There is a glass in front of you. Someone pours a liquid into it and stops midway. What do you think? Is it half full or half empty? You say half full. Good answer. Always think positively. And yet, the liquid tastes acrid, and you realize it’s a medical contrast medium, because you’re in the hospital about to get a colonoscopy. It tastes more like something you would paint your garden fence with than drink. So, do you still think the glass is half full? No, you’re actually looking forward to it being totally empty so that you’re done with it.
Get rid of this two-bit psychology! Positive thinking, my foot. It always depends on the context. Hermann Hesse expressed it beautifully in his Chinese parable. It’s the story of a man whose horse runs away, returning a couple of days later with an entire herd of wild horses in tow. Because of the new herd he has acquired, the man’s son learns to ride but one day falls from his horse, breaks his leg, and can no longer be recruited into the army. The point of the story: At first the man’s neighbors remark, “Oh, what bad luck that your horse ran away!” Then, “How lucky that the horse brought an entire herd back with it.” After that, “What a pity that your son broke his leg.” And finally, “Good thing that he wasn’t enlisted to fight for the Emperor.” The man simply smiles, because he knows that whether it is good fortune or bad depends on your point of view. You’re always wiser in hindsight.
Pessimism and optimism depend on your assessment of the situation. But your assessment makes no difference! The pessimist says, “Damn, things couldn’t get any worse.” The optimist counters with, “Yes, they could!” But what these positions have in common is a rigid way of thinking. A desperation.
A top sales professional doesn’t have to convince herself before a meeting that the pelting rain she’s driving through is actually good for the flowers, so that today—thank God!—she doesn’t have to water them herself. There is no reason to try and sugarcoat your thoughts—it’s not going to up your closing rate, I can tell you that much. The top salesperson thinks the way most people think: What lousy weather we have today!
But while she’s driving through the rain, she knows that she’s well-prepared and that she will give an excellent account of herself as a salesperson the moment she arrives. She just knows it, because she has assimilated the seven most important concepts before the meeting even begins. The
seven concepts?
Number One: Be Ready to Win
You’re at a meeting with a client in an industrial area. An important client, a long meeting, several one-on-one discussions, and a lot of money at stake. At around 1 p.m. there’s a scheduled lunch break. You go out to eat. What? One whole hour? Well, how long should your lunch break last? An entire hour? Or perhaps three quarters of an hour? Thirty minutes maybe?
I’ll tell you. I don’t know how long your lunch break lasts. But it will depend on how long it takes to get to your next customer. Because in the very same industrial area, there will probably be ten other potential customer firms. And among them, probably one from your wish list. How do you know that? Because you researched on the Internet the night before and located them. So naturally you go right over to one of your dream customers. Let’s say the trip to that customer takes three minutes; that’s how long your lunch break will be. Then you’ll have fifty-four minutes to dedicate to that customer, before taking another three-minute break prior to rejoining your main meeting of the day.
This is the way you do it, because winning is in your DNA. You spot the opportunity, not when it arises but long before it does. To be exact, you didn’t spot the opportunity; you planned for it and were ready right from
the start.
Those who think and feel this way need not worry about whether the glass is half empty or half full. They are not concerned about whether their worldview is optimistic or pessimistic. For them, it is a question of possessing the mindset of wanting something and wanting it unconditionally. Wanting to win.
That is how Wolfgang Loitzl thinks. The man who won seven gold medals at the World Ski Championships and the Olympics, making him one of the most decorated ski jumpers of all time. Ski jumping is a question of mind over matter. He won the 2008–09 Four Hills Tournament. This wasn’t necessarily something unusual, because somebody had to win it. In Loitzl’s case, however, it was before his overall victory that he gave an interview to an Austrian newspaper, claiming not only that he wanted to win but also that he was going to win. He simply said, “Nobody can stop me.”
