Astonlee
04-28-2009, 03:34 AM
Is all about heart and minds, nice words, but what does it really all mean?
Like you, I‘ve been feeling the full effect of the recession, and felt the despondency from potential customers when I’ve tried to ask them for an order.
However recently I was ask to create a sales training course from someone who wanted a company who knew the difference between an endmill and a windmill without talking the bull.... you normally get about widgets etc!
Until now we have focused our training on buyer selling tactics and supplier condition messages, but like everyone you take the view it will help pay the bills, so you get stuck in and get the job done, but little did I realised what a benefit this task would be to my business!
Over the years I have collected a vast amount of training materials that I used in the training of other sales & sales management personnel. With this abundance of training materiel I have created a new B2B selling course for my customer base...
However it slowly began to dawn on me, what with all the “end of the business world” type of predictions in the press it’s no wonder that the negative mental attitude of doom & gloom, is descending like a dark veil over the industry, and I like everyone else I was allowing it to control my mental attitude allowing it to become a self-prophecy of “If You Expect less Business, You will Received Less Business”
So since the New Year I have, like many others were lowering my own business expectations, but whilst revising my notes it made me stop and think about my own company’s situation: the www.mctooling.com site.
Since mid-September 08 we have now exceeded 150,000 viewings this month, and we have seen a subscription renewal rate of over 85% by our advertisers, we are still growing our visitor’s numbers, and as with YouTube still enhancing the services we are delivering, over and above anyone else in the industry.
Our only real competition is the printed press, who due to their unrealistic costs and resultant lack of advertisers are now down to only printing 6 editions per year now in the UK, in the full knowege that they are now not only selling yesterdays news coupled with being the very last place anyone would look for information, as it is quicker to “Google it” these days,
Don’t agree? Think about it “when was the last time you looked in a magazine/book for information” in fact you got quite annoyed when you could not find it on the internet. How much longer will the industry press be able to keep selling the idea that for companies to keep a presence in the market they must keep buying some very expensive paper normally used at best for recycling is debateable to say the least!
Even though I had so much positive news, I was still allowing the negative thoughts to cloud my judgement, even after being thanked by some of advertisers for their biggest orders they had won this year.
So like me don’t fall in the trap, and go and dig out those old sales training courses and revitalised your sales team with a positive approach.
Like the general of a victorious army once praised the perseverance of his men by saying, ‘Our soldiers are not any braver than those of the enemy – they are just brave for five minutes longer.’
Regards
Alan
Like you, I‘ve been feeling the full effect of the recession, and felt the despondency from potential customers when I’ve tried to ask them for an order.
However recently I was ask to create a sales training course from someone who wanted a company who knew the difference between an endmill and a windmill without talking the bull.... you normally get about widgets etc!
Until now we have focused our training on buyer selling tactics and supplier condition messages, but like everyone you take the view it will help pay the bills, so you get stuck in and get the job done, but little did I realised what a benefit this task would be to my business!
Over the years I have collected a vast amount of training materials that I used in the training of other sales & sales management personnel. With this abundance of training materiel I have created a new B2B selling course for my customer base...
However it slowly began to dawn on me, what with all the “end of the business world” type of predictions in the press it’s no wonder that the negative mental attitude of doom & gloom, is descending like a dark veil over the industry, and I like everyone else I was allowing it to control my mental attitude allowing it to become a self-prophecy of “If You Expect less Business, You will Received Less Business”
So since the New Year I have, like many others were lowering my own business expectations, but whilst revising my notes it made me stop and think about my own company’s situation: the www.mctooling.com site.
Since mid-September 08 we have now exceeded 150,000 viewings this month, and we have seen a subscription renewal rate of over 85% by our advertisers, we are still growing our visitor’s numbers, and as with YouTube still enhancing the services we are delivering, over and above anyone else in the industry.
Our only real competition is the printed press, who due to their unrealistic costs and resultant lack of advertisers are now down to only printing 6 editions per year now in the UK, in the full knowege that they are now not only selling yesterdays news coupled with being the very last place anyone would look for information, as it is quicker to “Google it” these days,
Don’t agree? Think about it “when was the last time you looked in a magazine/book for information” in fact you got quite annoyed when you could not find it on the internet. How much longer will the industry press be able to keep selling the idea that for companies to keep a presence in the market they must keep buying some very expensive paper normally used at best for recycling is debateable to say the least!
Even though I had so much positive news, I was still allowing the negative thoughts to cloud my judgement, even after being thanked by some of advertisers for their biggest orders they had won this year.
So like me don’t fall in the trap, and go and dig out those old sales training courses and revitalised your sales team with a positive approach.
Like the general of a victorious army once praised the perseverance of his men by saying, ‘Our soldiers are not any braver than those of the enemy – they are just brave for five minutes longer.’
Regards
Alan