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Category Archives: Sales Blog

How to Use Social Media to Completely Screw Up Your Life

Sales Blog

I read a lot of news sites to start my day, and one story I read this morning really had an impact:  “Ex-CFO Worker Who Berated Chick-Fil-A Now Lives On Food Stamps.”

The story is that, back when the controversy over the Chick-Fil-A CEO’s stance on gay marriage was raging in full, Adam Smith, a CFO for a medical device company in Tucscon making over $200,000 per year, decided to drive through his local Chick-Fil-A, get a free water, and then harangue the girl working the drive-through about the company’s political stance.  Now, this article isn’t about the politics of the situation.  It’s about posting on social media.  You should watch the video, however; it’s in the linked story.

Within days, Smith was canned by his employer, who claimed that bomb threats had been made.  In the three years since, his video has followed him around; once, he found another job but was fired within a week because the employer found out about the video.  Long story short, he’s still unemployed.

While Smith’s story is one that will cause varying reactions, here’s the reaction I want to create in YOU:  Don’t be a moron when you post on social media.  Here are a few thoughts:

  • First of all, if Smith wanted to make some sort of a political stance, he has a perfect right to do so.  As someone who consults with business owners on employing people from time to time, my concern is not that he made a political point, but that he arrogantly mistreated someone he perceived to be lesser than himself.  That’s a characteristic that will cause problems in any workplace.  I have a gut feeling that his company had already seen some of that internally.
  • Secondly, I honestly wonder how anyone could watch that video (before putting it on YouTube) and not realize that they were showing themselves to be a complete bodily orifice.  Before I post any of my videos on YouTube, I scrutinize them pretty carefully.  I’ve rejected videos because I looked too sweaty.  How could he not realize that he was showing an absolutely unacceptable way of treating people?  That smacks of poor judgement.
  • You can’t un-ring a bell.  He was seeking attention when he posted the video and he got it.  What he didn’t count on was that he couldn’t simply make the video go away; he of course pulled it from his own account, but by then others had reposted it.  There are dozens of iterations of his video on YouTube now.
  • What is said on the news story should be obvious – employers will search out your social media for indicators that you shouldn’t be hired.  One of my maxims is, “People will show you how they will fail.”  I’ve encountered many drug references, and other documentation of undesirable behavior on social media accounts.  “But that’s my private life,” you say.  Well, if you want to keep it private, why are you posting it on the Net for everyone to see?
  • “Freedom of speech” is one of the most misinterpreted phrases in the world today.  “Freedom of speech” only protects you against GOVERNMENT sanction for what you say.  The private consequences of your speech are yours to bear.
  • Finally, I wouldn’t advise him to show this video during job interviews, as he currently does.  However, there is one person in this video who should show it during EVERY job interview – Rachel Elizabeth, the drive through worker.  She handles a bad customer with complete class and diplomacy, and shows herself to be of good character.  If there’s a winner in this episode, it’s her.  I’ve been unable to find out what’s happened with her since the video was shot and posted, but I have a feeling that she’s probably doing better now than she was then.

The moral of the story is simple.  Take a moment to think before you hit “send.”  What seems like a good idea at the moment could literally trash your career and your life.

“The Sales Detective – Asking Great Sales Questions” Teleseminar – March 26

Sales Blog

There is no more important element in selling – NONE – than the ability to ask good questions.

Do YOU know your customers as well as you should?

Are YOU losing sales to salespeople who do ask better questions?

Or worse, do YOU know why you’re winning or losing?

You can get help in this teleseminar!

In “The Sales Detective – Asking Great Sales Questions,” Troy Harrison lays bare the keys to asking the questions that will HELP THE CUSTOMERS TELL YOU HOW TO SELL THEM.  Customers will tell you how – IF you give them the opportunity!  You’ll learn:

  • The two types of questions that you MUST ask
  • The most important objective that drives great questions
  • How what you don’t know can hurt you
  • How to organize questions for maximum effectiveness
  • How to Drill Down
  • The very important “Catch All Question”
  • And more!

