The very best salespeople avoid the negative. They look for the positive aspects of everything in life. More importantly, if they can’t see the obvious positive aspects in a bad situation, they will hunt for them. They will dwell, dig, rationalize, and then find something good in every bad situation.
These are the people who make us all feel better when things look bad. These are the people who say, “Every dark cloud has a silver lining.” Of course, there are always those people who will then tell you about the 78 people killed by lightning in Florida last year while looking for that silver lining.
The very best salespeople are firm believers that they create their own success. They tell us that they focus on the positive aspects of their company’s products but that sometimes they have to hunt for them.
Sally, a highly successful, 20-year veteran sales representative, told a story from when she first started in sales. She worked for a large telecommunications company and was responsible for selling telephone systems to medium-sized medical offices. The primary product she sold was a very popular mid-tier telephone system. This system had been a best seller for a number of years but recently was losing steam in the marketplace. There were many new competitive products emerging that were completely software-based, and almost all of them were cheaper than the one she sold.
Although the product had been upgraded and did incorporate a new software operating system, it still used some older technology. It was termed a “hybrid” product, meaning it was a viable product that made use of new software technology but still incorporated some older technology.
Sally hated to lose a sale. She lost one when she proposed a new telephone system to a blood bank and was up against two competitors with systems that were entirely software-based. Her price was slightly higher and her competitors’ technology wasn’t “hybrid.”
She lost the sale – and she had even given blood!
Sally decided to find out what was good about her product. There must be something good about it, as it was still a part of the company’s product line. She visited one of the senior design engineers at the manufacturing plant and asked him to tell her about the product. Sally said the conversation went kind of like this:
Sally: “Tell me about the system.”
Engineer: “It’s a hybrid.”
Sally: “Why do we keep selling it?”
Engineer: “It’s a good system and is very reliable.”
Sally: “Is it better than similar competitor’s products?”
Engineer: “No.”
Sally: “Does it have any features that competitive products don’t have?”
Engineer: “No.”
Sally: “Does it process calls faster?”
Engineer: “No.”
Sally: “Is it more reliable?”
Engineer: “No.”
Sally: “There must be something it does better than the competition?”
Engineer: “Well, there is one thing.”
Sally: “What?”
Engineer: “It’s easily expandable. It has a very, very powerful processor inside. Running at full capacity and doing self-diagnostics, it’s only running at about 60 percent. It still has a lot of excess processing capacity.”
Sally: “What does that mean?”
Engineer: “Well, you could expand the system to be twice its size with twice the number of telephone extensions connected to it without having to change out anything. Our competitor’s comparable models can’t be expanded.”
Sally: “Because of the very powerful processor inside?”
Engineer: “Yes, because of the processor inside. It is an intel® processor made by a company called Intel Corporation.”
It is important to stop here and point out two things: First, intel® is a registered trademark of the Intel corporation. Second, this conversation took place long before the little “intel® inside” sticker began to show up on the outside of your laptop.
Sally: “It has an intel processor inside?”
Engineer: “Yes, it has an intel processor inside.”
Sally sold a lot of these “hybrid” systems based on what she learned that day. In all of the initial meetings with customers after that, she would ask if they expected to grow, and as you would expect, almost all of them said yes. She would explain that her system was comprised of new, state-of-the-art software and time-tested architecture that was proven to be the most reliable (in other words, a “hybrid”). She would also explain that the system could grow with the medical practice to twice its size without having to be changed out. And she probably said a thousand times, “All of this is because it has a very powerful intel inside.”
________________________________________________________________________
Dan Norman is a sales performance expert, a professional speaker, a columnist and the author of Top Ten Selling – The Lumberjack Chronicles. He has hired and developed thousands of sales representatives and hundreds of sales managers. Throughout his career, Dan has made a science of understanding the fundamentals of what it takes to be the “best-of-the-best” in sales and management performance. To book Dan Norman to speak at your next event, visit www.toptenselling.com. © 2009 Dan Norman. All rights reserved.
