3 SIMPLE TIPS TO PUT SOME AWESOME BACK INTO YOUR SELLING

COLINISM

www.colinjbrowne.com ENTER >

SIMPLE TIPS TO PUT SOME

AWESOME BACK INTO YOUR SELLING

COLINISM

The first question is likely to be ‘why?’ Why another book about sales making a claim to be able to solve your problems and put you on the road to better results? Isn’t there already too much crap like this in the world?

Probably.

But here’s the thing: we’re collectively, as sales professionals, still making all the same mistakes we have been making for years. I spend a lot of time either pitching ideas of my own or working with salespeople to help them improve theirs and the lessons in this short book are ones I absolutely know to have made a massive difference to my own results.

In the end it just seemed wrong not to share them.

- Colin

www.colinjbrowne.com < 1 >

Getting to the top in anything from competitive

athletics to professional sales is fundamentally about

the same thing. Learn the basics, see which points

you’re specifically great at and focus on making those

awesome. But it’s also about embracing your individual

style, shaping and perfecting it until it is absolutely

outstanding.

COLINISM

Getting from okay, or even pretty good to awesome in sales may be a lot simpler than you’d imagine.


Most things in life are actually pretty simple. Even complex projects like the training that goes into creating an Olympic Gold athletic performance or climbing Mount Everest can be broken down into a very simple set of tasks.

The whole self-help industry depends on that being true because otherwise there would be no hope at all of the average person making the journey. The success of ideas such as Body-for-Life for example rely on the fact that getting into the best shape of your life is a pretty simple matter.

It’s a simple matter because you know what you ought to be doing, even without being told. Eat differently. Work out more. Run. If you do basic, simple things it is a guarantee that you’ll get in better shape. And yet, despite it being so simple and that most of us are pretty disatisfied with our bodies and would like to improve them, most of us are doing nothing about it. Why is that?

The reason probably is that just because these things are almost childishly SIMPLE, that does not make them EASY.

It isn’t EASY to get out of bed early and run down to the gym rather than hitting the snooze button for fifteen minutes more. It isn’t EASY to turn down a lunch time cheese burger and eat the apple and the banana you brought from home.

It isn’t EASY to choose to miss watching the match this evening because Wednesdays are for chest, shoulders and arms.

Picking between having a Big Mac or an apple for lunch

isn’t an EASY choice some days, even when you’re

focused on getting yourself in shape. Like commencing

a cold calling session or taking care of that pesky sales

admin we all hate, you’ll be in better shape to see it

through if you deal with the mattter early rather than

letting it linger and if you apply some creative thinking

to make the SIMPLE steps you know you need to take,

EASY.

COLINISM


The exact same things can be said for the task of smashing your sales targets every month and winning every incentive on offer. In theory it is very simple:

To have a great sales month, every month you need only get a bunch of great leads (and keep them coming), call those leads to qualify them, get appointments with those that push all your buttons and then, when you’re in front of the potential customer, show them what a genuinely awesome idea your product or service is for them and how awesome it would be for them to buy from you. Then you just ask for the business and write it up.

I mean, that’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it? But the fact that it is SIMPLE to break the process of a sale down into relatively few parts, doesn’t make selling EASY.

It isn’t EASY to make that first cold call. And it isn’t any EASIER to make the tenth. In fact, depend-ing on how the previous nine went, it could be a lot more difficult.

It isn’t EASY to find new leads all the time. It isn’t like you can just order them over the phone and have them delivered with a sandwich.

It isn’t EASY to overcome a flurry of objections from a client whose ennui at the very sight of his fifth sales visit of the day is as clear as daylight.

Because they’re not EASY, we often forget how SIMPLE they are and we put them off until another time when we’ll feel more like doing them. That decision is, I believe, one of the three biggest inhibitors to sales brilliance.

Time in sales always has a figurative bomb attached to

it. You never have as much time as you think you do

and things can have a habit of blowing up if you’re not

on top of them. And since revenue not generated has a

perpetual knock on effect, it’s all about starting RIGHT

NOW. There’s never going to be a better time when the

clock is attached to tubes of scary-looking explosive

stuff.

Recently I was watching one of those TEDx talks that are freely available on www.ted.com starring an awesome lady named Mel Robbins who made the point about as simply as it can be made. She said:

YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO FEEL LIKE IT

There is never going to be a time when you feel like getting started. Waiting for a better time is just waiting for a time that will never come. This is you, baby, right now.