This Teleseminar will help you have incredibly productive sales conversations!  If you would like to improve your results by knowing your customers better, you need to register for this Teleseminar!  http://troyharrison.wpengine.com/products-page/events/sales-detective-asking-great-sales-questions-teleseminar-march-26/

21st Century Prospecting Teleseminar – January 29, 2015

Sales Blog

Are YOU not getting enough new prospects and customers?

Do YOU need help understanding how to approach new prospects?

Do YOU understand how prospecting has changed in the last decade?

And most importantly….

Do YOU want a system of generating new prospects that YOU can control?

If the answers to any of the above questions was “yes,” then YOU need to attend this Teleseminar!

On Thursday, January 29, I will be presenting “21st Century Prospecting” in my first ever hosted Teleseminar.  This gives me a change to reach YOU, wherever you are in the country (or the world)!  This teleseminar will be approximately one hour of power-packed content!

Prospecting is, for most salespeople, one of the most important parts of the sales process.  Moreover, it’s the most highly compensated sales skill.  The big bucks in sales go to salespeople who can consistently and repeatedly bring in new business, while of course retaining current customers.  That salesperson can be YOU!

Do you struggle with one of these issues?

  • Understanding how prospecting has changed
  • The discipline of consistent prospecting
  • How to find your target customers
  • How to quickly and efficiently grab a prospect’s attention
  • How to use new social media tools in prospecting
  • How to get appointments

If you do, the answers to your questions, and the tools to solve your problems, will be in this teleseminar!  You’ll receive my methods and tools to consistently generate appointments with new prospects!  Attend this Teleseminar.

Time:  10:00 AM CENTRAL TIME (11:00 AM Eastern, 8:00 AM Pacific), Thursday, January 29, 2015

Place: Your desk (the Teleseminar login information will be sent after your registration)

Registration: $39.95 per person

Registration Deadline:  5 PM Central, Wednesday, January 28, 2015

How To Register:  CLICK HERE to add this to your shopping cart, check out, and you’ll receive the login information in an e-mail.

Thanks, and I’ll see you on the 29th!

An 800 Year Old Problem Solving Principle Still Applies

Sales Blog,

I always chuckle when people, confronting a problem with multiple solutions or a mystery with several explanations, bend themselves into pretzels coming up with incredibly convoluted “solutions” to those problems.  Somewhere, William of Ockham is laughing with me.

Sir William of Ockham was a Franciscan friar in the early 1300’s, and he came up with the principle called “Ockham’s Razor,” sometimes spelled “Occam’s Razor.”  Ockham’s Razor suggests that, among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest solutions should be selected.  Sometimes other, more complicated hypotheses may win out, but initially, the fewer assumptions, the better.

In other words, the simpler the solution, the more likely it’s true.  If you hear hoofbeats, think “Horse,” not “Zebra.”  This solution still applies – in business, in society, and in life.

For example – let’s say that sales of your product suddenly fall off a cliff.  The simplest solution is that another product or service is suddenly offering better value – but I see companies spend millions of dollars to produce research trying to find something different.

In my consulting practice, I (successfully) use Ockham’s Razor frequently.  When solving problems in your business, you should too.  It doesn’t mean that you automatically reject all other solutions – it just means that you start with the simplest and work from there.

Sir William would approve.

A Negotiation Tip From a Fast Man

Sales Blog,

I was recently reading an article on the business challenges facing Formula One race drivers.  Most drivers in F1, since about the Seventies, have used managers for their business affairs.  These managers negotiate contracts, sponsor deals, appearances, and the like – and of course, they take commissions.  With top F1 drivers earning upwards of $40 million per year these days, that’s quite a sum of money.

One driver who was notorious for never using a manager was Austria’s Gerhard Berger, who drove in the ’80s and the ’90s.  Berger was very fast, very rich, and notoriously tight with a buck.  In this article, he was asked why he didn’t have a manager – to which he responded that he didn’t want to pay someone else to do his business for him.

“My negotiation was very simple,” he said.  “I went in with two figures.  What I wanted and what I’d take.  I walked away when the amount on offer was below what I’d take.”  Berger seldom walked away – not only because he was talented, but because he made the negotiation process as simple and painless for his teams as possible.

