Wanna win friends and influence people? Trying to figure out who moved your cheese? Looking to go fish? Do you know your color code? If this makes any sense to you, you’ve probably been in sales before, or, at the very least, you’ve managed an office where you had to coordinate many different personalities. I spent 20 years in sales. I detested every second of every minute I spent in that element. In a sales environment, you’re Lil Nas X taking your horse down the old town road one minute. The next minute, you’re Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Who’s that? EXACTLY! Sales means you’re only as good as what you produce tomorrow because that record setting deal you closed today has already been forgotten. You come to work worried. You go home worried. You sleep worried. Is my job in jeopardy? Did I do enough? Did my boss see me doing enough? Did my coworkers see me doing enough? Is one of my coworkers trying to steal my enough? It’s tense in the world of sales. I got out. I was really good, though, so they asked me to train the salespeople. That, my friends, is when I learned one of the most important lessons in life. You can get almost anything you want with a compliment.
What was a single mom with no job history doing in staffing sales? Precisely. Sales is a place where anyone can fit in. You don’t always need prior experience or a specific degree or even a certain skill set. You just need to be willing to pit bull your way through situations. Stay on the phone. Sniff out those leads. If it smells like a potential sale, bite it and don’t let go. Turns out, good clients are very similar to children. They herd about as well as a colony of feral cats. In other words, if you’re good at corralling a bunch of kids, you’d probably make a decent salesperson. As I mucked my way through the ankle deep waste created by an inexperienced salesperson, I began to see some familial correlations. If you want someone to buy something from you, they have to like you. You can buy the widget from one of the other 500 people who will ding-dong-ditch their way past the receptionist today, but you can only buy the widget that gets hand delivered by Dina from Dina. So, how does Dina leave the right impression in the 10 seconds of phone time before Suzie HR hangs up the phone? It’s the same way Dina gets the stinky 10 year old kid to shower every few days. Make ‘em feel special. And, when you’re managing people, it’s a pretty identical situation to managing a family. There will be disagreements, lots of disagreements. Lots of gross discussions. Lots of please never do that again speeches. Oh, but won’t there be speeches.
To read more please log in or subscribe to the digital edition. http://www.etypeservices.com/Forney%20MessengerID423/
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.