Success doesn’t come easily. Success must be planned. Loitzl trained for many years and forged his own mindset, his own will to win. It was fourteen years after his debut in the Austrian national team that he finally stood on the highest step of the podium as an individual ski jumper. Up until that point all his medals were “merely” won within the team. But once he had gotten a taste of winning, he never looked back.
The drive to win is not a matter of talent nor of luck. It is not a matter of one’s form on the day or the external conditions. This drive to win is there before you step up to the line or it isn’t there at all. For salespeople this means that the successful deal is something you already have in your head, before you even walk out your door!
Number Two: Know Every Turn in the Track
The day before a Grand Prix, an IndyCar driver traces the course of the race on foot. He checks the state of the asphalt at all critical points, the height of the curbstones, the unevenness, the different gradients. He looks around, mentally visualizes himself in the cockpit, imagining how he eases on the brakes when coming out of the straight, shifts down into fifth, fourth, third, slows even more as he hugs the right curbstone, but he’s careful not to cut it too sharply, negotiating the apex of the turn. Then he accelerates as he swings left out of the bend, seeking the ideal racing line. Fourth gear, then fifth, as he moves away from the curbstone, sixth gear, then full throttle into seventh. And then he brakes again, and so forth. In this way, the driver plays the scene out entirely in his head the day before the race.
The sales professional visualizes herself walking through the main door of the client’s firm, how she will greet the client, with which phrase she will open the conversation, how her handshake with the client will feel—as firm as a vise. She goes through the initial proceedings: Take three deep breaths, drop the small talk, ask your opening question, laugh, conduct a needs assessment, shift into third, fourth, fifth, ease on the brakes; highlight the product benefits, approach the first curbstone, objection handling, accelerate out of the turn, fourth gear, fifth gear, name your price, payment terms, a quick turn to the left, then right, then full throttle ahead, ask for the sale, get the signature, cross the finish line, and victory is yours.
Visualize your sales pitch like a movie. Scene by scene. Shot by shot. Examine your film in detail. It will show you how a smooth sales pitch goes. By this I simply mean what is known as the “ideal racing line.”
Even in IndyCar, however, a driver can hardly live up to the way he has ideally imagined his race to be. Your personal visualization is not intended to stop you from deviating from the sales pitch even by an eighth of an inch. Rather, it is designed to offer you a sense of security in your performance. It is designed not to prevent any surprises but precisely for those cases in which there are surprises. If you suddenly find yourself faced with unexpected events, you must be flexible enough to react accordingly. But you can only be flexible if you know what the ideal racing line is to begin with. The IndyCar racer needs to do this as well, because in his case, he has no choice but to abandon the ideal line, at least momentarily, each time he overtakes
another car.
You can only be flexible if you know
what the ideal racing line is.
When should you shoot this movie of yours? Certainly not on your way to the meeting. Not in the morning in front of the mirror, either. At the latest, the evening before, in which case you can even dream about it.
Number Three: Find Out Your Customer’s Shoe Size
By the eve of your meeting you will have done your homework. No ifs or buts. After all, what would you say if you asked your son or your daughter about their homework, and they answered, “I’ll do it on the bus tomorrow.”
These are the main questions of your homework: What are the salient business data points of your customer’s firm? How big is the company? Does it have any subsidiaries? Where are they located? How is the company organized? What is its legal form? Is it family-run? What industry is it in? Is it active in only one industry? What is its market position? Who is its target group? What does the media say about this company? Who are its competitors? Which of your competitors have contacts with the firm? Who exactly will you be meeting? Do you know their name? Are they the decision-maker? What do you know about them? Their education, title, career, exact position in the firm, responsibilities, scope for decision making, hobbies, interests, family?
Furthermore, who else will be present at the meeting? Are any of your competitors there on that day? Before or after your meeting? If not, on which other day? Do you know what your customer looks like, so that you can recognize them on the spot and address them by name? Are their images accessible on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pipl, or 123people? What does the company’s website look like? Does the person you are meeting also have their own website? How much time will you have for
your meeting?
