#812 Four BIG Lessons

“I hear the no, but I’m looking for a yes.”  This is a line attributed to a highly successful sales manager in the wholesale liquor business.  A friend of mine worked for this manager and told me the guy actually said this to a client and turned a deal around.

This story reinforces four major lessons for me.  Here they are:

1.    As Sammy Davis Jr. sang “I gotta be me, I gotta be me!”  While I could watch this sales manager deliver that line and admire him for having the personality to use it to turn a deal around, I could not deliver that line.  It isn’t in me.  My personality disallows it and if I try it I will come across as insincere and further solidify no.  I gotta be me.

2.   Sometimes the sale begins at no.  Sometimes no is only an OB-jection. Not a final RE-jection.

3.   I’m told that he delivered this line somewhat tongue in cheek.  He made the client smile.  Tension, push and pull, isn’t good in a sales situation.  Rapport always wins!  What he did was defuse some tension with a disarming line and smile and it worked for him.

4.   If you’re losing anyway, try something.  Some of you may be old enough to remember Peter Falk as the TV detective Columbo.  As he was leaving a suspect he’d seemingly finished questioning, he would famously pop back through the door and say, “Just one more thing if I could please…” And then he’d reopen the entire conversation, uncover the truth and close the case.

Way back in 1982 I interviewed for my first professional sales position.  If I’d folded when Mr. Bromberg said “NO” at the end of that first interview, I would not have gotten that job and that job changed everything for me in 1982 and started me on my way.

Own your sales gene…