If you can embrace the concept of starting right now, you’ll be better than almost everyone around you, bunch of procrastinators that we are. That will give you a head start and buy you more time at the end of each sales cycle when otherwise you might be desperately trying to close any piece of business just to make your numbers.

But while deciding you’re going to become the master of doing it now is, I think, one of the big three for outstanding sales success, it isn’t the whole solution to the problem that ails many sales-people today. While increasing your sales activity is outstanding winning behavior, you’ll limit your effectiveness if you merely do much more of the same old stuff.

The world is full of sales theory saying there are very specific ideal ways to achieve a basic sales task; to make a cold call or to strike up rapport with a customer for instance. I think it’s all bullshit.

I think such theory recklessly ignores the fact that more sales are done when creative individuality is the defining principle.

COLINISM


http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxSF-Mel-Robbins-F-YOU-How-To

Getting creative in sales is a little like playing make-

believe the way you did as a kid. As you get deeper

into the business of sales, you get to thinking that only

serious answers can solve the serious challenges you

face. Don’t you believe that for a second, however. A

lot of current thinking is pretty clear that allowing the

childlike part of your brain to run riot now and then is

great for creativity. Even the iconic Steve Jobs advised

Stanford graduates to “stay foolish”.

COLINISM


It’s been my observation again and again that when salespeople allow their own quirky individu-ality to come out and be part of their process, they’re better able to focus on the actual task of selling which is frankly, demanding enough as it is. Being an individual is key to solving the second part of our three-part sales dilemma:

WE’RE OUT OF PRACTICE IN THE ART OF FINDING CREATIVE SOLUTIONS

I think that loss of truly creative problem solving in sales is a massive force in preventing us from being genuinely awesome. I also think it is what is holding us back and creating lacklustre perform-ances that are just getting harder and harder to keep doing on a daily basis.

I believe that there are simple ways to change that however.

Children very often hold the key. Give a five year old a box of crayons and a colouring book and tell them there is only one way to do it and they’ll look at you like you’re nuts because they can see hundreds of possibilities. It hasn’t in fact, ever occurred to that five year old brain that there might be a limit to the possibilities.

They’re right of course. There isn’t a limit. But we’ve forgotten it’s possible to think that way and even feel we’re being naïve when we do.

We’re so often locked into the same tired old approach to sales in which grim determination trumps childish invention and enthusiasm that we’ve stopped looking for completely new ways to do things.

It’s pretty clear that people buy from people they like.

You can be the most professional, well-versed, experi-

enced salesperson in the world, but they’re still going

to buy from someone more awesome than you, given

the chance. Your best chance in sales: be more awe-

some. More original. If you’re having more fun with it,

that will show and that can completely change your

customer relationships.

Let me give you an example of how it could be. This is a true story about a guy called Michael. A real guy; the head of a £500 000 000 division of one of the major mobile phone service providers in South Africa. In his early 40s he is a man with a Porsche and all the toys you can think of. He has a Black Belt Second Dan in karate. He’s sort of an over-achiever all along the way.

When he started out in sales some 20+ years ago, it was selling dinner sets door-to-door. Cases of matching plates and cups and bowls.

The young Michael was super-charged with enthusiasm so it was a hard trip down to the pave-ment when his first 50 door-knocks told him to bugger off. Those first few weeks were, to para-phrase Jerry Maguire, an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege.

But this guy wasn’t then and isn’t now, the sort to say die. Instead he decided to get creative.

The first step was to work out why he wasn’t getting anywhere. He decided it was his choice of customers that was wrong. He didn’t know anything about them and that meant it was little more than a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.

As he thought it through, he realised that his best shot at repeated success was to target single people. Married couples were likely to already have a dinner set because at the very least they would have been given one as a wedding present.

This is basic stuff, but it’s so important that marketers give it the fancy name of market segmenta-tion.

COLINISM


Give a five year old a box of crayons and there’s no

limit to the creativity they’ll come up with. We were

all five once and we all did this with the same enthusi-

asm. That attitude is more important in sales than you

might imagine because the more creative you can be,

the more you’ll stand out from a generally not-very-

creative crowd; important if you want to be properly

awesome at sales.

Understanding that, he turned his mind to where he would find lots of single people. In South Af-rica at that time, many government employees were given subsidised living quarters. Apartments for the single people and perhaps a home with a small garden for those married with children.

And because single people have different social behaviour to that of families, they generally lived apart so that there were whole blocks of apartments where single hospital employees or single policemen and women lived.

It was a realisation that changed things for him dramatically. But then he added the cherry on top by getting hold of the shift details for the people he intended to target so that he knew whether he should knock on their doors in the morning, the afternoon or even late at night.

