GIVE THANKS TO OUR SERVICE MEN AND WOMEN

It seems that every Memorial Day I read several posts and get multiple emails reminding me that Memorial Day isn’t about hot dogs and beer, it is a day to remember the men and women that have given their all for our country.

It is almost sad that a holiday of remembrance has become a weekend party.

BUT! Those of us that want to remember will. The people that have lost or know someone who has lost a son or daughter serving our nation will remember. The BRAVE men and women who have stood shoulder to shoulder with the fallen will remember.

Is this good enough? YES. These men and women didn’t do it to stop Americans from having their fun. They did it to allow Americans to have their fun.

If I see a service man or woman this weekend (or any other time) I will thank them for their service. If I see a veteran this weekend, I will thank them for their service. I will do this not just for me, but for all the other Americans having fun this weekend as well.

GOD BLESS AMERICA, and GOD BLESS EVERY AMERICAN.

Lorin

EASY PEAZY

I don’t know why, but over the past few weeks I have heard numerous stories from friends about how difficult it has been to do business with some companies.

I have listened and shook my head at some of the absurd things that I heard, but that was about as involved as I got…. UNTIL YESTERDAY!

I have written an e mail to the company I had trouble with, and until I hear back and see how they handle the problem, I won’t mention them by name.

I live in a 40 year old house. It is in GREAT shape and I do my best to either fix things myself or I have someone come out and fix whatever I need in a timely manner. Bottom line, I am not going to let my house “run down”.

Of all things to go wrong, the door knob from my garage to my kitchen (the door that is used the most) has worn out. This seems like a very simple problem with a 15 minute fix. Go out buy a new knob and replace it, RIGHT?

WRONG! All my locking doors work off the same key, so I need a knob that can be rekeys to all the rest of the locks. Remember I said my house is 40 years old? Well the door knobs are also 40 years old and the new locks sold everywhere, can’t be rekeyed to work with the same key as all the rest.

I did my homework, and found the manufacturer of the knob. They are still in business, but have been bought by a giant company. Thank goodness for the internet, I was able to find the company and they had a phone number to call. I called the customer service number and that is when the fun began!

First Problem – Electronic Answering, I was connected to an electronic answering system that asked my question after question. The problem was after the third question, my situation wasn’t one of the reply options.

Second Problem – No Operator. I pushed the “0” key on my phone trying to get to a “real person”. The “0” key simply started the recording over from the beginning.

Third Problem – “I Can’t Transfer Calls”. Being the smart resourceful person I am, I hit several option selections trying to get to a “real Person”. Option 4 did the trick! I was connected to the accounting department. A very nice lady picked up the phone and when I told her my LONG story, she said, “You need Customer Service”. She then gave me the customer service phone number, as she said it I followed along on my screen seeing that the number she was giving me was the same number I have been calling. I asked her to PLEASE transfer me to CS. That is when she dropped the bomb, “I’m sorry, I can’t transfer calls”

To keep this post to a manageable length, I will shorten the rest of the story.

After several more attempts, I finally got through to someone who said they can help me. I sent pictures of the knob, I sent pictures of the key, I sent pictures of the door, I sent everything they asked for. It took about a week and I got a return call from the company. GOOD NEWS, they told me. Because of the age of the lock, it has a LIFETIME WARRANTY and they will send out a replacement…BUT… they are out of stock and it will be 4 to 6 weeks until they get them back in stock. Seeing no other choice, I said I will wait.

Fast forward 3 weeks.. I got an e mail that the knob is in and they are shipping it to me. 2 days later a package shows up at my home with my NEW KNOB! I open the box and there is a note in the box telling me that I need to take it to a locksmith to have it keyed to my old locks, NO PROBLEM, I expected as much and had already found a place close to my house that will do it.

YESTERDAY…remember I said that this hit home yesterday?

Yesterday I went to the locksmith, he took one look at the lock, a look at the key, and then said, “THEY SENT YOU THE WRONG LOCK”! The lock was for a different key. I was in shock!

I went home and made the call, yep to the only number I had, and it all started again. I then sent the e mail that I am waiting to get a reply to. STOP LAUGHING AT ME!

Please, LEARN from this story. Make doing business with your company and with you as simple as possible. Remove any obstacles a customer may encounter when trying to spend their money with you. Help the customer get what they need the first time they contact you. Finally, be accessible to solve any problems and answer any questions the customer may have.

SPENDING MONEY NEEDS TO BE EASY PEAZY!

