Sales Lessons from the Garbage Men #1

Bear gets the garbageSince childhood, I have been fascinated with watching garbage men engage in their trade, and yesterday was no exception. Even if I am on the phone, when I hear the massive whine of the truck coming down the hill to my end of the street, I turn to watch out my 2nd floor window. The driver & 'shotgun' jump down from the truck to transfer the neighborhood's waste into the truck's all-consuming mouth. They joke and carry on while they work, oblivious to any social stigma attached to their profession. Pulling the lever, the truck's jaws compress & swallow our waste into its huge belly. In a blink, they climb back into the truck and charge back up the hill, leaving us with empty bins to be filled for next week's visit.

What, you ask is the sales lesson I draw from the garbage men? Well, there are many, but the top two are these:

1) Sales is about managing the flow of energy. The flow of new business cannot happen if your ‘leads book’ is clogged with stuck deals or poorly qualified, disinterested, dis-empowered or underfunded prospects. Make time every week to take out the garbage. Let it go and move on to new horizons.

2) Be light-hearted as you sort through your leads to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some deals are not meant to happen — not yet anyway. Have fun sorting things out. Joke with prospects as you seek to understand their situation, motivations, dreams and obstacles. Bless them with your love & let them go if the dynamics are not right for doing business together. You may find they will recycle (or refer you) sometime down the road!

Sales Being or Sales Doing

My friend Jim came to dinner recently, giving me the opportunity to get clarification on his comment to my January 1st blog post. As a retired business insurance salesman, I respect Jim's insights. He described his experience selling to prospects who are so wrapped up in their own personal situation that it is all but impossible to 'get through to them'. For him, active listening and related techniques often met with resistance.

The implicit question I was hearing from Jim was this: “How do you get to the soul of the sale with challenging prospects? How do you make that connection?” For a richer answer, I posed it during a Writing Down Your Soul session (did I mention I’m a sales mystic?)… 

Here’s what came through:

“The connection lies within you – in the authentic connection with your own heart and mind – your soul, or consciousness if you prefer that term. For you see, the whole Universe is contained in seed or thought form within that which is your own consciousness. The connection lies in BEING, not in DOING. It is the BEING aspect of human being that unites us with our fellows. Being is that which we ARE. Know your SELF as THAT and you will be interacting with your prospect on the level that unites you instead of separates you. All your emotions, thoughts, speech and action will vibrate at a frequency that touches the most Universal level of human existence.”

The answer continued… “Do not be unduly attached to the outcome of your interaction. The outcome will be orchestrated from the level of Being that sees the best possible outcome for all parties. Know that your actions from this level will serve all, will bless all. And the blessings you facilitate will not go unnoticed.”

I plan to elaborate on this theme in coming posts….

Soul of da Sale - Rap

i got a new blog / called soul of da sale

it's all about sellin' / an' makin' it real

not about pushin' / to get da next deal

your brothers 'n sisters / an' you 're ALL ONE

sellin' to anotha' / is sellin' to y'self

it's all about love / and doin' da right thing

so get in da groove / an' sell from da soul

watch da sales unfold / it's sweet to behold

so blog wit' me now / an' follow my tweets

its time to get dis / out on da streets!

Nobody likes to be sold, but everyone loves to buy!

In many ways, my sales success has been somewhat magical -- supported by unseen forces that have often paved the way to a sale in spite of my innate resistance to formulaic selling techniques recommended in sales training and books. I have never felt comfortable using manipulative or coercive techniques to win the sale. I prefer the honest approach that builds trust, and delivers on promise.

In the Fall of ’08 I was part of a sales presentation to a major financial services firm discussing ways that our consulting services could help increase engagement and conversion for new and existing… customers of their online investment services. One of the ~30 folks in the audience posed the question of when is the best time in a guided online task flow to present the prospect with cross-sell and up-sell offers. As part of our response, I made the comment in the title of this post. It struck a chord with the audience, as well as with my colleague, one of the top user experience design consultants in our firm.

A few months later, I was in the bookstore at the Las Vegas airport returning from a personal trip with my wife, and bought a Harvard Business Review book, On Sales and Selling. It contained a reprint of an article written by HBR editor Edward C. Bursk in 1947 titled, Low-Pressure Selling. Among other things, Edward proposed a selling model that was “not driving the prospect into a buying decision, but letting him reach the decision by himself; not selling him, but letting him buy.” You can imagine, I was blown away by seeing this idea put forward over 62 years ago! And it was so close to my comment at the financial services company.

In the years that have passed since this article was written, how many times have we heard, or even said ourselves, how much we dislike being pressured into buying something that we really didn’t want? How many times has ‘buyer’s remorse’ stricken a pressured buyer who then canceled the sale? If you haven’t seen the movie of David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross, with Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin, you must! It portrays this phenomenon beautifully!

Have you made use of “low-pressure selling” in your sales career? Or maybe you are not in the sales profession, but you intuitively use this approach of helping guide the discussion with a spouse, child, friend or business colleague in such a way that they own the decision, instead of being coerced into it. Let me hear from you!

What is the secret of your sales success?

Anyone who has been asked, or asked themselves that question knows how difficult it can be to put into words what may have become second nature after many years in a sales career. The question hit me in 2006 from one of 8 sales colleagues at an annual meeting for our $13M consulting services company. I had posted another record year of sales, consistently ranking at the top over what was then a 12 year career with the firm.

My answer was something like, "Well Ed, I really love my customers. I listen to what they are trying to achieve, and if I feel the services of our company can help them, I am passionate about communicating that in a way that relates to their challenges and desires."

But I knew there is more to it than that. The question got me going with a strong desire to understand and share how my personal interest in consciousness and spiritual development has paralleled and contributed to my growth and experience as a sales person.

Finally after 3+ years, the ‘musings of a sales mystic’, will support dialogue with my Self and fellow sales people about the successes and challenges, the magic and mystery of the selling experience. I do believe that there is an inner soul — or if you prefer the heart — to the selling experience. I hope you will join me in the dialogue to discover the soul of the sale, and how we can connect most genuinely and fruitfully with our prospects and customers. Please comment to share your experiences.

My appreciation goes out to Ed, who posed the right question at the right time; and to Bill Bauman, one of my favorite spiritual mentors. Bill helped me experience the reality of what Teilhard de Chardin said, “You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”