable”. These are the blends that can be frozen solid and when they thaw, will return to completely usable condition without any action on your part. Products that have this classification are pretty darn robust. By the way to earn that classification, they must be frozen and then thawed three times without any damage to their performance.
Next come those items that cannot be frozen. These are normally labeled “Do Not Freeze”. To continue the ice cream metaphor, if these are frozen, they will likely be rendered to a permanent “parfait” or layered state after thawing. With these more delicate blends, no amount of agitation will reconstitute them. Bottom line: they are now expensive chemical waste!
Finally come the ones that can be reconstituted, but which won’t self-heal. The rub is that these may be labeled with no mention of freezing or may even be listed as Do Not Freeze. Notwithstanding that labeling ambiguity, if you’re lucky enough to have one of these, when returned to room temperature and gently agitated, they’ll reconstitute. Be cautious about celebrating however until they sit overnight to confirm that they indeed survived the deep freeze.
Despite some items being capable of handling freezing, the common-sense bottom line continues to be storage in temperate locations for most of our liquid chemical products.
Polishing that pitch…Pressing for truth
If you’re evaluating that stock sales pitch and can’t decide what parts to keep, modify and or discard, here’s a novel idea: Ask a prospect who just heard it.
Hey, we all know that the absolutely best approach we can use in selling is to ask questions – versus making statements. Of course, asking the target of your “affections” to evaluate your presentation may seem like an odd way to apply that maxim, but what do you have to lose?
And what might you gain? That’s especially true if you just dropped a clinker and it’s pretty apparent that the sale isn’t proceeding anyway. You might be very surprised at what you learn. Moreover, by probing that prospect on which part (or parts) didn’t exactly hit pay dirt, you might just stumble on to what does!
Asking customers and prospects aside, there are your associates. They might just have some great insights into what is and what isn’t effective. And while you’re at it, they might just benefit from your appraisal of their standard presentation. And finally, don’t overlook your significant other. After all she has a vested interest in your doing well and can be totally candid…maybe even too candid ?.
No matter the source used, we all need to find the weak spot(s) in our presentations to bolster and or replace them with better stuff. Do that and just maybe you’ll find prospects more often deciding that they might just benefit from listening to what you have to say.