That’s the way negotiation should be, in my opinion.  No matter what anyone says, few people actually enjoy negotiation.  Negotiation means that the customer has to invent reasons not to do business with you – which is an unfortunate situation.  Berger never forced his teams into that position.

As a result, Berger drove for the top teams, he was well liked not only by the team members but by management, and he was extremely financially successful.  That’s not a bad result, is it?

Want to negotiate the right way?  Here are three simple tips:

1. Have a “Walk away” number – and walk away.  If you’re always going to sit at the desk, you have no power in negotiation.  If the terms are unacceptable, the negotiation ends.  And you’d be surprised at how often ending the negotiation restarts the negotiation on the other side of the table

2. Keep it friendly.  Never get into the trap of a hostile or adversarial negotiation process.  If I don’t win, I don’t play – and by “winning,” I mean a resolution that works for everyone at the table.

3.  Justify your discounts. If you have to lower your price, be prepared to remove some of the features and/or benefits from the offering.  Berger, for instance, would lower the number of personal appearances he’d make for lower salaries.

Negotiation doesn’t have to be unpleasant or difficult.  Follow this path and you can get past the negotiation to the sale – and that’s the fun part!

Three Characteristics of Successful People

Sales Blog

In my business, you encounter successful people, and you encounter unsuccessful people.  If you do this enough, you form theories about what differentiates the two. This particular post was inspired by someone that I was recently asked to mentor.  A friend of mine has a niece that has struggled to find her way in the professional world.  Now in her 30s, she is unemployed, a single mother who isn’t doing well financially, and isn’t happy with her situation.

I agreed to help her a bit.  I would help her write a resume’ that would get interviews, help her with a cover letter, set her up on the major job boards (including LinkedIn), and show her how to quickly and effectively apply for the administrative jobs that she was seeking.  I would NOT refer her to any employers or vouch for her, because this would be an extension of my reputation and credibility.  She was fine with this.  I told her that I’d do this on one condition:  That she devote at least two hours a day to her job search, applying to as many applicable positions as she could.  No problem.

In this short episode, I’ve witnessed the three characteristics that I’m about to discuss with you – in reverse.  By the way, this is not an exhaustive list.  I’ve known many, many very successful people, and they are as diverse as you can imagine – but if you were to draw a Venn diagram of all their characteristics, every one would intersect at these three.

I should also add one other caveat:  By “Successful,” I mean “Successful at life.”  Some of these people make millions every year; others may never top $30,000 in income.  However, they are all happy, self sufficient, a positive influence on those around them, and live lives of consequence.  With those caveats in place, here are the three characteristics:

1. They have strong impulse control.  Look, we all know that there are times when it would be much more fun to just tell the boss off, hit on the pretty secretary, or give someone a wedgie at the company Christmas party.  I’ve been there and had those impulses (well, OK, I’ve given in to one of them but I won’t tell which one). Successful people measure their responses to high-stimulus situations and refrain from indulging in impulses that lead to negative situations.

In this young woman’s case, the reason that she was unemployed was that she showed up five minutes late to work one day.  When the boss reprimanded her for it, she made some comments to the boss that the boss didn’t appreciate -and thus, she was history.

Why was she late?  Because she stopped for cigarettes.  Low impulse control.

2.  They have strong future-time orientation.  Just a note here.  I’m about to get very controversial, at least according to the Google search that I did on this topic.  Apparently there are a lot of cultural and psychological implications to this term.  If you want to read them, go right ahead, but you’ll have to search – I won’t do it for you.

Essentially, by my definition, “Future-time orientation” means “Understanding the implications of today’s acts on tomorrow’s results (positive and negative), and building your activities around your desired results.”  By example, salespeople exhibit strong future-time orientation when they engage in prospecting activities and other funnel-building activities.  Seldom will a prospecting call today result in a sale today (although there are those wonderful times), but a prospecting call today can result in a sale tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year – and successful salespeople work in that direction.