SIMPLE stuff. CREATIVE stuff. Within a year he wasn’t just the best salesperson that company had, he was the best one they had EVER had.

That may be a different story to the one you’re used to being told. The one that says sales is only about the numbers and nothing else. The one that insists that flexing from a very rigid approach is forbidden.

Had the young Michael not invented his own customer set, and re-invented his working hours in order to reach those customers, some of whom were on night shift and were home by day and some of whom were on day shift and were home by night, it would be a very different story.

As it is, the reality is audacious enough to be sales genius level.

COLINISM


Ah, if only. If sales was even one one-hundredth this

easy, books like this would be unnecessary because

you’d be too busy scuba diving off Aruba to worry

about making your target. I understand that it’s tough.

I also believe however that with fresh thinking, it can

be the second most fun you’ll ever have (I’m not going

to lie; scuba diving off Aruba is always going to be the

winner).

COLINISM


Oh, and it goes without saying that he had FUN. Lots and lots of it. It’s always fun when you’re winning.

That is principle number three that I think has a big part to play in holding us back:

WE FORGET TOO OFTEN THAT THIS STUFF IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN

I met a dynamic duo of salespeople at a publishing company in Dubai once who got around their fear of cold calling by making it a game between them. They encouraged each other through an energetic hour to come up with the most awesome opening line or to include a simple, inoffen-sive, but arbitrary word in each pitch. As one of them would fit it in, the other would fall apart laughing.

Counter-productive? Don’t you believe it for a second. Considering the alternative, that they sat alone in separate cubicles without encouragement, not really knowing where to start, this was creative wizardry. These two were the number one and number two salespeople in their team, pretty consistently.

I know a guy who gets through a vast number of customer calls as long as he is able to walk around the floor with his golf driver, playing an imaginary game of golf as he goes about it. Who knows what’s going on in his head? Personally, I don’t think it matters, as long as it works for him.

I know a guy who ends every day with drinks or a cup of coffee or an ice cream sundae with a cli-ent. For him, relationship building is everything so that he’s not just the guy that sells them stuff.

Hey, while you were out getting coffee, 47 random customers called asking if anyone could help them buy loads of the stuff we sell. I said you’d call them back when you have the energy.

You’re never going to be as good at anything as you

are things you consider to be fun. Sales is hard work

at the best of times and if you’re not having fun with

this emotionally-charged pursuit, you’re less likely to

be successful. You can do a lot of jobs if you’re not that

into them, and complete them successfully even on

days when you’re not feeling up to it. Not sales though.

If you’re having a bad day or a bad month, it will show

and it will have an impact.

I know another who put together a very clever (and very funny) PowerPoint presentation present-ing him as a hot new product and describing the benefits of having him in your life.

I know a guy who has hands down the cleverest way to get in front of any customer I have ever heard. And I know a girl who outsold an existing team of eight men, beating their annual totals though she had only six months to do it, just by doing one SIMPLE and CREATIVE thing. If you want to know these two stories, drop me an email; my address is on the last page and I’d be delighted to share them with you.

Taking these lessons, and many others like them, I believe these three ideas to be hugely impor-tant if you want an awesome sales career:

1. Remember you are never going to feel like getting started.2. Get back into the mode of thinking creatively. 3. Remember that this stuff is supposed to be fun.

Okay, it’s play time! Go sell!

COLINISM


1. Never say NO to anything for at least 72 hours. We are so pro-grammed to be risk-averse that when we approach a new idea our instinct is too often to say: “Yeah, but here’s why that will never work ...” When we walk into a new situation, we look for the things that make us feel uncomfortable and that we want to avoid. In so doing, we give over control of our thinking to the creative luddites that dwell in almost all of us. Don’t. Let new ideas breathe for a while. Rather than looking for the negatives, look only for the posi-tives, and dig deep. You can always ditch the idea in a few days if it isn’t turning out to be a winner.

2. Get up from behind your desk and go looking for ideas. Speak to your colleagues; visit customers; go for a walk around a shopping centre; flip through a bunch of magazines you wouldn’t ordinar-ily ever look at. One thing is for certain, making some changes to your environment, your influences or your routine can change the context of your thinking. No new ideas are going to suddenly jump off your computer screen while you sit behind your desk. Get out more. Observe more. See more people. The ideas are out there, not in here.

