Always have a toothpick handy!

Are you all aware that today, March 15th,  marked the worst day of Julius Caeser’s life?  Sure was!  Seems that he got himself carved up by a bunch of his enemies in the Roman Senate in 44 B.C.   William Shakespeare thought it was important enough an event to write a play about and teach us all about the term “The Ides of March.” 

It went down this way.  Caeser was an arrogant old fart and he apparently summoned the Senate to meet in the Theater of Pompey on the Ides of March.  A certain seer (soothsayer)warned Caesar that he had better have his head on a swivel that day and to be on his guard because a great peril on the 15th of March had his name written all over it.  Caesar apparently blew the fortune teller off and didn’t pay him much mind.   So when the big day had come and Caesar was strolling on his way to the senate, he saw the seer again and greeted him with a jest and said: “The Ides of March has come,” basically telling him, “Shows how much you know!”  The seer then answered him softly and said: “Yes, the Ides of March has come, but it has not passed.” 

Caesar soon learned that you don’t dis the seer because as the Senate convened, Caesar was attacked and stabbed to death by a group of senators who called themselves the liberatores  (”Liberators”).  They justified their action on the grounds that they committed tryrannicide and were preserving the Republic from Caesar’s alleged monarchical ambitions.  Call it anything you like….they killed him!  The term “Ides of March”  has since come to be used as a metaphor for impending doom.   Big deal, huh?  Well, if you like trivia…the ides of March was a also a red letter day for George McFly in the movie ”Back to the Future II.”  He was killed on the 15th of March, 1973!

So whether you are superstitious or not, at least today you learned a new expression or term you might not have known before.  If you want to be really enlightened you should also know that in the Roman calendar, the term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July and October, and the 13th day of the other 8 months.  Don’t ask me why.  It was a long time ago and my day-timer only goes back a few years.

I think we should all pull together today and spit in the face of all the doom-sayers and let’s make this March 15, 2008 our best day so far this year!

Regards, Rick

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for stopping by and sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick

Stop!  Don’t leave yet.  I am not done!

Stay and be enlightened some more! In the last few posts we have talked about communication and the affect that words, tonality and physiology have on the message we are trying to convey. Remember the breakdown?

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for stopping by and sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon a few years ago.  I was laying on the couch watching a golf tournament when all of a sudden the door bell rang.  I shuffled to the door and was a bit upset to see that nobody was there….until I looked down and found that there was somebody there!  It was a little boy looking up at me.  He was maybe 4 or 5 years old and he was wearing an old, raggedy and ill-fitting little-league baseball uniform.   I immediately looked to the end of my walkway and saw a car.   There was an anxious looking man and woman inside who, I rightly determined, were the young man’s parents.  They had obviously shooed their son up the walkway to my front door and were waiting for him.  It  became crystal clear that I was about to be hearing a sales-pitch.

Believe me when I tell you that this little boy was about as cute as a young man could get and not be a girl.  He had one of those round pumpkin shaped faces that just lit up like a jack-0-lantern when he smiled.  And that smile never left his face!  He opened his excited presentation with the words, “Hi, Sir” and I have to tell you, from that moment on I never understood another word!  He was all over the place.  His words were unintelligible.  Every once in awhile I picked up “money” and “new uniforms”  and “donate” but beyond that he might as well have been speaking in Sanskrit.   Even so, he was having no trouble “communicating” with me and getting his message across.

It was his obvious passion.  You could just tell that he was so excited to be out trying to raise money to help his little league team.   He truly believed in what he was selling!  Having raised 4 sons of my own I could just picture him in his little bedroom last night practicing and rehearsing his sales presentation.  By the time he was finished with me I couldn’t wait to get my checkbook and help him out.  I was sold!! 

Obviously, what sold me was his enthusiasm and sincere energy.  Of course, the fact that he lived about 4 doors down and I knew his family didn’t hurt his chances either, but I digress.   The point I want to make here is to follow up on my post of yesterday. 

The little guy didn’t have the words but, so what!  He sure had the tonality and physiology!  That is where the communication occured.  Words make up only 7% of the effectiveness of communication.  Tonality, (how we say the words) is 38% and our physiology is 55%.

