Colinism 001 - 3 Simple Tips to Put Some Awesome Back Into Your Selling
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Transcript of Colinism 001 - 3 Simple Tips to Put Some Awesome Back Into Your Selling
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8/6/2019 Colinism 001 - 3 Simple Tips to Put Some Awesome Back Into Your Selling
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COLINISM
www.colinjbrowne.com ENTER >
SIMPLE TIPS TO PUT SOME
AWESOME
BACK INTO YOUR SELLING
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COLINISM
The rst question is likely to be why? Why another book about sales making a
claim to be able to solve your problems and put you on the road to better
results? Isnt there already too much crap like this in the world?
Probably.
But heres the thing: were collectively, as sales professionals, still making all
the same mistakes we have been making for years. I spend a lot of time either
pitching ideas of my own or working with salespeople to help them improve
theirs and the lessons in this short book are ones I absolutely know to have
made a massive difference to my own results.
In the end it just seemed wrong not to share them.
- Colin
www.colinjbrowne.com < 1 >
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Geng to the top in anything from compeve
athlecs to professional sales is fundamentally about
the same thing. Learn the basics, see which points
youre specically great at and focus on making those
awesome. But its also about embracing your individual
style, shaping and perfecng it unl it is absolutely
outstanding.
COLINISM
Geng from okay, or evenprey goodto awesome in
sales may be a lot simpler than youd imagine.
www.colinjbrowne.com < 2 >
Most things in life are actually prey simple. Even complex projects like the training that goes into
creang an Olympic Gold athlec performance or climbing Mount Everest can be broken down
into a very simple set of tasks.
The whole self-help industry depends on that being true because otherwise there would be no
hope at all of the average person making the journey. The success of ideas such as Body-for-Life
for example rely on the fact that geng into the best shape of your life is a prey simple maer.
Its a simple maer because you know what you ought to be doing, even without being told. Eat
dierently. Work out more. Run. If you do basic, simple things it is a guarantee that youll get in
beer shape. And yet, despite it being so simple and that most of us are prey disased with our
bodies and would like to improve them, most of us are doing nothing about it. Why is that?
The reason probably is that just because these things are almost childishly SIMPLE, that does not
make them EASY.
It isnt EASY to get out of bed early and run down to the gym rather than hing the snooze buon
for een minutes more. It isnt EASY to turn down a lunch me cheese burger and eat the apple
and the banana you brought from home.
It isnt EASY to choose to miss watching the match this evening because Wednesdays are for chest,
shoulders and arms.
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Time in sales always has a gurave bomb aached to
it. You never have as much me as you think you do
and things can have a habit of blowing up if youre not
on top of them. And since revenue not generated has a
perpetual knock on eect, its all about starng RIGHT
NOW. Theres never going to be a beer me when the
clock is aached to tubes of scary-looking explosive
stu.
Recently I was watching one of those TEDx talks that are freely available on www.ted.com starring
an awesome lady named Mel Robbins who made the point about as simply as it can be made. She
said:
YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO FEEL LIKE IT
There is never going to be a me when you feel like geng started. Waing for a beer me is
just waing for a me that will never come. This is you, baby, right now.
If you can embrace the concept of starng right now, youll be beer than almost everyone
around you, bunch of procrasnators that we are. That will give you a head start and buy you
more me at the end of each sales cycle when otherwise you might be desperately trying to close
any piece of business just to make your numbers.
But while deciding youre going to become the master of doing it now is, I think, one of the big
three for outstanding sales success, it isnt the whole soluon to the problem that ails many sales-
people today. While increasing your sales acvity is outstanding winning behavior, youll limit your
eecveness if you merely do much more of the same old stu.
The world is full of sales theory saying there are very specic ideal ways to achieve a basic sales
task; to make a cold call or to strike up rapport with a customer for instance. I think its all bullshit.
I think such theory recklessly ignores the fact that more sales are done when creave individuality
is the dening principle.
COLINISM
www.colinjbrowne.com < 4 >
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxSF-Mel-Robbins-F-YOU-How-Tohttp://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxSF-Mel-Robbins-F-YOU-How-To -
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Geng creave in sales is a lile like playing make-
believe the way you did as a kid. As you get deeper
into the business of sales, you get to thinking that only
serious answers can solve the serious challenges you
face. Dont you believe that for a second, however. A
lot of current thinking is prey clear that allowing the
childlike part of your brain to run riot now and then is
great for creavity. Even the iconic Steve Jobs advised
Stanford graduates to stay foolish.
