The Ups And Downs Of Selling
The Ups And Downs Of Selling
The headline in last Friday's Wall Street Journal said "Market's 7-Day Rout Leaves U.S. Reeling."
What a difference a weekend can make. Today's Wall Street Journal front-page article said "Dow Takes Giant Leap As Bailouts Snap Gloom." As a matter of fact the Dow did take a giant leap going up a record-breaking 936 points in one day.
Here's the way I see it. What goes up usually goes down. What goes down usually goes up. And that's because history does tend to repeat itself. The same holds true for the ups and downs of selling.
These are not the easiest days for people in the selling profession. Doom and gloom! It's one huge pity party. Everyone's drinking from the same cup. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. You have a choice - you really do. You don't have to buy into the ups and downs of selling - you can choose to stay focused exclusively on the upside of selling.
I live in Lakewood Ranch Florida. And just a few short years ago the Sarasota/Bradenton area boasted one of the hottest real estate markets in the United States. Everybody's aunt Harriet became a real estate sales agent. My own home, in three short years appreciated by a factor of 2.5. Everybody was buying houses hoping to flip them for a quick and easy profit.
It was like going fishing and watching the fish jump onto your boat - it was that easy. There was a buying and selling frenzy and needless to say it didn't require much in the way of selling skills if you were a real estate salesperson.
A realtor friend of mine told me 75% of the real estate salespeople hung up their spurs and left the business. Why I wondered - could that be? Well what was easy became more difficult - maybe even impossible.
What once required zero selling skills now required a Masters in the art of selling. In this case, the ups and downs of selling clearly separated the winners from the whiners.
Yesterday I was reading a chapter from one of my favorite books, "Light From Many Lamps" by Lillian Eichler Watson. In one chapter she talked about A.J. Cronin's attempt at writing his first novel.
He came to the point of almost giving up. In fact, he threw his work in progress into a trashcan.
The book he finally completed was Hatter's Castle. "The novel he'd almost given up on was chosen by the Book Society, dramatized and serialized, translated into 19 languages, bought by Hollywood and has sold over 3 million copies."
Here's an excerpt. "What is the use . . . to work . . . to save . . . to go on living . . . with Armageddon around the corner? I am glad to recollect. In this present chaos, with no shining vision to sustain us, the door wide open to darkness and despair is.
The way to close that door is to stick to the job that we are doing, not how insignificant that job may be, to go on doing it and finish it."
These are challenging times for professional salespeople. These times are equally challenging for your sales prospects and customers and probably just as challenging for your competitors. You see, everyone is susceptible to the ups and downs of selling.
Don't give up - get going and start doing more! The ups and downs of selling don't have to be obstacles - treat them like golden opportunities.
Yesterday I got an e-mail from Miles Bruce - president of Panic Plastics. He sent me a quote from Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur, who also happens to be president of the Dallas Mavericks. Here's what the quote said:
"The 2nd rule for getting rich is getting smart. Investing your time in yourself and becoming knowledgeable about the business of something you really love to do.
It doesn't matter what it is. Whatever your hobbies, interests, passions are. Find the one you love the best and GET A JOB in the business that supports it.
It could be as a clerk, a salesperson, whatever you can find. You have to start learning the business somewhere. Instead of paying to go to school somewhere, you are getting paid to learn. It may not be the perfect job, but there is no perfect path to getting rich.
Before or after work and on weekends, every single day, read everything there is to read about the business. Go to trade shows, read the trade magazines, spend a lot of time talking to the people you do business with about their business and the people they buy from."
If you're serious about selling get serious about learning more. Get serious about learning as much as you can about your customers and their customers. Become the burning torch that spreads light and enthusiasm everywhere you go.
In any crowd of doomers and gloomers you'll surely stand-out.
Turn the ups and downs of selling into a personal challenge.
You can get up 15 minutes earlier . . .
You can do two extra follow-ups . . .
You can make one extra sales call . . .
You can ask more thought-provoking questions . . .
You can do more, learn more, and become more valuable to your sales prospects and customers.
And remember Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's words, "The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide."
Never let the ups and downs of selling get you down.
Let's go sell something!
The Ups And Downs Of Selling - To learn more about this author, visit Jim Meisenheimer's Website.
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The ups and downs of selling are a little like the ups and downs on Wall Street.
The headline in last Friday's Wall Street Journal said "Market's 7-Day Rout Leaves U.S. Reeling."
What a difference a weekend can make. Today's Wall Street Journal front-page article said "Dow Takes Giant Leap As Bailouts Snap Gloom." As a matter of fact the Dow did take a giant leap going up a record-breaking 936 points in one day.
Here's the way I see it. What goes up usually goes down. What goes down usually goes up. And that's because history does tend to repeat itself. The same holds true for the ups and downs of selling.
These are not the easiest days for people in the selling profession. Doom and gloom! It's one huge pity party. Everyone's drinking from the same cup. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. You have a choice - you really do. You don't have to buy into the ups and downs of selling - you can choose to stay focused exclusively on the upside of selling.
I live in Lakewood Ranch Florida. And just a few short years ago the Sarasota/Bradenton area boasted one of the hottest real estate markets in the United States. Everybody's aunt Harriet became a real estate sales agent. My own home, in three short years appreciated by a factor of 2.5. Everybody was buying houses hoping to flip them for a quick and easy profit.
It was like going fishing and watching the fish jump onto your boat - it was that easy. There was a buying and selling frenzy and needless to say it didn't require much in the way of selling skills if you were a real estate salesperson.
A realtor friend of mine told me 75% of the real estate salespeople hung up their spurs and left the business. Why I wondered - could that be? Well what was easy became more difficult - maybe even impossible.
What once required zero selling skills now required a Masters in the art of selling. In this case, the ups and downs of selling clearly separated the winners from the whiners.
Yesterday I was reading a chapter from one of my favorite books, "Light From Many Lamps" by Lillian Eichler Watson. In one chapter she talked about A.J. Cronin's attempt at writing his first novel.
He came to the point of almost giving up. In fact, he threw his work in progress into a trashcan.
The book he finally completed was Hatter's Castle. "The novel he'd almost given up on was chosen by the Book Society, dramatized and serialized, translated into 19 languages, bought by Hollywood and has sold over 3 million copies."
Here's an excerpt. "What is the use . . . to work . . . to save . . . to go on living . . . with Armageddon around the corner? I am glad to recollect. In this present chaos, with no shining vision to sustain us, the door wide open to darkness and despair is.
The way to close that door is to stick to the job that we are doing, not how insignificant that job may be, to go on doing it and finish it."
These are challenging times for professional salespeople. These times are equally challenging for your sales prospects and customers and probably just as challenging for your competitors. You see, everyone is susceptible to the ups and downs of selling.
Don't give up - get going and start doing more! The ups and downs of selling don't have to be obstacles - treat them like golden opportunities.
Yesterday I got an e-mail from Miles Bruce - president of Panic Plastics. He sent me a quote from Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur, who also happens to be president of the Dallas Mavericks. Here's what the quote said:
"The 2nd rule for getting rich is getting smart. Investing your time in yourself and becoming knowledgeable about the business of something you really love to do.
It doesn't matter what it is. Whatever your hobbies, interests, passions are. Find the one you love the best and GET A JOB in the business that supports it.
It could be as a clerk, a salesperson, whatever you can find. You have to start learning the business somewhere. Instead of paying to go to school somewhere, you are getting paid to learn. It may not be the perfect job, but there is no perfect path to getting rich.
Before or after work and on weekends, every single day, read everything there is to read about the business. Go to trade shows, read the trade magazines, spend a lot of time talking to the people you do business with about their business and the people they buy from."
If you're serious about selling get serious about learning more. Get serious about learning as much as you can about your customers and their customers. Become the burning torch that spreads light and enthusiasm everywhere you go.
In any crowd of doomers and gloomers you'll surely stand-out.
Turn the ups and downs of selling into a personal challenge.
You can get up 15 minutes earlier . . .
You can do two extra follow-ups . . .
You can make one extra sales call . . .
You can ask more thought-provoking questions . . .
You can do more, learn more, and become more valuable to your sales prospects and customers.
And remember Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's words, "The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide."
Never let the ups and downs of selling get you down.
Let's go sell something!
The Ups And Downs Of Selling - To learn more about this author, visit Jim Meisenheimer's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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