THREE LEFTS MAKE A RIGHT

My first car was a 1955 Ford Custom. Straight 6 engine with “Three on the Tree” (That’s old talk for a 3 speed manual transmission with the shifter on the steering column). I sold this car to my best friend when I got my next car, a 1959 Plymouth with Push Button Automatic transmission. My friend Tommy drove the Ford for almost a year before he tore the front end out of it. I followed him to the junk yard to bring him home. Because the Fords front end was such a mess Tommy couldn’t make a right turn, we had to plan our trip to the junk yard making only left hand turns. Yep, you guessed it, this is when I first realized that “THREE LEFTS MAKE A RIGHT”!

In sales this is sometimes how we need to plan our sales calls. It would be faster and more direct to make right turns, but we know if we go in that direction the customer will not come along with us. (I hope you are getting the masterful way I am using analogies here) We need to make turns that the customer is willing to follow even if it takes longer to get to the final destination, the close.

Selling is sometimes a balancing act. You need to balance the customer’s likes and dislikes with the potential of the customer. The act of estimating the potential of the customer is in itself a balancing act, will this customer need a lot of service? Will the customer expect discounts? Will the customer pay the bills on time? All these and more need to be considered when looking at a customer’s potential. Once you have gotten an idea of potential, you then need to balance how much time you can invest with this customer. Sometimes, I hate to say, a customer just won’t be profitable. In this case you need to walk away.

If you evaluate a customer and find out that you can afford the time to make 3 lefts to go right then get to work and start selling.

Here is one of the hardships of this situation. Many times we need to invest a considerable amount of time just to make a good evaluation. If the decision is to move on, we feel we have lost the time. Maybe not! During the evaluation process we need to look for common traits with other customers we have evaluated. If we see enough good traits then the 3 lefts are worth the gamble. If we don’t, then we need to cut the presentation short and move on.

Planning the sales call around the evaluation is the key to success. Start the evaluation process as soon as you turn into their parking lot. Look around, if there are 50 parking spaces and only 7 are filled a flag should go up. This doesn’t mean you leave, just keep it in mind. If you walk into the lobby and it loks like no one has been there in a long time another flag should be raised. When you walk down the hall and all the offices are empty, up comes another flag. However if you get back to the production area and see that it is an automated shop and that they are running full speed all the other indicators go away. This is why you need to invest the time to do a FULL evaluation. If you had decided to leave before seeing the production area you would have 3 lefts and they would have equaled a WRONG!

Plan to take the time needed to make good solid decisions about potential, go ahead and make all the lefts you need to, because for every 3 lefts  you make, you make a RIGHT !

Lorin