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You are browsing the archive for 2007 December.

Meditation as a path to Happiness

December 19, 2007 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Emotional Intelligence, Wellbeing Support Services

christmas

Season’s greetings to you, your teams and your families.

I have enjoyed sharing my opinions, ideas and work with you over this year.

I hope it has supported you in some small way to achieve your goals and endeavors and I look forward to being of service to you all in 2008.

buddha

Now given my focus has been on ‘Sales’ you might wonder why I am focusing on “Meditation as path to happiness’ as my final piece for 2007. There is method in my madness. You may recall some months ago I wrote about ‘reflecting on reflecting’ and how it is a powerful skill to help people work and perform to their best. There is also an increasing body of scientific research showing definite links and health benefits on all levels to meditation and mindfulness.

Some of you may not be aware but my university education is in science, studying biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology and immunology. This background combined with my life long participation in sport and my love of yoga and meditation has kept me looking out for the work that links them all together and show the links between mind body and spirit.

Top performing people in many occupations, including sales, are often extremely self-aware and other-aware. Many participate in forms of reflection and meditative practice to assist them in remaining effective in their day-to-day work and dealings with self and others. With that in mind, as another year comes to an end, it is often an opportunity to take time to reflect on the year that was and our role in it – whether we are in sales or not.

With all that we do it is so easy to become caught up in the relentless pursuit of meeting deadlines, pursuing goals and just keeping everything on track, personally and professionally. With all this activity we may put ourselves at risk of missing the wonderful opportunities to reflect on what we have learned and what we already have to be grateful for in our lives.

I have personally been reflecting on the on the 13 years I have been in this business. From those early days to now has been quite some journey. I began this business on 9 January 1995 with the intention of working with the whole person to develop their potential to engage in productive work relationships in concert with a bigger picture. I found focusing on the area of sales and service seemed a logic way to legitimise this type of work more easily. Our aim at Barrett has always been to help people grow and gain mastery through greater self-awareness, understanding, mindfulness and purposeful action. In doing this work, we too, have learned much, received many insights and found much to be grateful for along the way. I have been wanting to speak publicly for a long time about mindfulness and meditation, however back 13 years ago mindfulness, meditation and self-awareness were not mainstream topics for discussion in business. The good news is, that in more recent times, these practices are taking the main stage. Unlike some new age ideas in the market today, people are realising these practices are not fads, they are life long skills which allow for mastery in many areas, including sales. People are now recognising that using Mindfulness and Meditation helps them be more effective, creative and relaxed at work, home and in the community.

yoga

With that I would like to introduce you to some of the current work being done in this area. Meditation as path to Happiness (PDF) is paper written and presented by Dr. Craig Hassed at the 2006 Happiness and its Causes conference www.happinessanditscauses.com.au. Dr Craig Hassed was trained in medicine at Melbourne University and graduated in 1984. His interest in a holistic approach led him to focus on wellbeing rather than simply treating illness. This led him to focus upon counselling, mind-body medicine and meditation. In 1988 Craig decided to make a contribution to bridging these missing links in medical education through joining the Monash University Department of Community Medicine and General Practice. I would like to thank him for giving us permission to publish this article and bring his work to your attention. Topics include:

  • The stress response and its effects on the mind, brain and body
  • Mental health today
  • The importance of attention
  • The search for happiness
  • Meditation, healing and happiness
  • Mindfulness meditation

In addition to this paper I have also included a lovely meditation you may like to try over the new year break called The Attentive Heart Meditation

Thank you again for your continued support. I look forward to keeping in touch with you in 2008.

Happy New Year & Best Wishes

Warmest regards

Sue Barrett

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Making the most of Up Selling & Cross Selling

December 11, 2007 in Sales Skills, Value Creation

Do you sell one thing and one thing only? Probably not. I suspect your business has a range of things it can offer. And I suspect that many of these things can be integrated together to make an end-to-end solution or various combinations that lead to much larger sales.

