Have you ever found yourself in a position where you had to deal with someone whose ego was as big as a house and you weren’t sure what to do? Let me tell you from personal experience, once you understand what’s going on, you can literally have these people eating out of the palm of…
The key to creating loyal customers is simply listening. If you listen long enough and hard enough, the customer will tell you exactly what it’s going to take to maintain his or her loyalty. All you need to do then is act on this information and you are home free. As simple as this sounds,…
My oldest child is a son named Philip. If we have spent time together and feel good about each other, and I ask Philip to mow the lawn, chances are he will agree. On the other hand, if I have been gone for a week and we haven’t seen each other, much less done anything…
Several years ago on Memorial Day weekend, my family and I went to a local dealership to look at new cars. This started out as one of the most pleasant buying experiences that has ever happened to us. Instead of trying to sell us a car, the sales person actually let us buy one! He…
I sat next to an account manager for Coca Cola on a plane ride to Phoenix who shared an interesting story with me. She had been trying for many years to get the soft drink syrup account for one of the larger convenience store chains in Phoenix. The problem, however, was that the competition…
Getting Customers To Sell For You I have my cars fixed by an establishment called Don’s Repair. Although this place was a little out of the way for me, Don’s prices were good and when Don fixed something, it stayed fixed. So I started referring some of my friends to Don. They were also impressed…
Some relatives of mine, Dick and Lucille, own and manage a hardware store in a small town in Michigan. The hardware store they own is part of a chain of hardware stores that specializes in serving small communities. When Dick and Lucille moved to this community twenty years ago, they became part of it. They…
For the most part, people prefer to do business with people they like and trust. That’s why personal relationships are far more effective when it comes to getting people to say ‘yes’ than the mastering of any sales technique. Let me give you an example: Eighty to ninety percent of the people who go…
I was consulting with a company that had education centers all over North America they taught various technical courses to high school graduates. This company had a fair number of salespeople whose job it was to sell these technical courses, which sold for about $9,000 at the time, to people who had graduated from high…
Not long ago, I was staying at a hotel near the Toronto airport. When I arrived in my room, I noticed a placard on the bathroom counter. The card read: Dear Guest: As a responsible citizen, you are probably concerned about doing your part to help preserve our fragile environment. If you are, the management…