This is your homework. No excuses. A ten-year-old doesn’t have the luxury of skipping her math problems; she simply has to do them. So go to it.
Number Four: Drop Your Preconceptions
In my first sales job I had just completed my training. I was to start the following day. I was raring to go. I had acquired the technical know-how for photocopiers and fax machines. Now it was time to approach the clients. I was taking over the territory of one of the veteran salespeople in the company. I was delighted that he had left me all of his client files. Everything was diligently and neatly recorded. The red list contained the current customers, the green list was arranged by year, and the yellow list was according to revenue. Nothing beats good organization.
Then I began to read some of the profiles: “Mr. Smith is a drunken loser and totally unreliable.” “Mr. Johnson is a prudish tightwad with bad breath.” “Mr. Williams is having an affair with his secretary and is a patronizing idiot with a Napoleon complex.” “Mr. Jones is as dumb as a sack of hammers and cannot grasp a single thing. The meeting was useless.” And so on and so forth. Profile after profile of scornful and dismissive comments. After three or four days of reading through them all, I almost wanted to cry. Could it be that I would be dealing with nothing but losers, cranks, and creeps? What a horrible job. What a wretched sales territory. What a despicable industry!
Completely dejected, I sat at my desk with my head in my hands. My boss passed by, saw me staring grimly at the profiles, and said, “Limbeck, stand up. Pick up the files and come this way.”
He guided me toward the elevator and said, “Press B.”
Why were we going to the basement? We made our way down and got out, and he pointed directly toward the big silver garbage cans. “Open them up, Limbeck.”
What was this, some bizarre disciplinary drill?
“OK, now throw the files in the garbage and shut the lid.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. You see, Limbeck, now you can clear your head. You can start from scratch. Now you’ll be writing the reports.”
It was wonderful. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. From now on there was only cold calling, freed from the preconceptions, assessments, and opinions of my predecessor. I was starting with a clean slate, with no negative thoughts about the clients to dwell on. Just because my predecessor didn’t get along with them did not mean that I couldn’t.
A clean slate, with no negative
thoughts about my clients.
Every personal piece of information about another person is necessarily subjective. It is better to stick to the facts. And even those facts are things that you should verify yourself, instead of reading them off somebody
else’s reports.
Otherwise, you might end up in the predicament that a saleswoman in my seminar did. She had taken over a customer whose profile had read, “A family man through and through. Family is all-important to him.” She greeted the customer and inquired, “How are the wife and kids?”
“My divorce is pending.”
Oops.
The lady in question had handled it deftly, saying, “I can relate; my divorce is too. It’s tough.”
Even so, her meeting after that didn’t go very well. Never let yourself be influenced by other people’s information about your customers. That information can be false, biased, and outdated. It is your customer, and you have to approach him with new eyes. Your eyes. For my part, that’s how I’ve always handled it, and it has served me well. If a manager proposes to tell me something about the strengths and weaknesses of individual employees before a seminar, I politely decline the offer. Being unbiased has advantages for both sides.
Years ago, a prominent photocopier manufacturer even made this notion of perpetually starting afresh into a principle. Every four years the employees’ sales territories were switched. The reasoning behind it was that their product was so good that once a customer buys from them she stays with them. Any salesperson who has not managed to make a sale with a certain potential client in four years will not make one in five years either, because the problem would lie not in the product but in the salesperson. A new salesperson, though, could turn the prospect into a client. Say what you will about this philosophy, the manufacturer was very successful at the time.
Number Five: Give and Think
How much can you rake in with your next deal? Oh no, you say modestly, it’s not about the money. Money doesn’t bring happiness, you say. Well, you’re being a hypocrite. Admit it! Money reassures you. Money grants you independence. But you are right: Money alone will not necessarily bring you happiness. But neither will no money.
As always, it’s about striking a balance. Namely, a balance among the five things that most people strive for: financial independence, good health and a long life, a fulfilling relationship, social recognition, and a rewarding profession.
