Why Call When You Can Stop By? No Way!
Why is it so hard to learn how to talk with people? Why does this take such a tremendous effort to do and do effectively? Meaning, generate leads. I don’t know, it seems to me, if you want to improve your sales you have to improve on your effort. To me, that makes all the sense in the world. More effort, more sales. Simple! Why do we listen to people who can’t do something and then tell you to do it, or tell you it can’t be done because they can’t do it? And, of course, the worst part is, you believe them. What’s even more ridiculous is someone telling you something can’t be done when they have no proof it can’t be done. They just listened to someone else who couldn’t do it.
What happened to the challenges we’re suppose to create in sales to become better at what we do? Where did all that go? I see sales people today just wasting away. Here’s what I mean. Sales people today accept minimal standards of success, minimal standards of accomplishments, minimum standards of presentation skills, prospecting and referrals, and so on. What happened? Where did all the energy go, the drive and ambition from sales people? I give up; I can’t figure it out. I have to say this just to get it off my chest. When I was a preneed counselor, there was no one to take us out and show us how to generate good leads and leads that were sellable. Why? If the company did not spend money to market leads we were dead in the water. If they didn’t set up a phone room, that was it, we were done, that’s for sure. We died on the vine, became our own clients. It was a nightmare. And, we were out looking for a job that provided leads. Leads, leads, and more leads. Boy, without leads you couldn’t make it in that field, nor could you in any field of sales. So what did we do? Well, we had to make a decision. We had to figure out a way to get out there and find our own leads. We had to decide. Boy, that was a real scary thought. The problem was, what are we going to decide? To work and work hard or to not work and not work hard. That was an easy decision. So, we started looking for new jobs as a lot of sales people do. Only kidding. There had to be a way to find leads that was not so difficult to do. A couple of us got together and brain-stormed over lunch. After all, you can’t think on an empty stomach, you know? Here’s what we came up with. Let’s get referrals. Let’s talk to people we don’t know. Let’s call existing clients and ask them. Let’s send out flyers. Let’s advertise, run a small ad. We chipped in to do that. We were getting so excited about all the things we were going to do, we could hardly contain ourselves. Let’s put together some seminars at senior citizen places and churches and clubs. “Oh my God, this was great!” we finally had a plan. We had a mode of attack to generate leads and write all kinds of business. We were great! We decided to start the following week, which was only a few days away. We felt it would be better to start off right, you know how that is. Then, all of a sudden, it was Monday morning and we had to get going, and someone had to ruin it all by asking a stupid question. And that just put the kibosh on everything. Took all our excitement away, all our energy and ambition to succeed. We could have strung him up by his toes, we were so mad. This guy had the nerve to ask us: “What are we going to say? What are we going to write in the ad? What are we going to talk about, at the seminars and who’s going to do it? What are we going to say to the client to get referrals, how’s that going to work?” it was at that moment we realized we were in big trouble. “Big, big trouble!” no one knew what to say or do. Do you? And, herin lies the problem for a lot of sales people in the business. What to do? How to do it? What to say? How to say it? It’s the same problem for everyone. Where to go and what to do when you get there? This can be very troubling. Then, the “do not call” rule came out, leading to more trouble. Now what? Well, companies have spent a fortune trying to figure out what to do without spending more money. Everyone started looking to everyone else for a solution to this mega-problem and still no magic solution arrived, except going back to the basics: Door Knocking. I went to one cemetery and told them I could teach them to door knock and make 15 to 20 appointments a day, 150 per week and 600 per month. Of course, they laughed me out the door. No one can do that, they said, it does not work. Here’s what I believe. Any problem is solvable if you believe the problem is solvable. You just have to look for the way to solve it. Of course you’ll go through all the traditional things ways, and then you’ll start creating things to do until you find the right way. Herein lies a big problem: Knowing what to look for. Please don’t take this personally. Most sales people are so conditioned that they don’t know what to look for because of their own conditioning. It stops you in your tracks. So, what do you do? Let me help you out. First, recognize as a fact that sales people stopped thinking years ago. This is not a negative thing; it’s just a thing. This has happened because of our conditioning. I’ll give you a good example everyone will relate too. Go to the mall and shop. Walk into a store, any store. A salesperson will walk up to you and say what? That’s right! You win. They say, “May I help you?” and, of course you say what in return? Yes! Again you win. You say, “No thank you, I’m just looking.” Here’s my question. How do you know both sides of the conversation? This is what I’m talking about when I say that sales people stopped thinking years ago. But, here’s the worst of all. The salesperson hasn’t discovered that “May I…” is not working anymore. Start thinking about what you do on a daily basis. If what you’re doing is not working, don’t do it anymore. This is where you have the problem. What do you say that you haven’t said before? It’s hard to do, but it’s not impossible. Work on it and it will come to you. Remember this: if, you believe there’s got to be a better way, there truly is. Find it. Almost everyone I’ve ever run into has said, at one time or another, that there’s got to be a better way. Yet, how many of those people have stopped to figure it out? Now is the time to do it. When you find it, you’ll be able to book the 15 to 20 appointments a day as I did. Or, maybe even more. There is one other inherent problem here, though. How do you run all the appointments? What you do, and what I did, is divide the appointments among the other salespeople. I got so good at door knocking that I took three family service people out and in just under three hours we set 45 appointments. I figured it out and I’m sure you will as well. “If you think it’s hard-it is!” Don’t give up. If what you are doing does not work, then change it. Keep changing it, as most of your thinking will be related to your conditioning and vice verse. Please feel free to contact Cremation Options if you have any further questions or concerns in respect to this article, direct cremation, cremation services, or cremation costs.
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Awesome post, I learned some tips from this post. I want to learn more.