Shrewd salespeople don’t play by the rules. While the bank insists that all documentation must be in order before an account is opened, the salesperson gets all the documentation and has account opened but not necessarily in that order. The order is dependent on the situation at hand. Like a soldier, he adapts Successful salespeople
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What happened to the calendar and diary? Was it caught in a time warp? Like me, you have possibly witnessed a steady decline of the two with every passing January. To a point this year, when I’m almost at zero sightings. There was a time when the two were all the rage. The transition to
What’s in it for me? That’s what the salesperson who wants to progress in his profession must ask. He must set selfish goals to succeed in selling. Especially now in the beginning of the year. Here’s why? Sales is not a desk job so this column has repeatedly averred. Systems and structure for reporting is
New Year new things they say. And for the progressive salesperson, New Year, new opportunity to learn from the goings-on this season. Because he knows sellers must be good advisors. This season some things will remain the same. From tomorrow, just like last year and all the years before it, like the exodus out of
Many sales are lost when salespeople depend on inanimate stationery to sell instead of capitalizing on the human interaction. Brochures should not be a favourite of the salesperson. Prospects hardly read marketing stationery or act on the information in it. Brochures don’t sell. Salespeople do. Few people take the reading culture beyond formal schooling; a glossy, creatively
Something interesting happened to me as I was fueling recently. A hawker walked up to my car and politely asked if he could tell me something about the wipers. Intrigued, and not being much of a car enthusiast, I agreed. And the ensuing sale inspired these three lessons in selling from a hawker But first,
Hunger the quality that separates. A labourer’s appetite works for him, the Bible proclaims; his hunger drives him on. Hunger. The mark of a true salesman. What makes the newspaper vendor trot after you in traffic? Hunger. Hunger makes the hawker I met in the evening traffic the other day plead as a tactic to
“Hips Don’t Lie” so says Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira; and in sales numbers don’t lie, either. Indeed, ‘sales is a game of numbers’ isn’t a cliché-it’s a fact. And numbers don’t lie. In fact, I remember a senior human resource manager, while preparing appraisals for the different departments in her organization, wished that she could make
During the Housing Expo held at KICC, Nairobi, which ran for four days, it dawned on me that exhibition stands are only as good as the people manning them. Elaborate exhibition stand designs were on display. Choice material was there for gawking. Branding was at its peak. And a kaleidoscope of colours was evident. Inside
You can list many activities on your daily to-do list, but I submit that they really boil down to just three activities to thrive in sales: monitor-facing, customer-facing or “air”-facing “What’s in your cup?” a common advert inquires. “What’s in your day?” I usually pose to participants in my workshop. “What activities would I see
How do I plan my day as a salesperson, I hate doing reports, What should I focus on as a salesperson