COLINISM
www.colinjbrowne.com < 5 >
Its been my observaon again and again that when salespeople allow their own quirky individu-
ality to come out and be part of their process, theyre beer able to focus on the actual task of
selling which is frankly, demanding enough as it is. Being an individual is key to solving the second
part of our three-part sales dilemma:
WERE OUT OF PRACTICE IN THE ART OF FINDING CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
I think that loss of truly creave problem solving in sales is a massive force in prevenng us from
being genuinely awesome. I also think it is what is holding us back and creang lacklustre perform-
ances that are just geng harder and harder to keep doing on a daily basis.
I believe that there are simple ways to change that however.
Children very oen hold the key. Give a ve year old a box of crayons and a colouring book and tell
them there is only one way to do it and theyll look at you like youre nuts because they can see
hundreds of possibilies. It hasnt in fact, ever occurred to that ve year old brain that there might
be a limit to the possibilies.
Theyre right of course. There isnt a limit. But weve forgoen its possible to think that way andeven feel were being nave when we do.
Were so oen locked into the same red old approach to sales in which grim determinaon
trumps childish invenon and enthusiasm that weve stopped looking for completely new ways to
do things.
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Its prey clear that people buy from people they like.
You can be the most professional, well-versed, experi-
enced salesperson in the world, but theyre sll going
to buy from someone more awesome than you, given
the chance. Your best chance in sales: be more awe-
some. More original. If youre having more fun with it,
that will show and that can completely change your
customer relaonships.
Let me give you an example of how it couldbe. This is a true story about a guy called Michael. A
real guy; the head of a 500 000 000 division of one of the major mobile phone service providers
in South Africa. In his early 40s he is a man with a Porsche and all the toys you can think of. He has
a Black Belt Second Dan in karate. Hes sort of an over-achiever all along the way.
When he started out in sales some 20+ years ago, it was selling dinner sets door-to-door. Cases of
matching plates and cups and bowls.
The young Michael was super-charged with enthusiasm so it was a hard trip down to the pave-
ment when his rst 50 door-knocks told him to bugger o. Those rst few weeks were, to para-
phrase Jerry Maguire, an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege.
But this guy wasnt then and isnt now, the sort to say die. Instead he decided to get creave.
The rst step was to work out why he wasnt geng anywhere. He decided it was his choice of
customers that was wrong. He didnt know anything about them and that meant it was lile more
than a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
As he thought it through, he realised that his best shot at repeated success was to target singlepeople. Married couples were likely to already have a dinner set because at the very least they
would have been given one as a wedding present.
This is basic stu, but it s so important that marketers give it the fancy name of market segmenta-
on.
COLINISM
www.colinjbrowne.com < 6 >
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Give a ve year old a box of crayons and theres no
limit to the creavity theyll come up with. We were
all ve once and we all did this with the same enthusi-
asm. That atude is more important in sales than you
might imagine because the more creave you can be,
the more youll stand out from a generally not-very-
creave crowd; important if you want to be properly
awesome at sales.
Understanding that, he turned his mind to where he would nd lots of single people. In South Af-
rica at that me, many government employees were given subsidised living quarters. Apartments
for the single people and perhaps a home with a small garden for those married with children.
And because single people have dierent social behaviour to that of families, they generally lived
apart so that there were whole blocks of apartments where single hospital employees or single
policemen and women lived.
It was a realisaon that changed things for him dramacally. But then he added the cherry on top
by geng hold of the shi details for the people he intended to target so that he knew whether
he should knock on their doors in the morning, the aernoon or even late at night.
SIMPLE stu. CREATIVE stu. Within a year he wasnt just the best salesperson that company had,
he was the best one they had EVER had.
That may be a dierent story to the one youre used to being told. The one that says sales is only
about the numbers and nothing else. The one that insists that exing from a very rigid approach is
forbidden.
Had the young Michael not invented his own customer set, and re-invented his working hours in
order to reach those customers, some of whom were on night shi and were home by day and
some of whom were on day shi and were home by night, it would be a very dierent story.
As it is, the reality is audacious enough to be sales genius level.
COLINISM
www.colinjbrowne.com < 7 >
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Ah, if only. If sales was even one one-hundredth this
easy, books like this would be unnecessary because
youd be too busy scuba diving o Aruba to worry
about making your target. I understand that its tough.
I also believe however that with fresh thinking, it can
be the second most fun youll ever have (Im not going
to lie; scuba diving o Aruba is always going to be the
winner).
COLINISM
www.colinjbrowne.com < 8 >
Oh, and it goes without saying that he had FUN. Lots and lots of it. Its always fun when youre
winning.
That is principle number three that I think has a big part to play in holding us back:
WE FORGET TOO OFTEN THAT THIS STUFF IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN
I met a dynamic duo of salespeople at a publishing company in Dubai once who got around their
fear of cold calling by making it a game between them. They encouraged each other through an
energec hour to come up with the most awesome opening line or to include a simple, inoen-
sive, but arbitrary word in each pitch. As one of them would t it in, the other would fall apart
laughing.