If this is the case, then how well are you selling in the size and scope of your business offerings?

Too many times sales people get fixated on the immediate sale in front of them not really seeing the potential of that sale now or into the future. If they would only ask the right questions and get a bigger perspective to work from they might get more and bigger sales for less effort.

If you do not ask the questions you will never know. I learned that if you ask, at best, you can get a lot more back in return and, at worst; they can just say ‘no’. At least if you ask you never die wondering.

So I thought I would share a personal story about one of my up selling and cross selling experiences and what I learned from it. I share this story because it continues to remind me not to settle for second best.

A while back I made a presentation to a large group of people from large Australian corporation. My topic was about the ‘Huge Cost of Hesitation’. This was my first entrée into this business and I really wanted to do a great job for all the obvious reasons. Whilst the topic was challenging, the presentation was well received and my sponsoring client was very happy. I knew this could lead to great things.

Well within three days, I received a phone call from one of the senior managers who attended the presentation. He wanted to know if he could use an assessment tool I referred to in my presentation for the recruitment of new sales staff. I replied ‘yes of course you can’. He then said ‘OK so how do I go about using it?’

Now at this point, I could have set him up to use the tool and only sold in that tool, instead, however, I asked him to tell be more about what he was trying to achieve. To which he replied that he was setting up a whole new business area and wanted to hire a different type of sales person than they had traditionally employed in the past. He thought the assessment could help him do that. I asked him if I could ask him more questions to which he replied ‘yes’.

I wanted to see how open minded he was so I asked him had he defined what this new type of person would look like. He said ‘no’. I suggested there were a number of ways he could approach this and I proposed two options to him:

  1. At best we could develop and map the ideal sales person profile for his business model, build a recruitment kit he and his managers could use to properly assess the candidates, supply the right assessment tools and then provide feedback.
  2. At worst he could just use the tool and we provide feedback as originally requested.

He was very happy to explore this further. I committed to getting him a detailed proposal that day. Which I did. Besides everything mentioned previously, I also included 2 bullet points outlining sales and sales management training which could form part of their induction training. (you just never know)
After I sent the proposal, I received a call the next day asking me to elaborate on the 2 bullets points around the sales and sales management training piece as well. Which I did.

They then rang back the following day and asked me what my best price was. I said what they had was my best price. They said they were used to working in markets that always bargained on price. I said that was fine but that I didn’t do that in my market. My price was my price. It was transparent and they knew what they were getting piece by piece. They said ‘OK, that was fair’ and then asked when could we get started on the project. We agreed a date and that was the beginning of a very fruitful relationship.

So what did I learn? If you take things at face value that is all you are likely to get. By asking a few more questions, getting an understanding of their bigger picture and knowing how my products and services worked in concert and separately I was able to turn a $1,000 sale into a $90,000 sale.

Did I do anything special? No not at all. All I did was ask more questions and tried to understand their whole issue. Oh and I knew how my products and services all worked together.

By the way, whilst they paid more, it was worth it to them because their new ‘breed’ of sales people achieved:

  • Achieved a sales closing ratio of 4:3 within 2 months ·
  • Sold the annual sales budget within 5 months.

My client was very happy and said he and his team had learned a lot about how to select in and develop sales people; skills they hadn’t had before and could now take with them anywhere they went. In turn, he referred me on to other areas within the business and so the journey and sales continue.

Here are some handy hints to help you up sell and cross sell:

  1. Product Knowledge: know all your products well
  2. Product Associations & Combinations: Know how your products integrate with each other and how they form a bigger picture. This goes with this goes with that, etc.
  3. New topics: know how to introduce relevant new topics and products into the conversation.
  4. Education: Don’t underestimate your value in terms of the education you bring to clients
  5. Pricing structure: know how your pricing works: the structures, bundling, unbundling, volume pricing, various product pricing combinations, etc


For more information try this research site: www.findarticles.com.