I’M SORRY

It has been almost 5 ½ years since I last posted to The Training Buffet, Help Yourself. 5 ½ years… I wish I had a great reason, I don’t. I wish I had a great excuse, I don’t. I wish I had a clue, I don’t. The truth is, I just didn’t.

As the saying goes, LIFE GOT IN THE WAY!

I am back now, I am motivated to start posting, I am also done saying I because "The Training Buffet, Help Yourself" is about you. I write it about experiences I have, but the message is always about YOU.

YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER, BUT SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO HOLD THEIR HEADS UNDERWATER UNTIL THE BUBBLES STOP BEFORE THEY DRINK!

I went into the field with a rep a few weeks ago, who was struggling, to say the least. He had not been selling much. He had no real plan and was more or less just driving around looking for a place to try and sell.

After the first 3 sales calls we made on day 1, I asked him to stop at a diner that we passed so we could set things up. We pulled out his active account list and his past 4 weeks of sales calls. WHAT A MESS!

He had customers that he had called on 3 times in the past 4 weeks that bought nothing and customers he hadn’t called on at all that had purchased hundreds of dollars from him on the last sales call and everything in between.

The rep then said words I have been hearing for years as the top excuse for not calling on a customer… I DIDN’T WANT TO SEEM PUSHY. I told him I didn’t even know what that means.

I asked, did he think calling on a customer on a regular basis was pushy? Did he think being in a business on a set schedule was pushy? Did he think SERVICING a customer was pushy? He said no. So I asked him what he considered pushy. NO ANSWER.

We put a quick plan together for the rest of the day and I asked him to work on the next 3 days that evening and come pick me up from the hotel ready to go to work the next morning.

YUP, you guessed it, the next morning, NO PLAN. He gave me 5 bad reasons he hadn’t done what I asked him to do. I wouldn’t let him leave the hotel parking lot. We went into the lobby and I had him make a plan for the day. At the end of the day I gave him the same assignment as the night before, make a plan for the next 2 days we would be working together.

Stop shaking your head, you know darn well he had NO PLAN the next morning. We went through the same exercise and that afternoon when he dropped me off at the hotel, instead of asking him to make the plan at home I made him (almost kicking and screaming) come into the lobby and make the plan for the next day.

15 minutes, that is how long it took, 15 minutes for him to have a plan that I was happy with. You could look at his face and see how mad he was that I made him do this, but the next day we sold more than the 3 previous days combined.

This was an extreme example of holding his head under water until the bubbles stopped to make him drink, but, he drank. The next week, he had his best week in the business and when he called to tell me about it he said it was because he had a plan every day and it worked.

It took me being PUSHY and forcing him to do something he didn’t feel was worthwhile to see what he needed to do to succeed. Look at your daily habits and identifying what you can do better, and then holding your own head underwater (remember, don’t actually hold your head underwater, or anyone else’s for that matter) until you make the adjustments to help yourself succeed.

Lorin

MAN VS. MACHINE

It is said that everything you could want to know is somewhere on the internet, and quite possibly it is, but that doesn’t mean you can find it.

A friend of mine came to me today asking about a product that my company sells. He wanted to know things like how to use it, where and when to use it, and how my product compared to other products similar to it that are on the market.

Now this may sound like he is asking normal questions that any customer would ask, and in fact he was. The one thing that you don’t know about him is he is an internet junkie. I have never seen him buy anything without first looking it up on the internet and researching it beyond what any sane person would call absurd.

To give you an idea of how he looks things up, he spent hours looking up the best brand of gas to put in his lawn mower. True story, and to make it even better he found the best gas was a brand that isn’t even sold in Georgia. Enough said?

Anyway, for him to ask me about my products was a little out of character so I decided to go on the offence and find out what was going on. He started out by telling me about the research he did, and gave me a quick overview of what he found out. He then pulled out his folder and showed me what he had printed off about the products and what he thought was important.

To be honest, it was an impressive amount of information that he had gathered.

I asked him why then did he need more information from me if he already had all of this information. This is where the conversation got very interesting. He told me that he could find all sorts of information about each product, but what he couldn’t find anywhere was the differences between the products. He wanted to know why he should buy one over the other.

This made me think, how many of our customers run into the same problem? How many of your customers get tons of facts about products but have no idea of which product to buy based on the information they just looked up?

I started thinking about my customers and how many times one of them told me they looked my product up online or in my catalog. I thought about how many sales I lost because a customer looked up my product and someone else’s and the other product looked better on paper.

I told my friend about the two products he was considering and why one was better for him than the other. I explained that both products are excellent but my product was much better suited for what he intended to use it for.