Every successful person I’ve ever known has strong future-time orientation.  They envision where they want to be at a future point in time, then actively work in that direction.  Most unsuccessful people I’ve known do the opposite – they live in the ‘now,’ engage in activities that produce immediate gratification, and to hell with tomorrow.

By the way, “future-time orientation” doesn’t mean living strictly for the future and delaying all gratification.  I like to think that my own life is a mix.  For instance, if I have a speaking engagement in a fun city like Las Vegas or Miami, I’ll give a great speech, I’ll collect names, and segment out those that I want to approach for sales (future-time).  But if I’m in one of those cities, I might also take an extra day in my trip as a ‘fun day’ for me (now orientation).  That’s a mix that works really well for me.

In this young woman’s case, as we were working on her resume’ and profiles, my first real sign of trouble was when she said, “This is really great, Troy….but my problem is that I need income NOW.”  I explained to her that if she didn’t do this, not only would she not have income now, but she wouldn’t next month, either.  In hindsight, she didn’t get it.

3.  They associate with other successful people.  One of the first pieces of advice I gave her was this:  “If you want to be successful at life, associate with other people who are successful at life.”  Remember my definition of “successful at life” above.  From talking to the young woman, I knew that most of her friends didn’t fit that description, and I recommended that she get out to business functions, such as Chamber after-hours meetings, and meet some new people.

Your closest friends and associates will either build you up or break you down.  This is usually a function of their own security with themselves; people who are secure in themselves are not threatened by others’ success.  One of my speaking heroes, Craig Valentine, refers to this as the ‘crabs in a bucket’ syndrome.  If you put crabs in a bucket, they’ll sit there….then sooner or later, one will try to climb out.  And what will the others do?  Well…they’ll reach up and pull that crab back down into the bottom of the bucket.  Are your closest friends crabs?  It’s unfortunate that, as we move toward success, sometimes we do have to eliminate people from our lives that drag us down.  Every successful person I know has done this – and you might, too.

Two days after our second session, I emailed the young woman and asked her if she’d put in her two hours.  She replied, “Troy, I haven’t. I’m a mess.  My boyfriend (of five months – Troy’s note) was stopped by the police and he had warrants in four different jurisdictions in Kansas City, so I’m freaking out and trying to get to talk to him.  To be honest, I need money to buy a phone card.  Can I borrow….”  I’m not going to repeat the rest of the story.  No, I didn’t loan her money, and I haven’t responded. It’s pointless.

I do realize that some of you reading this might think ill of me – that I’m mean, or stingy with my time, or even snobbish (when I told this story to one person, she used that term).  Some might think I should continue to try to work with her.  I’m not.  My time is valuable, as is yours, and I choose not to spend it on those who won’t help themselves.

I should also point out that I don’t believe that the three characteristics are “traits.”  Traits cannot be learned or adapted.  They are “characteristics” because they are foundational to our approach to life – and I do believe that they are learned behaviors.  And as such, they are behaviors that you can incorporate into your own approach to your life and your career.

What Customers Want From You (Even If They Won’t Say)

Sales Blog

Well, I’m on the horns of a dilemma.  It’s Sunday night, and I’m spending the night in a hotel room, as I do many nights these days.  My hotel isn’t a cheap one; it’s a good one. But there’s one little problem.

The TV doesn’t work.

And by that I mean that it doesn’t turn on.  Not with the remote (which does work, because it lights up), and not by pressing the button on the side of the TV.  It’s kaput.  As Monty Python would say, “This TV is no more.  It is an ex-TV.”  I should point out that I just discovered this fact, as I hadn’t turned on the TV before.

So here I am, in a nice hotel room, probably an hour or an hour and a half before I turn in for the night, with no TV.  I have books and I’m an avid reader, and obviously I have my laptop.  But one of the entertainment sources (really, the only one that the hotel provides) is out of action.  And I’m not happy.

Of course, I could see about rectifying the situation. I could call the front desk and tell them that the TV doesn’t work.  They, then, have two options:

1.  They could move me into a room with a working TV.  I’m not a fan of this option, since I’m already unpacked, relaxed, and again, it’s a short time before I go lights-out.