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Don’t tell me it’s out of your control

December 6, 2007 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Value Creation

‘It’s out of my control.’ ‘I can’t do anything about it.’ ‘I’m just the sales person.’

Sales people who sell in equipment and service contracts take note. This story is about you and your responsibility to the customer for the life of the sale not just the initial sale of the machine and the signing of the contract.

The quotes above are what I heard this week from a sales person from a well-known equipment manufacture who sold us a complete equipment and service package 18 months ago. It certainly wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Without going into too much detail we have had the ‘printer from hell’.

This piece of machinery has never lived up to the expectations promised by the afore mentioned salesperson and has been in repair, on and off, for nearly 18 months. Service person after service person came and went, only bandaiding this issue as it turns out.

Over time after various discussions with the nice service people we found we had been sold a specific product type, which had had issues from day one with many people. We looked at getting out of our contract on several occasions. We asked other people in the know and they said we were probably going to be stuck with this contract.  For a while we lived in hope that this was just a glitch and we would be ok.  And for a few months is was, however, whenever we did any big print jobs it just kept getting worse. We spoke to the service people and the customer service people who could do nothing.  Our issue was never escalated to management. The service people where coming out, on average nearly every three weeks. It had to be costing them big time too.

Well we finally lost patience. So we recontacted the sales person and told him of our issues. We told him that we had been clearly put under incredible pressure with lost productivity and wasted materials. But did he care? NO.

He had no concern or desire to understand our situation or the cost to our business. His first attempt to ‘help us’ was farcical. He told us there were two ways we could solve the problem:

1. We could get out the contract by paying $9,000, or

2. We could upgrade to a new machine and sign a new contract with him.

Great! Just great!

When I told him that his suggestions where clearly unacceptable and that we did not trust him he came up with this:

‘It’s out of my control.’ ‘I can’t do anything about it.’ ‘I’m just the sales person.’

That finally took the biscuit.

I told him that he was ‘holding our business hostage’ and if he was unprepared to help us I would go to the top. Which I did. And guess what? Action occurred that day and our issue is in the process of being resolved. We have a replacement printer and we are in discussion with management as to where to go from here. ·

Did that sales person have the authority to do something about this but couldn’t be bothered?
Was it out fo his power to make any decision?

I don’t know but what I do know is that it was in his power was to take it to management which he didn’t do.

There are clearly many questions still to be answered and it is not my place to go into that company’s business (well not yet anyway) to assess why this occurred. However, being treated like that by the sales person who did not care one bit about our plight makes me sick.

When you enter into contracts with companies you are engaged with them over a period of time. This type of arrangement usually happens when a business leases equipment i.e. a printer for instance. These companies not only want you to get their machine they also want to you to buy the ‘servicing’ of that machine.

In this case what I think the sales person failed to grasp was that this type of relationship is a long-term customer relationship. The sale doesn’t end at the signing of the contract and delivery of the machine. You cannot abdicate your responsibility as a sales person. And sadly I am sure this not an isolated incident.

That sales person and others like him need to recognise they have a duty of care to that customer and their duty of care only ends when that customer ceases to be a customer.

And by the way saying ‘Sorry’ would have helped too.

Here is an acronym I got from a neat website www.customerservicepoint.com which this sales person could have benefited from applying:

L.E.A.R.N. is an acronym, with 5 easy steps to follow: ·

LISTEN – Listen carefully to your customer. Don’t interrupt or tell the customer to calm down, this will only ignite the anger. ·
EMPATHIZE – Feel the pain of the customer, and tell her that you can understand how they feel.
APOLOGIZE – Apologize to the customer, even if you feel that you have no part in the problem. Do not blame the customer, but there is no need to take the blame yourself! ·
REACT – Decide what you will do to resolve the problem, and tell this to the customer.
NOW! – Do not delay. Take immediate action! The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding customer service.

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