Sales and Service the Best Combination

When you are in the sales and service industry who knows how much income you can produce. Literally the sky is the limit. I remember about twenty years ago I was selling home improvement services to home owners in our local area and ran across a family that needed to have their homes foundation leveled. It was a nice home in ever respect until you walked in the front door and the floor was heaving up in several places through out the home. You could not see this from the outside of the home at all. When I first asked what services the family needed I was out in the front yard looking for the usual signs of bad roofing, windows or doors. I did not see any of the usual signs of deterioration at this property so I was going to pass on this house and go on to the next house. However, the homeowner who saw me with my briefcase looking over his property ran out side to see what I was doing. I explained that I was in the home improvement business and complemented him on his great looking yard with the excellent landscaping and the appearance of his home. He explained that the problems were not with the exterior of his home but the inside that needed the real work. I followed him through the front door and he had to tell me to watch my step about every three feet as we walked around the inside of his house. He had a concrete slab home but the entire foundation had crumbled and come apart. I had never and to this day have never seen another home in this condition. I an not sure but I think all of the rebar in the concrete must have rusted in to and caused the concrete to come completely apart. He also had a lot of close by trees and the roots had heaved up and broke the foundation. As you can imagine, we had to jack the home completely up and jack hammer most of the floor out and latterly poor a new foundation inside the home. The cost for doing all of this was astronomical. However when I quoted him the price he never flinched. I then went on to explain how our financing worked so he could pay off this large cost over a period of ten years if he liked. He said, rather than finance the project, he would just write us a check when we finished the work. I told him fine and he and his wife signed all of the necessary paper work and we finished the job in about three weeks. True to his word he wrote out a check for the full amount and the check did not bounce. During the job I asked what he did for a living and found out that he had a lawn and landscaping business. He about twenty people working for him and he made a little over eighty thousand dollars a year running the business. I thought this was fantastic business for young energetic people to get into. The secret to success in this type of business is having a small effective sales crew that go out and procure the business. When you think about it, there is millions of dollars that could be made country wide and could put thousands and thousands of young men and women to work. Taking care of all of the yards of people who do not want to mow their own lawns is a very good opportunity for both the workers and the salespeople who sell the jobs. Well this was just a business that I happened to think about this morning when I was going through the process of making my to do list. Believe it or not this is the sixty-first day of our six month project. Hope you are doing well with your project as well. Remember be sure and go back and read the post starting with the 5-10-2012 post to start your own six month project to become successful doing whatever you do. Thank you, Billy J Gibson Better known as the Selling Fool

The Warm Up, an Essential Ingredient to the Sale

Well, as promised I am covering the importance and necessity of having an exceptional warm-up before giving any sales presentation.

Now if you are calling on people that are well known to you, the warm up can be short but still needs to be effective.

Obviously, if you are calling on strangers as you will be ninety percent of the time the warm is extremely crucial. People want to do business with people they trust and the fact that you got into their door or office means they have some trust in you.

However it takes a certain level of trust to listen to your story but it takes even more trust to commit to spending money with you or your company.

The way you develop this trust is to do a great warm-up.

When you first meet with people you have to have a short conversation to talk about your company and a little about your self.

It is also good to mention the weather and any big news headlines of the day.

However as always I would stay away from politics and religion as these subjects can either make you or break you.

Don’t make the warm-up overly long either. You will get a feel for when the people are ready to listen. I always learned to ask a few questions to get the prospects talking. After a short while they will be ready to shut up and listen to what you have to say.

You need to know your product or service inside and out so you can deal with any questions that come up.

However, should you not know the answer always explain that you are not familiar with the issue and promise to find the answer and follow up with the prospect with the answer.

What ever you do don’t lie!

Lying to the prospects or customers is simply shooting yourself in the foot.

Well I hope that will help you come up with some good ways to warm up to the customers so they will listen intently to your presentations.

Also a little humor is good as long as you don’t over do it and the humor is in good taste. You never know for sure who you are talking to so, be polite and well mannered and think positive.

Thank you,

Billy J Gibson

Also better known as The Selling Fool