Professional selling is really nothing more than a transference of feeling.  And nothing transfers that feeling more than  tonality and physiology.  It’s that unexplainable “aura” around a person when they are truly excited about what they are trying to communicate.  Ask any parent if their infant child who hasn’t developed words yet has any trouble communicating what they want.  The baby’s body language and tonality (sometimes crying or screaming) definately gets their point across. 

Over the years I have seen many brand new salespeople who haven’t yet learned their sales presentations (words) do very well in their first couple of weeks because they are excited and enthusiastic about what they are doing and that excitement registers with their customers and sales are made.  It’s almost like the customer is thinking, “I don’t know what this guy is selling but I have to have some of it!”  Sadly, after the newness wears off and the excitement wanes, sales start to fall off also. 

I wish I had the formula for excitement and enthusiasm and could bottle it up and hand it out.  We all have had it at various times in our lives just like the little kid but for some reason we lose it along the way.  The folks that stand out and excel are the ones that are able to summon it up when they need it.  Take entertainers for example.  I saw the play “Fiddler on the Roof” many years ago and the program said these actors and actresses had performed the same show over 4,500 times!  How do they keep it fresh night after night after saying the same lines thousands of times over and over?  Simple.  They are able to treat every performance like it was Opening Night!  That is the sign of a true professional.  

We have to find out what motivates us….what melts our butter…..what blows our skirt up… what gets our juices going.  We need to charge into each day with the excitement and enthusiasm of that little kid.  My motivation was always my sons.  We all get lazy at times and I admit there were times that I didn’t want to make another prospecting call or talk to another customer but I would pull out a picture of the kids and say to myself, “If I take a shortcut.. who am I really hurting?”  That was my motivation.  We all have something that fires us up!  We just need to focus on it until we feel the energy.  I once read that the best way to make sure you always do your best is to imagine that the whole world were watching you.  Talk about an audience!

Maybe the best way to explain what a “real professional” attitude is would be to share with you a story of Joe Dimaggio the great Yankee outfielder and hall-of-famer.  Known as the Yankee Clipper (and for you non-baseball fans, he was also known as Mr. Coffee) he played 15 years and retired in 1951.   The story is told of  an event that occured in his final season.  It was late August and the Yankees were playing a Sunday double-header in Detroit.   It was late in the second game and Joe was at bat and hit a weak pop-up to the shortstop.  Instead of just stopping and returning to the dugout, he hustled all-out to first base like it was the 9th inning of the World Series.  When he got back to the dugout his teamates started ragging on him a little bit with comments like, “Lighten-up Joe, you’re a hall of famer, relax a little bit, you don’t have to prove anything.”  One of his teamates asked him, “Joe, why are you working so hard?”  His answer illustrates why he was one of the greatest of all time. 

“The reason I work so hard is that there may be someone in the stands today who has never seen me play!”

Wow!  Not hard to see why he excelled.  That was his motivation.  What is yours!  As you step onto the ballfield of life each day bring your enthusiasm, excitement and passion with you. 

 Make it a great day, Rick

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick

But in this case it is not opinion but fact.  Read on and be enlightened! 

There are only 3 ways in which we human beings communicate.   Only three!

1. Words
2. Tonality
3. Fizzyology  (Yes, I know how to spell it but wanted to see if you were paying attention)

Of even more interest is the relative effect each of these have in our ability to get our message across to each other.  Experts have shown that the breakdown is as follows:

1. Words - 7%
2. Tonality - 38%
3. Physiology - 55%

Words, as you see, have the least effect on our communication.   HOW we say those words, or the tonality, is over 5 times as important than the words themselves and of course the real  communicator is our physiology, i.e. body language, eye contact, hand gestures etc.

The sad thing about blogging is that the only way we can communicate is with our words.  Punctuation marks can help a little by taking the place of tonality or physiology but unless you are a great, great writer you will never be able to get your point across as well as you could if you were speaking to your audience face-to-face.  Exclamation points and italics are a sad substitute for true passion and excitement that people can read in your face. 

