THE VICTOR WRITES THE HISTORY

I was having breakfast with a sales rep friend of mine a few days ago and we were exchanging leads with one another as we have been doing for many years now. I handed him a business card from a customer of mine who I have just started selling a few months ago.

As I handed him the card he read the name and said, “That #^($@&!, I will never talk to him again, he is an #^%!&(*” I was shocked, not at his language (I have been known to let loose a string of words similar to his) but at the fact that he didn’t like this guy who I have started to become friends with.

This made me think about something that happened to me when I was in school. I was in a history class and the professor started telling the story of the Civil War, from the aspect of the losers (the South). It was actually pretty funny to hear about battles talked about from this aspect. It changed the way you viewed the entire war.

Getting back to my conversation with the rep, I started to smile as he was getting redder and redder in the face thinking about this guy that he didn’t like at all. Here we had the same person, being viewed by two people who do the same thing, and resulting in totally opposite opinions.

This reminded me of a sales meeting I used to conduct. I would start by making a statement like, “You can’t sell a convenience store, they never buy anything” I would then nod my head and ask who agrees with me, every time I would have a group nodding and readily agreeing with me. Before the meeting I would always look at my reps accounts and find a rep that had a BIG convenience store account. After I got most of the reps to agree that you could not sell a convenience store I would then ask that rep their opinion. They would tell everyone about the success they were having selling a convenience store.

I would do the same thing with 2 or 3 other industries and always have the majority of reps saying you couldn’t sell them, and then the rep that was having great success selling them. The end of the meeting was, depending on how well you are personally doing in an industry dictates your opinion of the industry.

The same goes for people. Depending on how much business a person is giving you often indicates how you feel about the person.

So now you should be asking what is the point of this post, simply this, Don’t listen to someone’s opinion about a prospect. You can take it into consideration but make up your own mind. What you may find out is that the bum to another rep may become your best friend and best customer.

Lorin