“The Specialist” Sales and Management Training Blog

Hey everybody,

I hope you had a very challenging day. As you travel with me (while I am sharing 39 years of tremendous excitement in our great profession) you will notice, if you follow closely, that I will talk about something in one post and maybe 3 posts later come back at it again from a different angle.

Here’s the answer to last night’s question, which for you 1st timers was “How do you know why your people are working for you or your company without asking them?” Well, I have given you this answer in a previous post, just framed around a different set of circumstances. In politics I am sure you have heard the shock when something is leaked to a newspaper or someone. Well the truth is the leaks are intentional. They are called trial balloons. They, being the party in charge of making the laws, will deliberately let something leak or float a trial balloon to gauge public outcry or opinion. If it is bad they are in shock that someone could leak something as absurd as that. If the response is great everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon to claim the idea was theirs.

In our business I am constantly floating trial balloons around my staff, while carefully monitoring theirs eyes and response. For example, I once had a group of young people and I put up a cash contest. When I was announcing the contest I noticed that only a couple of them got really excited. To take this a step further, out of the few that got excited only two were talking about the money. The other two were talking about being the best and winning. Right then I knew which ones in that group were motivated by money and which ones were motivated by recognition. But wait, my job is not complete. There were still a couple of people that were indifferent. When I had floated my next trial balloon I mentioned a shopping spree and took the group to a chic clothing store and told them what next weeks goals were and what the prizes would be. The group that was indifferent before changed. Two of them were all over the clothes.

The point I am making is I throw enough trial balloons out there until I know for sure everyone’s motivation. Now it is not always in the form of a contest or promotion. That is the beginner’s way. I can throw out 20 trial balloons in seconds and because I study everyone’s eyes so naturally I can see instantly when their eyes show excitement or indifference. This is a learned skill that takes constant practice of one of the 8 basics of success, “Eye Contact”. Remember, The eyes are the window to the soul, but only after you master it.

You know, I hope this journey is exciting to you because me reliving this information is incredibly exciting to me. If one of you readers becomes great in your profession by mastering this information my mission will be complete.

“The Specialist”

Hi everybody,

It’s me again. I have a great one for you tonight. You can use this in sales, in fact, for the professional salesperson it is a must! However, for tonight we are going to focus on the management side of the equation.

This is all about getting the peak performance from your staff. To test yourself, you should try this little quiz. If you dare, without asking anyone or even speaking to anyone on your staff, see if you can write down on paper each employee’s name and beside it put down why you think they are working for you or the company. Already got you thinking don’t I?

You see, good managers know exactly why each person is working for them. What will amaze you is that very few people are there just for money. Now lets think, if you do not know why they are there then how can you possibly motivate them? Here is a very simple example. The teenage girl works at the local pet store cleaning poop from the kennels. By the way this is a true story. When the young girl is done cleaning the kennels the manager immediately moves her to the front and puts her on the register for the rest of the night. The manager could not figure out why he had so much turnover at the position. He asked “The Specialist” for some advice.

First I asked him what he thought? He rationalized the turnover by saying for $6.75 per hour people could find better things to do with their time then clean poop. Well, of course, I did not agree with his analysis. I suggested to him that if he let the young girls play with the animals a little bit they would stay for a long time. He replied, well that would be costing me money. My reply was very simple. The few minutes that he let the young lady play with the animals saved him the much larger cost of turnover, not to mention the inconvenience of sometimes him getting stuck with the chore, due to their untimely departure.

You see, the reason the girls took that particular job was their LOVE FOR ANIMALS. NOT the $6.75 per hour. He never understood why the young girl worked there. Now when you take this self evaluation quiz your first question to me is how do you find out this information without asking each employee? That’s tomorrows post. I hope I have opened your minds and I expect to hear from some of you tomorrow to tell me some of your results.

“The Specialist”

Hi everybody,

I was recently giving a class to the top sales persons and sales managers for a National sales company and one of the top sales people asked me how I overcome objections? Well I thought for a minute and simply stated that with that question the salesperson was implying that the prospect and myself were in disagreement about something.

Wrong position to be in! “The Specialist” in his entire career only had to use rebuttals or overcome “objections” when I was a beginner. The last 15 or more years I never had to sell under those conditions. When I am selling a prospect it really is about me listening to them and AGREEING with them in their positions. You would be amazed how receptive people are to YOUR ideas when you take THEIR side on issues that mean something to them. Everybody in life wants to be right. It is a real art form to be able to perfect this technique. Only someone with advanced skills can pull this off and the rewards are GREAT! Not only will this increase your closing percentages but will trickle down into your family life, and your relationship with your wife and children will certainly be enhanced! I as always look forward to your replies and comments.

“The Specialist”