I have been a public speaker and trainer for over 30 years and feel really hamstrung with this blogging thing cause I don’t feel I can communicate as well as I would like and am used to.  Take tonality for example.  With HOW I say a word I can actually change the meaning of what I am saying.  Take the following sentence:

“I didn’t say I shot my wife.”

Depending on my voice inflection, (tonality) I can make those simple words mean many different things.  For example: (Inflection on the subject word is italicized and bolded)

“I didn’t say I shot my wife.” (the man over there did)

“I didn’t say I shot my wife.” (I implied it)

“I didn’t say I shot my wife.” (My mistress did)

“I didn’t say I shot my wife.” (I poisoned her)

“I didn’t say I shot my wife.” (I shot his wife)

“I didn’t say I shot my wife.” (I shot my dog)

Each sentence had the same seven words but depending on my voice inflection they had six totally unique meanings.  Great speakers understand tonality.  They vary the pace of their speaking, sometimes they are loud, sometimes they whisper, sometimes they use accents.   They understand that the meaning of what they say can be affected by how they say it.  They use anything to keep from being monotone which not only weakens the communication but puts the audience to sleep. 

That is why I really respect great writers.  They have a tough job.  They need to get their message across using just one of the means of communication.  And the least important one at that!

Don’t get the wrong idea from me.  Words are very important.  Mark Twain once said that the difference between the right word and ALMOST the right word is like the difference between lightning and a lighting bug.  No wonder he was a great writer.  More later, 

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick

Here’s the deal. 

If you want to start making more sales….quit trying to make more sales! 

Think about that for a moment.  It might dawn on you that there is a reason that most salespeople enjoy a less than stellar reputation among the buying public. 

Why do you suppose that is? 

Could it have something to do with the idea that most salespeople look at the sales process as a contest.  In other words, if they sell you…they win and you lose!  If you don’t buy…. you win and they lose.  The more competitive the salesperson is the more they try to win the contest and thus also earn the well earned reputation of being “high pressure.”   Try this on for size.

Selling is something you do FOR your customer… not something you do TO them!

It is no wonder that many customers approach  the sales environment with anxiety, fear and trepidation.  As salespeople we have to remember that:

We salespeople pay the sins of every salesperson who has come before us! 

If our customer’s past history with salespeople has been nothing but a litany of disrespect, high-pressure and a total disregard for what is important to them then obviously the customer will approach the sales situation with a pre-conceived idea of what is going to happen.  They have already reserved a litle “pigeon-hole” into which they tend file away ALL salespeople.  You may be the total exception to the rule and a true professional but you still are going to be stuffed into that little pigeon hole unless you do something different to earn your customer’s trust. 

What can I do?

Well, for starters, say nothing important for the first 2 or 3 minutes you are with your customer.  Why?  Because when you first meet your customer there is going to be some tension.  You don’t know each other yet.  You are feeling each other out.  If you start in with your sales presentation too early or before that “relationship tension” has been reduced you are just acting like every other salesperson who couldn’t wait to make a sale.  Now your customer is thinking… “Yeah, this guy is just like the last one!  He doesn’t care about me… he just wants to make a sale.”

So what do we talk about instead?

How about talking with your customer about their most important subject!  Them!!!  You will discover what makes them tick and what is important to them!   They will love you for it!  Talk about their job, their family, hobbies, back-ground, future plans etc.   Take the attitude that you just met your customer in your favorite social setting and get into a conversation and not a presentation. 

Really listen to your customer! 

All of us love to be recognized.  Find something about them to compliment that you sincerely like.  Maybe it is a piece of jewelry, shoes, their yankee ball-cap or just about anything else other than your product or service.   Remember, that the compliments must be sincere.   Whatever you talk about… don’t get into your presentation until you have established common ground.   Actually, what will probably happen is that your customer will eventually ask you about your product or service once he feels comfortable with you.   You then will have permission to begin your sales process.   Remember this always:

More sales are lost in the Opening than in the Closing!

If you handle your first 2 or 3 minutes like a true professional you will find that everything else will just fall into place and you will also find that:

People love to buy… they just hate to be sold!

Go make it a great day! Rick

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick