Positive in Tough Times?

Tony Robbins was on the Today Show recently talking about being prepared mentally and staying positive through tough times.  Good clip and only about 4 minutes long.  Check it out below!

Shazam!

Like them or not, superheroes are bigger now than ever.  Two of the biggest movies this summer were superhero flicks.  The top halloween costumes?  Superheroes.  Whether its regular joes using creative gadgets, mutants with cool powers, or aliens in tights - people love superheroes.

So I laughed when I found Super Hero Cards.  These are business cards, but with a custom-made superhero on one side and your business information on the other.

If your customers get a lot of business cards from other sales reps (and they probably do), this might be a cool way to help you stand out!

And to quote Dwight Schrute from The Office: Do you know who the real heroes are? The guys who wake up every morning and go into their normal jobs, and get a distress call from the commissioner, and take off their glasses and change into capes, and fly around fighting crime. Those are the real heroes.

Not Down, Just Different

I like reading stuff by Jeffrey Gitomer.  He has great sales advice and he’s actually interesting to read.  Despite the reputation most salespeople get for being “people-oriented”, most sales books I read are kind-of boring.

So I mosied over to his website today and he had an article about finding opportunity during tough times.  I’ve heard it from numerous sales teams – the number one objection now is “we’re cuting back on expenses because of the economy” or usually something along those lines.   It’s tough to argue with, but it’s not impossible to overcome.

Keeping this in mind, Mr. Gitomer outlines 8.5 things that you can do to help get more sales now and help out the company:

Improving Your Outlook

A lot of us use Outlook for our email.  And I’ve noticed that many people who use Outlook don’t keep it all that organized.  I’ve talked with some people who keep upwards of one thousand emails in their inbox alone. This makes it a litle daunting when trying to track down a key reply from one of your customers.

Enter the new tool, Xobni (zob-knee, or “inbox” backwards).  Xobni is a powerful email analytic tool that installs as a skinny vertical pane on the right side of Outlook.  Click on one of your emails and it instantly displays that person’s phone number, lists previous email threads, and the various attachments that you’ve exchanged. 

Darn cool stuff when talking with a customer on the phone and needing to reference a previous email exchange.  And it also analyzes when people tend to email you – information that you can use to strategically send emails in order to get a quick reply.

It also syncs up with LinkedIn to show their profile picture and a link to their info there.

And another one of my favorite features is a link in the window to “Schedule time” with the contact.  When you click on that link, Xobni will quickly analyze your calendar and then pull up an email to that contact with your available times over the next few days.

Like I said, cool stuff.  And cooler is that it’s free.  Check it out here and let me know what you think!

Looking for Opportunity

As we continue to weather the storm, keep on the lookout for opportunities that will pay off in the long run.  That’s the advice of Warren Buffett in this Op-Ed in the NY Times.  It’s a great article with some really solid advice.

A key quote:

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Again, good things to keep in mind.

Reality Sales

Paul Cherry at EyeOnSales.com gleamed some sales lessons from his local hardware stores.   The main lesson?  Being real with customers goes further than building superficial relationships.

The store’s been at the same location for close to 50 years, and as far as I can tell, it does a terrific business. There are plenty of other places to buy hardware: bigger stores with more selection and better prices. So what keeps people coming to this one?

I think it’s those crotchety, opinionated salespeople.

These days, many salespeople are polite, efficient and helpful – and utterly anonymous. It’s not their fault; they’ve been trained that way. They sell from a script and never take a chance. You might as well be talking to Robby the Robot.

Not so at the corner hardware store. For better or for worse, you never walk away from the counter without feeling that you’ve just engaged in a deeply human interaction. Sometimes I’m amused. Sometimes, frankly, I’m a little annoyed. But in the end, I keep coming back because I feel somehow connected to them. They’re an institution, and the neighborhood wouldn’t be the same without them.

Click HERE to go read the full article.

Saying “You’re Fired” to a Customer

It’s hard for sales people to say “no” to customers.  I mean, sales reps do all they can to make the customer say “yes”, but when is it good to tell a customer “thanks, but no thanks”?

That was the question posed by someone at SalesTeamTools.com and they got a lot of responses.  Among the top ones are:

1. When it’s illegal or breaking ethical standards
2. When you compromise quality standards
3. When the deal is not win-win

You can check out more over at he post.  What other reasons would you fire your customer?

The Eyes Have It

Two months of research. Check. Two weeks worth of outlining, illustrating, writing, and rewriting. Check. Two days devoted to memorizing and rehearsing. Check. Two hours devoted to putting together a really slick PowerPoint program. Check. Two eyeballs. Two eyeballs?

 There is no doubt that a lot of time and effort goes into putting together an important presentation. Sometimes a lot can be riding on how your presentation is received by certain people, so all the effort is definitely worth it. But it can sometimes all be wasted for the lack of two eyeballs – yours – that could be helping you sell your message, but instead they are staring at the back wall or at the ceiling or at your shoes or at your notes. They should be focused on your audience. 

Sometimes, as presenters we worry too much about what we have crammed into our heads, and not enough about what is going on with our heads, by which I mean our facial expressions and the use of good eye contact. There is so much power in the expressions of your face. You can communicate literally hundreds of emotions – and messages – using only the muscles in your face. Also, the messages are universal. In one famous study, researchers showed photographs of dozens of Westerners, each with a different expression on his or her face, to tribesmen in remote villages in Papua New Guinea. None of these simple bushmen had any trouble at all identifying the feelings being communicated in every picture.

 People get tired of hearing me say this, I’m sure, but the fact is the power of your presentation is rarely in your content; it is in how you deliver your content. People aren’t just listening to your words; they are watching your body language, especially your face. Even if it is only on an unconscious, subliminal level, people read the expressions on your face and in your eyes and begin to form opinions about whether they will trust what you say, or not.

 What messages do you want your facial expressions to communicate? You want to project a positive image – warmth, friendliness, confidence, caring, openness, acceptance, and sincerity. Keep a variety of smiles at hand – from big, gregarious grins to playful nods and winks – and you can’t go too far wrong. Whatever you do, avoid frowning, scowling or just standing there with a neutral, flat expression on your face. Your facial expressions will either draw people in, or drive them away.

 A big part of the power of facial expressions comes from those two eyeballs I mentioned earlier. An effective presentation relies heavily on making eye contact with every individual in the room. Your eyes say so much! Even more than a smile or a frown, your eyes reflect what is really going inside you. People are constantly reading your eyes as a way of looking into your heart. If you want people to trust you, look at them! Don’t be afraid to make eye contact with them.

 During the course of your presentation, try to connect with as many people as possible. Try to maintain eye contact with each one for at least 5 seconds, but don’t lock in on one person too often or too long. Don’t mechanically scan the room like a security camera – you know, sector one, sector two, sector three, back to sector two. Let your eyes casually, but purposefully, roam from person to person. Sure, they are all hearing your words, but making eye contact helps make your message personal for them. Even if you lose your place and can’t remember what you were going to say next, don’t stare at the floor or the ceiling, keep on making eye contact. People are likely to think you have just paused for effect. And when anyone connects with you, maybe even giving you a smile – be sure to smile back!

 By making eye contact, you are saying, “I am talking to you, I care about what you think and what you are hearing. Do you get it? Are you with me?” People can’t build a relationship with a PowerPoint slide, but they can build a relationship with you. Let people see in your face and in your eyes that you not only care about your content, you care about them, and that will make all the difference in the impact of your presentation.