There have been better salesmen, showmen, thinkers, innovators and business leaders. But no one that embodied all of these things the way that Steve Jobs did.
Some of my posts that reference Steve’s salesmanship:
Are Salesmen Sociopaths
Birth of a Salesman
What’s the difference between me and you?
You talk a good one – but you don’t do what you supposed to do
-Dr Dre, What’s The Difference
There is wisdom in what Dre is saying here in a song that doesn’t make his Greatest Hits album. The difference between a good salesman and a great salesman is 15 minutes a day of “doing what you’re supposed to do”.
Make the extra effort to make the calls, meet your deadlines, do the little things that other salesmen don’t want to do, like sending something personal out of the blue, remember birthdays, spend some time bettering your skills, go to a new meeting, make a change in your process and measure what works and what doesn’t.
Spend the last fifteen minutes or so of every day finding a way to be better than the competition. Just over an hour a week making small changes incrementally will take you from good to great.
I need you to do something before reading the rest of this post. Take a hard look at what you’re selling. Not the idealized 30,000 foot view of what you’re selling (i.e. “I’m selling confidence!”), but what you’re actually selling. If you are selling cars, or medicine, or insurance, or training then I want you to think about what that product has done over the last few years. Has that product gotten easier to purchase as time has gone on? Has the average price gone down? Is supply up or demand down? Are you working harder on fewer smaller deals?
I want you to start there because you need to know if you’re racing towards zero. Signs of a race towards zero include the things above, but also smaller margins, more customer churn and general lack of joy in your business day. You’re selling a commodity man. You’re a few steps away from being the guy inside the window
That’s right, you’re dangerously close to being an order taker instead of a salesman. If you’re the business owner and have access to them you need to start figuring out how to de-commodify your business. If you’re just the salesguy, you should start polishing that resume up, because the Magic 8-Ball is predicting smaller commissions in the near future.
Newspapers, Publishers, Software Developers, Insurance Agents, Travel Agents. Those guys have or will be racing toward zero very son. Are you next and what are you doing to prevent it?
