Many of you Southwestern managers may have already seen this if you’re paying attention to youtube…Kenny Brooks, a self-styled comedian who uses a barrage of funny one-liners to sell his cleaning product, has gone viral. Kenny’s sales technique is caught on camera by a prospect. From the looks of this, he didn’t attend a conventional [...]
Southwestern Sales Talk
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I had the chance to share some ideas recently at Southwestern’s Great Recruiters Seminar, specifically in a workshop on communication strategies. One of the points I stressed to student managers was to teach new team members how to treat you, from the start. First impressions are tricky. People make rapid assumptions about new acquaintances. Oftentimes, you can [...]
There are far more than five ways to destroy a Southwestern sales call. But, in the interest of brevity, and of maintaining my small readership, I’ll narrow this to just five. Remember, selling is a complex activity with many variables. Every prospect is different; every sales encounter has a new twist–especially when you’re dealing with [...]
One element of Southwestern sales success–likeability. If you attended Southwestern‘s Sales Schools recently, you may recall Nicholas Boothman sharing the idea that before a prospect buys anything, they have to buy you! If they like you, prospects will look for opportunities to say “yes.” To that end, Tom Hoobyar, NLP Master Practitioner and blogger, shares [...]
Continuing in my “worst ever” series…. As the gatekeeper for Southwestern Company, I get lots of random sales pitches and marketing promotions at work. This may be a bit of a stretch for a sales blog, but here is a real email promotion we received recently at The Southwestern Company. I include the sales pitch in [...]
I didn’t recognize the number, but I was feeling lucky and picked up. It was a call from a salesman selling hotel vacation club memberships. He greeted me by mispronouncing my last name, then reassured me by telling me, “I’m not calling to sell you anything.” He then proceeded to try to sell me something. Sigh. I [...]
My family dined out the other night at Chili’s and we had a killer waitress. She made a great first impression. She sold herself. She sold the food selections. She was attentive. She also got a big tip when we were done. I wish this waitress could sell books with the Southwestern Company–she would do well! As we were [...]
When I was a young astronomy major at college, I was fascinated with the subject of black holes–massive stars which survived a supernova and imploded on themselves. The remnant had a gravitational field so powerful, not even light could escape it. I’m sure at some point you’ve been around griping, whiny people who have devolved into emotional [...]
It’s hard to imagine a worse sales experience than I had at Sprint some months ago. (See blog post 11-19-09). But…this time it occurred at a different Sprint retail store. My experience with bad salespeople is always brought into stark contrast with the great salespeople at The Southwestern Company whom I get to work with. Anyway, I [...]
Here’s a quick bonus mini-blog, compliments of the Southwestern Company. Several of you responded to my earlier posts about how to handle networking events, not only from a first-impression standpoint, but also considering what to say and how much to tell someone when you meet them. I gave you the Cliff/Spark Notes version of this [...]
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