Counter-producve? Dont you believe it for a second. Considering the alternave, that they sat
alone in separate cubicles without encouragement, not really knowing where to start, this was
creave wizardry. These two were the number one and number two salespeople in their team,
prey consistently.
I know a guy who gets through a vast number of customer calls as long as he is able to walkaround the oor with his golf driver, playing an imaginary game of golf as he goes about it. Who
knows whats going on in his head? Personally, I dont think it maers, as long as it works for him.
I know a guy who ends every day with drinks or a cup of coee or an ice cream sundae with a cli-
ent. For him, relaonship building is everything so that hes not just the guy that sells them stu.
Hey, while you were out
getting coffee, 47 randomcustomers called asking ifanyone could help them buyloads of the stuff we sell.
I said youd call them backwhen you have the energy.
COLINISM
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Youre never going to be as good at anything as you
are things you consider to be fun. Sales is hard work
at the best of mes and if youre not having fun with
this emoonally-charged pursuit, youre less likely to
be successful. You can do a lot of jobs if youre not that
into them, and complete them successfully even on
days when youre not feeling up to it. Not sales though.
If youre having a bad day or a bad month, it will show
and it will have an impact.
I know another who put together a very clever (and very funny) PowerPoint presentaon present-
ing him as a hot new product and describing the benets of having him in your life.
I know a guy who has hands down the cleverest way to get in front of any customer I have ever
heard. And I know a girl who outsold an exisng team of eight men, beang their annual totals
though she had only six months to do it, just by doing one SIMPLE and CREATIVE thing. If you want
to know these two stories, drop me an email; my address is on the last page and Id be delighted
to share them with you.
Taking these lessons, and many others like them, I believe these three ideas to be hugely impor-tant if you want an awesome sales career:
1. Remember you are never going to feel like geng started.
2. Get back into the mode of thinking creavely.
3. Remember that this stu is supposed to be fun.
Okay, its play me! Go sell!
COLINISM
www.colinjbrowne.com < 9 >
COLINISM
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1. Never say NO to anything for at least 72 hours. We are so pro-
grammed to be risk-averse that when we approach a new idea our
insnct is too oen to say: Yeah, but heres why that will never
work ... When we walk into a new situaon, we look for the things
that make us feel uncomfortable and that we want to avoid. In so
doing, we give over control of our thinking to the creave luddites
that dwell in almost all of us. Dont. Let new ideas breathe for a
while. Rather than looking for the negaves, look only for the posi-
ves, and dig deep. You can always ditch the idea in a few days if it
isnt turning out to be a winner.
2. Get up from behind your desk and go looking for ideas. Speak to
your colleagues; visit customers; go for a walk around a shopping
centre; ip through a bunch of magazines you wouldnt ordinar-
ily ever look at. One thing is for certain, making some changes to
your environment, your inuences or your roune can change the
context of your thinking. No new ideas are going to suddenly jump
o your computer screen while you sit behind your desk. Get out
more. Observe more. See more people. The ideas are out there,not in here.
3. Get out a colouring book and some crayons. Forget that you feel
silly. Beer yet, do it with a bunch of kids. Children are wildly
idealisc, untainted yet by dramac life failure and braver and
more extreme than you can possibly imagine unl you spend me
with them. Youll likely have to reframe your problem and lose the
business-speak so that their young minds can grasp it, but put it in
terms that t their frame of reference and even if you dont come
up with anything useful or meaningful (which is probably likely
since buy a bunch of angry dinosaurs and make them eat your
competor isnt enrely praccal in this day and age), youll at
least delight in the radically dierent approaches to problem solv-
ing that exist in young minds that are freer than yours.
4. Always be asking quesons. Never take things for granted. Youdbe surprised what soluons are already out there in the collecve
life and work experiences of the people even in a small organisa-
on, just waing for you to ask about them. Lew Pla, the celebrat-
ed former CEO of Hewle-Packard once said: If HP knew what HP
knows, we would be three mes as protable. Similarly, the story
goes that when Virgin Atlanc was a young airline, Richard Branson
used to hold massive pares for his employees where he could nd
out their opinions and hear their ideas. Ideas such as the placing of
individual TV screens into seat backs was given to him by a VirginAtlanc cabin crew member.
5. Forget status altogether. In fact, specically spend me with the
most customer-facing people in your organisaon: the receponists
or the switchboard or call centre people for their insight into what
makes your customers ck. Their jobs mean they deal with custom-
COLINISM
Ten ps for thinking more creavely so you can add some AWESOME to your sales!
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COLINISM
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COLINISM
www.colinjbrowne.com