That sounds pretty good. But very few people succeed in balancing all five. And hardly anyone will be equally fulfilled in all of them at the same time. Take, for instance, the manager who ruins her health due to her excessive focus on money, money that she will then need to restore that health. Has she won? Or the man who is married to his job and whose relationship will almost certainly suffer because of it? Or the poor but healthy elderly woman sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons, wondering if anyone would care if she disappeared off the face of the earth?
For a good salesperson, of course it’s also about the money. Anything else would be a lie. But it’s not the first priority. Money is the fuel and the lubricant. But you also need a transmission, a car body, wheels, brakes, a road, and a driver’s license. Whoever focuses too much on money when selling will fall by the wayside or will overshoot her target. In both cases, however, she will fall short of her goal.
A top salesperson doesn’t want to know what and how much she can get from the customer. A top salesperson asks herself what she can give to her customer.
Whether I am selling a customer a single sales seminar or twenty days of training comes to the same thing and involves the same joy, the same commitment, the same preparation, and the same effort. There is no “light” version of a sales pitch. There are only good or bad sales pitches. The probability of the good pitch also being the successful one is endlessly higher than the bad one winning out. Even if the deal you make with your customer is a small one, the likelihood of obtaining a second deal is considerable. Because if you’ve managed to persuade the customer, the money will come of its own accord. Without desperation and without tricks. And if you’ve found an effective solution for the client, then she will buy a second time. And a third.
There is no “light” sales pitch.
There are only good ones and bad ones.
It’s natural that the balance among the five cardinal points mentioned above changes as time goes by. At nineteen I just wanted to be rich. I admit it. Today I’m in my mid-forties, and other aspects of life are more important to me. My balance has shifted more toward my health and my family. But I was able to make this change at my discretion only because I could afford to do so. However, the hunting instinct, the force that drives the sales professional, has not changed. That has nothing to do with money. Today I can simply afford to forgo a contract for the sake of my own well-being or to pass it on to another colleague.
Nevertheless, a sales professional needs to be convinced of his own product. He has to be fond of it, think highly of, love it. Yes even love it. It is only in this way that he can effectively persuade his customer that she will benefit from it. When I used to sell photocopiers, I always harbored the certainty that I was doing my client some good, that my photocopier was quicker, superior in quality, and more reliable than the competition’s.
This way of thinking is vital. Make sure that you have earned the customer’s respect. Never think that if you win him over today, you’ll cash in big at the end of the month. In the long run, this will lead you into trouble, and shows little respect and even less self-esteem.
Number Six: Gauge Your Dress Code
One day I came into work, looking forward as I always did to seeing my colleagues. My assistant was always in such a good mood, it seemed as though she had swallowed a clown before breakfast. I walked in, and she was already giggling, “Here’s an inquiry that just came in, and you will not believe what business they’re in. They sell bull semen!”
It was true. They were selling Canadian bull semen to German farmers. I met with their executives, who proved to be dapper, well-dressed, and witty gentlemen, and we agreed on a two-day seminar in a hotel in the Bavarian countryside. So far so good. So Limbeck prepares his attire for the occasion: a suit, a pristine shirt with matching cuff links, custom-made shoes, and a silk tie, rounded off with a handkerchief. He gets into his Porsche 911 company car and hurtles off to Bavaria.
The hotel was in a town of no more than a hundred souls. As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw my first seminar guests—all of them wearing sneakers, jeans, flannel shirts, and jackets with their company logo. All of them dressed very casually, certainly not for business.
I knew that I had lost the second I got out of my car. But what was I supposed to do? I had to get out. No sooner had I gotten out than I saw it written on their faces: This dandy in his wedding suit and with his fancy ride wants to teach us how to sell bull semen? He’s never done a hard day’s manual work in his life. He doesn’t even know the meaning of real life.
This dandy wants to teach us how to sell bull semen?