3. Get out a colouring book and some crayons. Forget that you feel silly. Better yet, do it with a bunch of kids. Children are wildly idealistic, untainted yet by dramatic life failure and braver and more extreme than you can possibly imagine until you spend time

with them. You’ll likely have to reframe your problem and lose the business-speak so that their young minds can grasp it, but put it in terms that fit their frame of reference and even if you don’t come up with anything useful or meaningful (which is probably likely since ‘buy a bunch of angry dinosaurs and make them eat your competitor’ isn’t entirely practical in this day and age), you’ll at least delight in the radically different approaches to problem solv-ing that exist in young minds that are freer than yours.

4. Always be asking questions. Never take things for granted. You’d be surprised what solutions are already out there in the collective life and work experiences of the people even in a small organisa-tion, just waiting for you to ask about them. Lew Platt, the celebrat-ed former CEO of Hewlett-Packard once said: “If HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times as profitable.” Similarly, the story goes that when Virgin Atlantic was a young airline, Richard Branson used to hold massive parties for his employees where he could find out their opinions and hear their ideas. Ideas such as the placing of individual TV screens into seat backs was given to him by a Virgin Atlantic cabin crew member.

5. Forget status altogether. In fact, specifically spend time with the most customer-facing people in your organisation: the receptionists or the switchboard or call centre people for their insight into what makes your customers tick. Their jobs mean they deal with custom-

COLINISM

Ten tips for thinking more creatively so you can add some AWESOME to your sales!


COLINISM


ers all the time. Ask them what they think customers are looking for right now.

6. Tell people what you’re thinking. Secrets have their place, but nothing will refine your new idea like input from others around you. It is a universal truth that when one person expresses a new idea, all the others around them will chime in with their thoughts on the matter, solicited or not. If you’re open to input and prepared to take the negatives as either constructive criticism or jealous irrel-evancies without getting defensive about them, this can really help you with your thinking.

7. Brainstorm with other members of your sales team, but do it after hours, while doing something awesome. Even a big Friday night out will change the context of your thinking and bring up new ideas. Arrange to get out of town for the weekend or join a boot camp together. Any classic team building exercise will do because the creativity that comes out of that, while usually lost to the group, is always valuable to individuals who care to embrace it. Like you.

8. Record ideas when they arrive. Write them down. Speak into your cell phone’s voice note recorder. Trap them before they escape! Marketers say that our brains are jelly these days because they’re pumping as many as 3 000 messages into them every day. You’re never going to remember a cool new idea against that onslaught,

and especially so because ideas that arrive unexpected, out of the blue, triggered by something you’re doing at the time are generally (a) really pretty awesome and (b) fleeting and hard to retain. Don’t let them escape!

9. Revise your old notes once you’re in the habit of writing them down or recording them (I use a mixture of both. I love to write, but if I’m on the move, my BlackBerry voice recorder app gets plenty of use. Later I listen back and type them up). Six months from now, an idea you can’t currently make sense of may have a much more useful context.

10. Lose the fear of failure. We all hate to fail, obviously. You’d have to be pretty weird to enjoy it. But you can’t get anything new done if you’re concerned that it may not work. You know what? It may not. So what? It’s got to be worth giving a new idea a try, especially when the alternative is that you keep flogging the same dead horse and getting the same lacklustre results.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but that’s sort of the genius behind this idea. Using some of these ideas to help charge up your cre-ative thinking should lead you to more ideas on how to think creatively. It’s an always-on cycle once you start it. If you’d like to share some ideas of your own with the world, email me (there’s a link on the back page) and I’ll share them on the COLINISM blog with fuill credit to you.

www.colinjbrowne.com

COLINISM

www.colinjbrowne.com < 12

About the AuthorColin Browne is a speaker, writer and founder of the COLINISM movement which currently counts among its members such luminaries as ... well, him. He co-founded SALESGURU in South Africa in 2006 and founded the SALESPUNK project in 2010.

Colin lives in London where the weather is a lot better than people said it was going to be. He likes mostly rock music but he pretty much likes anything.

He believes that everyone deserves a break and a solid dose of goodwill because we’re all just trying to make our way in life, right?

ContactYou can contact me by sending me an email or find out more about me by visiting the COLINISM website. If you want an answer to the questions earlier in the text, email me with the subject header: I want to know what it is they did and I’ll happily share that with you. If you’d like to share an idea for unlocking creative thinking, drop me one with the subject header: Great creative thinking idea. Don’t be shy. You’re truly awesome just for thinking it!

Copyright infoThe copyright of this work belongs to the author. You may print this and distribute it electronically, via your website, by email or however you want to. The only things you cannot do are change it or charge for it. Play nice and everyone benefits.



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3 SIMPLE TIPS TO PUT SOME AWESOME BACK INTO YOUR SELLING