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