Although I knew what kind of clientele the salespeople would be dealing with, I had still made the clumsy mistake of dressing like one of their executives and had failed to ask what the dress code actually was. A complete oversight, a novice mistake.
The seminar didn’t go any better than it had started. I had failed to earn their respect from the outset. The attendees came and went, left to get refreshments, fiddled with their smartphones—the mood was shot. I tried to salvage what I could by telling them about my youth on a farm and about my uncle the winegrower, but it didn’t help. I was the dandy who just wouldn’t be taken seriously.
After the coffee break, I turned the tables on them. Offense, as they say, is the best defense. “Gentlemen, I’m getting the feeling that you’re behaving like your customers would. Like peasants. That’s probably because I didn’t prepare myself adequately for the occasion, and I admit that I’m completely overdressed.” Then I proceeded to take my suit jacket off, removed my tie and cuff links, and rolled up my sleeves.
This helped, at least for this particular seminar. I had overcome the first hurdle, and they even booked more seminars, but after that things petered out. I was never able to strike the right tone with my attire, to stay one cut above my audience without going overboard, and the opportunity was lost.
No good sales professional bends over backwards and tries to adapt herself beyond recognition. No good sales professional begs for an assignment. Every good salesperson wants to remain self-sufficient and has to know how to manage money. And your client has to do likewise, if he wants to buy something from you. If you get a raise of $700, put half of it aside, and realize that this is money that you didn’t have a minute ago. Don’t go overboard the moment you have some money and success. If Limbeck shows up wearing a tailor-made suit, cuff links with his logo, and a handkerchief, it’s because it’s a trademark that works, not an affectation. Had I worn the same thing at twenty-one years of age, nobody would have taken me seriously. They would have taken me for a poser, and rightly so.
The exhibition of status has to be just right—neither shabby nor ostentatious. A good salesperson is always one notch better dressed than her client. Just one notch. Not two or three leagues. And make sure you address this issue before you make your way to a meeting.
Number Seven: Be There Before the Action Starts
There are many golden rules for a salesperson. We could talk endlessly about each one of them, and I could write a lengthy book about everything a salesperson can and must know. There’s one thing in particular, however, that I would like to mention. Although the main focus is on mindset, attitude, and way of thinking and not on skills, methods, techniques, or codes of conduct, there is one rule of conduct that represents a certain mindset: Never be late!
Sure, there are always obstacles: traffic jams, black ice, hurricanes, blizzards, and so on. These are all explanations but not excuses. It’s happened to me as well; I’ve been late too. Twice in twenty years. And on both occasions, the whole day was shot. Not because I didn’t have a good reason for being late or because I performed poorly at the seminar. No, because it unnerved me so much that I couldn’t forgive myself.
See yourself as a pilot who has to run through her flight route calmly beforehand, then check her aircraft to make sure everything is in order, and finally confer with her cabin crew. When the “go” is given from the air traffic control tower, the pilot must have everything under control and be ready to start.
When you are making a product presentation, you should be at the company at least an hour beforehand. If you have to set up equipment, make sure you are allowed to enter the room well before the presentation begins, because only then can you judge how small or spacious, dim or bright the setting is.
If you’re using a laptop, it should already be booted up and ready to go with whatever program you might be using. Few things are more embarrassing than making your customer wait for you to turn on your computer.
No customer likes to wait
for you to boot up your computer.
This mental checklist that you go over before your presentation—being ready to win, knowing every turn in the track, finding out your customer’s shoe size, dropping all preconceptions, giving and thinking, gauging your dress code, and being there before the action starts—all of this serves to prepare you to be the best sales professional you could possibly be. Nothing should detract from the energy you need to close a deal. Success is not determined three minutes before the sales pitch but three hours before, in our own mental programming.
I was once given a small lucky charm by a shaman. I always have it in my pocket; it is my talisman, my anchor. When I hold it in my hand, I can feel how it puts me in the frame of mind that I need to be in to perform at my best. It helps, but it will never replace the vital groundwork I do long before my first meeting with a new client.
