My first foray into sales involved selling on the phone and face to face.
I was a “headhunter” — a recruiter placing financial executives (controllers, CFO’s, CPA’s) into jobs, mostly in private industry.
Most of the job involved telephone sales, and perhaps 15-20% of the job involved in-person sales.
Then I got into commercial insurance.
Since I had no system to generate leads, I spent a fair amount of time in ‘networking meetings’ and other really horrible situations, trying to basically “beg” for business. Of ALL the professional things I’ve ever done, this is one of the things I hate the most. To me, when this is how you prospect, you are stripped of ALL your dignity.
Again, most of my selling here, either in trying to beg for leads, or in trying to convince people to work with me, involved in-person (belly-to-belly) selling.
Then I got involved in financial planning. Again, since the company I worked for (I eventually left them and went out on my own after a few years), had NO way to get business other than shoving me into a room the size of a closet with a telephone book and a phone… most of my selling was on the phone, and a smaller portion — say… 30 – 40% was in person.
As a side note, it’s amazing how a national company can hire people, promise them the sun, the moon and the stars… knowing they have no way of showing them how get clients, isn’t it?
Anyway, again I learned nothing about generating leads (which is probably why I’m obsessed about this, today) but I learned a LOT about selling in this position. One of the managers I worked with was a very good sales person and spent a ton of time with me in this area.
So much so that when I got into direct-response marketing back in early 2000, I was able to use it to take me very far, pretty rapidly — because of all the years of sales experience (and frankly, sales failures) I had behind me.
Amidst all of this experience, there is one thing I learned above everything else, that has served me well over time, and made me a lot of money.
It’s something that’s harder than almost anything else to transfer into print, because it’s more attitudinal in nature than anything else.
And when you’re in person, you can use words to go back and forth in a question and answer format to cultivate this attitude, but you’re much more limited in print, obviously.
Make sense?
Yes, but you’re probably wondering, “What the hell are you talking about already?”
Right?
OK, great so let’s cover this now.
The Law Of Importance says “If the sale is more important to you, than it is to your customer… then you have lost all leverage and control over the deal.”
It’s critical your prospect never feels the sale means more to you than to them.
This is an attitude any good sales person should be able to project. It will get you tons of clients and customers… and make you a shitload of money, but it is also the foundation of all your “positioning.”
But be careful — there’s a fine line to walk between the law of importance, and being arrogant.
Make sure you don’t cross it.
Now go sell something, Craig Garber
P.S. New copywriting “positioning” rules right here
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