What I am saying is I did what a sales rep is supposed to do, I didn’t just give my friend a bunch of features and benefits about the products and leave it up to him to make up his mind. I helped him to understand what the features and benefits meant to him and which ones were important to him based on his needs.

I thought to myself how easy buying would be if every product had a review of how it worked in every possible situation and a comparison chart to illustrate the pros and cons. That is when the concept of “everything is on the internet” became a little fuzzy to me.

The internet is here to stay. It is today, and always will be from now on, a major source of information for buyers. But I can say with complete confidence, THE INTERNET WILL NEVER TAKE THE PLACE OF A SALEMAN when comparing products for specific applications.

So the next time a customer says they looked up your product on the internet don’t assume they know how the product will work, they may only know what a marketing person decided was important about the product.

Lorin

BELOW COST

Today I did something that I absolutely hate doing, I went with my daughter to buy a car! If I go to buy a car for myself, it isn’t the most pleasurable experiences, but doing it for someone else (even my daughter who I love dearly) makes it one of the most unpleasant things in the world. Couple that with needing to deal with awful sales people and you have found my hell!

We drove to our first dealer and parked. An extremely friendly gentleman came right over to meet us almost before we had gotten out of the car. He had a great smile and a good solid hand shake. I introduced myself, my wife and daughter and told him upfront that my daughter was his customer and I was just there for support. The salesman did exactly want he should have done and focused on my daughter and made her feel like a queen. He asked her about herself and what she was looking for. He probed for answers to questions like what model are you looking for and what options she wanted, what color she wanted, what were her driving habits and a list of questions that helped him guide her to a vehicle.

He did a great demo (a test drive) and let my daughter take the car over a variety of different roads to see how the car handled. He went over the options (features) and what each did (benefits) and explained how each one worked.

I was sure he was about to make a sale when he looked at my daughter and said so how long until you are ready to buy? I was in shock, he was about to let us walk out of the dealership without the car and without a sale.

My daughter looked at me and asked me what I wanted to do. OK, I need to be honest, I could have said I wanted her to buy the car and that would have been the end, my torcher would have been over. But being the good dad I am (and a sales trainer) I said well lets go think about it over lunch and we will let him know. And away we went to the next dealership.

We drove about 15 miles to the closest dealer that sold the same car and here is where I almost lost it. Because we knew what model and options she wanted from the last stop it was easy to pick a car on the lot. This salesman was smart enough to close my daughter on buying the car right then and there. I said lets go talk price.

We went through the normal routine of filling out some forms and off the salesman ran to get his “BEST” price. 5…10…15 minutes passed and no sign of our salesman. Finally he came in all excited and exclaimed how happy he was with the “DEAL” he just got for us.

He pulled out a piece of paper (not one of the forms my daughter filled out) and there were a few figures scribbled on it. He looked my daughter in the eye and said just sign here and I will get the car ready. My beautiful daughter looked and me and I just smiled and made a counter offer and sent him on his way back to his sale manager to go to work for us.

This time it only took about 5 minutes and he came back not quite as enthused as the first time. He said his manager was set on the price he gave us and wouldn’t do anything more. My daughter once again looked at me and I stood up and put out my hand and thanked him and said goodbye. He asked where I was going. I simply said to another dealer that wanted my daughters business. He asked for one more chance and I smiled and told him one more and it can only take 2 minutes.

He didn’t need both minutes I gave him, within 30 seconds he came back with his manager in tow. His manager looked at the paper as if he hadn’t seen it before (I thought he was the one who gave us the price, oh well) and he said, Mr. Greenstein to which I said, don’t talk to me, she (pointing to my daughter) is your customer. He looked at my daughter and said, do you realize that at this price I am losing $400.00?

At that, I stood up again and stepped in front of my daughter and said, “Baby, I don’t want you to be the person who makes this dealer go out of business, I can’t allow you to buy this car and have them loose money.”

With my speech over both my wife and daughter burst into insane laughter as we walked out the door.

Well we still needed a car for my daughter so back to the first dealer we went, this time I asked for the salesman we talked to AND his manager.

I am so glad I came back. The manager was an excellent salesman and for the first time I was feeling that my daughter was in good hands. He went back over the car with her and talked about the price. He explained how the pricing worked and why the car was priced as it was. He was never shy about asking his price, but built value around the price.

Then he said the magic words that pushed me over the top to where I told my daughter to buy, he said to my daughter, “ERIN, ANYONE CAN SELL YOU A CAR. IT IS THE SERVICE AFTER THE SALE THAT SEPARATES ME FROM THE REST.” He then told her all the little extras that he and the dealership provide.

