Be a Story Teller, not a Joke Teller

I have become a huge fan of Jeffrey Gitomer. If you haven't had a chance to check out his stuff you should visit http://www.gitomer.com/ or you can download some of his podcasts on I-tunes. In his latest "sales rant" he talked about being a story teller instead of a joke teller, and I think he was right on the money.

I have seen it a number of times with other sales reps and have been guilty a few times myself. You just never know what could offend someone, and if you aren't offensive, telling a joke that isn't funny could be just as damaging. Nothing says "cheesey salesperson" more than a bad joke in a sales meeting. I have made a promise to myself not to tell a joke in a sales meeting no matter how funny I think it is.

Story telling on the other hand, is a great idea. I don't mean stories about your crazy weekend, but rather stories about your clients. Having good compelling stories about why other businesses became clients or why they remain clients can set you up for success. Telling stories brings a sense of comfort to a business meeting and can help allow your prospect to open up. Just think about how great a conversation you could have after telling a story about a client, and your prospect is dealing with the same issue. All of a sudden your prospect is telling their story, and might end up doing your job for you; selling your service/product.

So, I think it would be wise for us all to take some advice from Jeffrey Gitomer, and become better story tellers, and keep the jokes at home. Better yet, get rid of the jokes all together. They probably aren't that funny anyway...

Regards,

K Mason

Put it on Your Calendar

I am now the poster child for how not to successfully start something new. When I created my Blog I had every intention of posting at least weekly if not more. Instead I posted twice and then took over a month off. Yikes! The silver lining in this cloud is that my actions have directly led me to this post.

In this down economy many of us sales people are trying to increase our activity to keep up with the reality of it being tougher to find business. I know in the past I have told myself time and time again that I would spend more time on the phone calling prospects but I would get to the end of the week with similar results; less appointments than I wanted. Over time I realized the problem was not my desire to make the calls, but actually scheduling time to make them. We can talk all day long about what we need to do to be successful, but if we don't schedule time for those activities they never get done. In my case it was very easy for other distractions to take up a lot of time during the week.

So the challenge today is two-fold. We need to come up with a plan to increase our activity, and once you decide what you need to do; Put in on Your Calendar! Otherwise you are just another sales person with great ideas but nothing to show for it.

Cheers,

Kevin

P.S. I just added a weekly Calendar event to post my Blog!