2.  They could send someone up to check it out, and either fix or replace (most likely) the TV.  I’m not a fan of this option, either.  I’d have to get dressed (perhaps I’m sharing too much at this point), and the rigamarole would take up the last hour and a half of waking time in my room – time that I’ve dedicated to unwinding.

No, I’m going to do without, and then I’ll comment in the morning.  And they’ll ask me why I didn’t call.  So I’ll explain the above reasons, and then I’ll give them a very valuable piece of knowledge.  I’ll tell them what I (and most of their customers) really want:

I want things to work.  I want them to work the first time.  I’m sure they’d have worked to ‘rectify’ the problem.  I don’t want the problem in the first place.

“But, Troy,” you’re thinking, “Things can’t always be perfect.” (Correct.)  “And how could they know that the TV doesn’t work if you don’t tell them?”

I have an answer for this one.  Keep in mind that this is a higher-end hotel, and the room rates reflect that.  It seems to me like it would be 20-30 seconds well spent for the housekeeping staff to quickly turn on the TV in each room for a spot-check when they clean.  I don’t think that little extra is too much to ask at a high-end hotel.

Which brings us to the moral of this story.  Problems are best fixed BEFORE your customer notices and complains.  If you want to improve your customer service and retention, ask yourself this question:  What spot-checks can I make BEFORE my customer interacts with my product or service?  What problems can I catch before it’s a problem for my customer?

Do those things…implement those procedures….and your customers will be happier.

Now, if you’ll excuse me….I guess I’m going to read one of my books.

Selling Effectively At Trade Shows, Presented by Skyline Displays Heartland, November 14, 2014, Lenexa, KS

Sales Blog

Due to popular response, I’m presenting this program again on November 14!  If you missed it, you need to be there!

Most companies who exhibit at trade shows don’t get the full benefit out of their investment in time, people, and equipment, and they end up thinking that “trade shows don’t work for me.”  That’s simply not true.  Most companies can grow their sales and profits through trade shows – but doing it right requires a comprehensive sales strategy and approach.  In this 1-1/2 hour program, nationally renowned sales author and expert, Troy Harrison, will show you how to generate the maximum benefit from your trade show investment.  Topics covered include:

Pre-show:

  • Planning your sales efforts
  • Why dividing and conquering is key to an effective trade show selling strategy
  • How many people to bring – and how to deploy them

At the show:

  • What people fear the most when they come to your booth – and how to take away their fear
  • What to consider for giveaways at your booth (hint: it’s not what you think)
  • Making an impression in 15 seconds
  • Quick and non-offensive lead qualification
  • What to capture and how to capture it
  • The two most important questions to ask everyone who stops at your booth
  • Evenings: It’s not over when the show closes

Post-show:

  • Helping show prospects initiate their buying process
  • Your timeline for lead follow up
  • Knowing when to say when (and disconnect with unprofitable prospects)

If you’re exhibiting at trade shows, this could be the best 90 minutes of your year!

Troy Harrison to Speak at PPAI Expo 2015!

Sales Blog

I’m excited to announce that I have been selected to speak at the PPAI Expo in 2015, in Las Vegas!  This is the biggest single event in the Promotional Products industry, and I’m looking forward to being a big part of it.  On Monday, January 12, I’ll be presenting the following programs:

8 AM – 9 PM:  Ask the Right Questions to Win More Sales

10:40 AM – Noon:  Troubleshooting and Coaching Sales Performance

The PPAI Expo will run from January 11 through January 15, at the Mandalay Bay Expo Center in Las Vegas, NV.  For more information, please visit expo.ppai.org.

 

Troy Harrison to Present Two Programs at AIMED Fall Conference, September 30, 2014

Sales Blog

I will be presenting TWO great programs at the AIMED Fall Conference in Chicago on September 30!  I’ll be presenting a session on Power Interviewing, and one on Onboarding, both designed to help you get more out of your hires!  If you’re in the mailing and office equipment industries, you need to be there!  For more information, visit:  http://www.aimedweb.org/template.cfm?page=217