He then did what his salesman forgot to do the first time we were there, he asked for the sale. This time my daughter didn’t need to look at me for an answer, she has been around me long enough and knew a good sales presentation when she heard one. She looked at him, put out her hand and said yes sir, let’s write this up.

The sales manager took care of all the paperwork went into the finance office with her and then did the best delivery of a car I have ever seen, taking time to show my daughter ever feature and how it worked on her new Honda Civic.

Today I have seen some good, bad and definitely ugly sales skills. I also saw a true professional that was not only good but PROUD of how good he was. Thank you Rick Johnson of Curry Honda in Chamblee GA for being the pro you are. My faith in car salesmen is restored.

Lorin

A GREAT SAYING

A GREAT SAYING

I found this saying on Facebook and it immediately hit me as one of the best sayings I have ever seen.

I hope you like it as much as I do.

I CHOOSE…

TO LIVE BY CHOICE, NOT BY CHANCE;

TO MAKE CHANGES, NOT EXCUESE;

TO BE MOTIVATED, NOT MANIPULATED;

TO BE USEFUL, NOT USED;

TO EXCEL, NOT COMPETE.

I CHOOSE SELF-ESTEEM, NOT SELF PITY.

I CHOOSE TO LISTEN TO MY INNER VOICE,

NOT THE RANDOM OPINIONS OF OTHERS.

Read this once, read it again, and then THINK about each line and how much better off we would all be if everyone acted on it.

CHOOSE!

Lorin

I WANNA GO HOME

I have always been amazed at what I hear come out of a reps mouth when they are having a challenging day. Today I received a call from a rep to tell me they wanted to go home to gather their thoughts.

Now I am not someone who gets shocked very often. I have been in sales and sales training long enough that very few things I see or hear anymore shock me, THIS SHOCKED ME.

I sat at my desk with the phone in my hand just staring at top of my desk, I was speechless for a moment. Finally I asked the rep what thoughts she was going to gather at home that she couldn’t gather just by pulling over in her car and grabbing something to drink for a short time.

I could just imagine her on the other end of the phone thinking about what to say next, and then it struck me. She was already home, this was a call to cover her rear end.

Not wanting to simply call her a liar, I asked her where she was that moment and offered to meet her and ride with her the rest of the day. She started to stutter a little and then said she didn’t want company she just wanted to be alone. I offered to buy her lunch so we could talk for an hour or so, once again she opted for being alone.

It wasn’t until I asked her if she wanted to quit that I got the truth. I was right, she told me that she had given up by 9:30AM. She had stopped by a customer that told her he would definitely buy the next time she stopped in. She stopped in and he didn’t buy. She said she made 2 more stops and both told her no. (Can you imagine 3 stops and 3 no’s… what is the world coming to) She said by then it was 9:30, she knew her husband was out of the house at work and she just gave up and went home.

 I wanted to know why she called me. What was she trying to accomplish by calling me? So I asked her directly what she wanted me to do. We both stayed silent for at least 20 seconds and she said, “I want you to help me make sales”.

This cracked me up, I blurted out, “FROM YOUR HOUSE?” Once again 20 seconds or more of silence. Then she told me I was right and she was just being stupid.

I looked at the clock and it was getting to be noon, so I told her to come meet me at the office and we would see what we could do about helping her. She showed up about 45 minutes later and I could see she had been crying.

I asked what she was crying about, quitting or quitting on herself. She shot daggers at me with her eyes and said she had NOT quit on herself. She told me she could do it.

She started to get up and walk out of my office and I asked her where she was going, she said to work. Why? I asked. She said to prove to me she could do it. I told her that she was going to fail.

Talk about a shocked look, she looked like I had just punched her in the stomach. She said how could I say that, I answered, she didn’t need to prove anything to me. I told her I believed in her a lot more than she believed in herself right now. I said to succeed she needed to go and do it for her. She needed to prove to herself that she was as good as I thought she was.

It doesn’t matter how long a rep has been selling, how successful they are, or how confident they seem to be. Every rep at some point gets an acute case of SELF DOUBT. There is only one cure, WINNING! It may be making a sale or getting an appointment with a buyer that you have not been able to get to before. It might be winning a contract or making a hire. It might just be opening the car door and getting out in a place that has intimidated you for days, months or years.

A win is a win is a win. We all need wins.

It is now 9:30 PM and I just got off the phone with the rep. She told me that her day got better, but not by much. She did make a few small sales but nothing to be excited about.

I told her that she needed to be excited about the entire day. I told her that she pushed herself to do things she really didn’t want to do and that the day might not have been an award winning day, it was still better than it would have been had she stayed home.

Lorin