REFERRAL$

By Hank Trisler

When I was a young man, I gave referrals freely and enthusiastically. I figured that if I had found a good thing, it was my sworn duty to share it with my friends. Now that I am smack in the middle of geezerhood, I refer sparingly and with many reservations and disclaimers.

Sad experience has taught me that referring usually is a "no-win" deal. If the deal goes poorly, I’ll catch hell from someone. If the deal goes well, I’ll seldom hear anything from anybody. It’s far safer for me to just shut up.

A few years ago, my daughter, Alayne, came by with a problem. Her Isuzu Rodeo was heating up and she wanted to know who she should go see about fixing it.

"Well, Dave’s always done right by me," I foolishly said. I was speaking of an acquaintance that had been taking care of my car for some time.

"You know I had a problem the last time I took it to him," she replied.

Any reasonably clear-thinking person would have seen the storm clouds and would have backed away as fast as he could, but not me. I had come down with "referring fever," where one gets odd gratification from passing on advice to a loved one.

"Hey, Dave apologized and gave you a free oil change and filter. The guy who caused the problem isn’t even there anymore." Not only had I given a referral, I was now selling her on using the referral, despite her better judgement.

One of the mechanics at Dave’s determined she had a bad radiator and gave her an estimate of about $400.

Alayne called me after she had picked up her Rodeo. "I got screwed," she wailed. "I checked on the internet and I could have gotten a new radiator for less than half of what Dave charged me and another guy I know would have put one in for $250. What should I do?"

I told her that radiators came in varying qualities and that price was not the most important factor. It seemed that was about the amount I had paid Dave for a radiator a few months before. Was she aware that all Dave’s parts had a lifetime guarantee? As if my life weren’t sufficiently complicated, I was now defending Dave. Not in the least mollified, she sent Dave an e-mail of complaint and copied me.

A week later, having heard nothing from Dave, Alayne asked me to call him. Continuing my conduct as a damned fool, I did. I told him of the problem and he told me his e-mail had been on the fritz. He explained to me all the stuff I had already explained to Alayne and got himself fairly annoyed in the process.

The upshot of the whole deal is that Dave had his General Manager send Alayne an e-mail of explanation, rather than apology. Of course that didn’t do the job. Now both Alayne and Dave are offended not only with one another, but also with me. I wish I had never made the referral in the first place, particularly when I knew better.

Here’s the conundrum: I depend on referrals myself for my living. In teaching sales methods, one of the prime methods is referral, yet I dislike giving them as I often get burned. Let’s examine some things we can do to make the whole referral process more comfortable for all parties involved.

Reward Referrals. If we agree that there is appreciable risk on the part of the referring party, we probably agree on the need for ample reward to balance the scales.

I’m not talking about money here. The principal difference between lovers and prostitutes is money. Money corrupts the act of referral, unless it is a part of some organized "bird dog" or referral points program. Referrals that you get just for the money are far less valuable that the ones you get for love. I am suggesting a little joy gift that is lasting evidence of your appreciation for the confidence the referrer is showing in you. It should be individually purchased and be a reflection of the esteem in which you hold the customer.

The gift should probably be the same whether you make the sale or not. The act you are rewarding is the giving of the referral, not the making of the sale. The sale part is your responsibility.

When you succeed, be sure to let the referrer know about it with a call, or note. Tell them how happy the customer is with his purchase and how much you appreciate the referral. I don’t know how it is where you live, but I almost never hear about the result of a referral unless it’s from the customer. What is my incentive to refer to that salesperson again?

When you fail, speed is essential. Take the example of Alayne and Dave. I heard nothing from Dave about the problem or his resolution of it. My feeling is that he mishandled my referral and it will be a very cold day before I give him another. If, on the other hand, he had gotten back to me before Alayne and said something like, "We had a little problem with your daughter. She got some low-ball prices and I don’t know if she’s yet convinced that she got a good deal. I want you to know I took good care of her and will continue to do everything in my power to make her happy, as with anyone else you refer to me."

Now what is my feeling? I think, I referred that ungrateful whelp to a friend who took great care of her, but she still isn’t happy. I guess I’ll have to find him another customer to compensate. The facts of the case are exactly the same. The only difference is who got back to the referring source first with the bad news.

Keep working for referrals, as they are the best business you can get, but don’t be offended when someone is hesitant to give one. They might just have gotten older and wiser.

IS SINCERITY OVERRATED?

By Hank Trisler

Some folks have been holding forth about the importance of sincerity in selling. I thought about that and found it a charming concept that leaves me with a warm feeling, much like a kitten in my lap.

How does sincerity and bluntness convert to success in selling? If you are completely sincere, not only will you not make any sales, you won't have a family, or any friends, either. You may well have noticed that your customer's wife has breath like an acetelyne torch, but you would not be well advised to so inform him in the interests of sincerity.

The prime job of a salesperson is to create congenial relationships by making people happy. Excessive sincerity gets in the way of that. I'd much rather get an insincere compliment than a sincere insult. Oscar Wilde was heard to say: "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

"Diplomacy," "Tact," "Consideration," "White Lies" are all the antithesis of sincerity, but that doesn't make them ineffective in selling. Charles F. Kettering, the inventor of the overhead valve V8 engine, said: "You can be sincere and still be stupid."

The best salespeople I have met are, without exception, charming, considerate, pleasant people. They go out of their way to be charitable in describing others and very careful in dealing with people's emotions. You know it would be absolutely impossible for them to actually like all these people, but they certainly give the impression that they do.

Jean Giraudoux said, "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." If you can't trust Jean, then who?

It's just possible you might have an opposing view. Let it fly.

F16 vs. BIRD

READ FIRST, THEN VIEW VIDEO ...

by Guest Blogger Leo Parrish of Highland, MI

This is footage from the cockpit of an F-16. Cool reaction and  professionalism of 
the two pilots, including cockpit transmission with video. F-16 engine ingests bird
after takeoff @ Tyndall AFB, FL. Think you might find it interesting to see a crash
from the cockpit of an airplane.

It is an instructor pilot in the rear and a student in the front seat of an F-16.

A "Bird Strike," as seen through the Heads Up Display (HUD). You can see the bird
flash by just prior to impacting the engine. You can hear the aircraft voice warning
system telling them they have a problem and referring to the "D-6 NL" which means
there is no engine RPM.

They made 2 attempts to relight the jet engine, but evidently there was too much
damage from the bird strike and they had to eject.

These guys were very cool; note the heavy breathing... They certainly flew longer
than one would expect before ejecting.. Airspeed can be observed on the HUD's upper
left corner. It goes down to the low 120's as they struggle to get the engine going
again, but as the plane noses over and dives to earth it increases to at least 175
just before impact.

It just goes to show how quickly your day can go to pieces - 45 seconds from strike
to ejection. All and all, not bad. They ran the Emergency  Checklist, made two
relight attempts, and picked out a ploughed field for impact before ejecting...You
can follow the audio attached to it and hear the conversation between the pilot and
instructor pilot and then the tower, including the pilot saying they were punching
out...The tower didn't seem to completely understand it  all, and missed the
significance of the last transmission. The tower's last radio call, he's talking to
an empty aircraft.

The video continues until impact, even after they both eject. A classic "buying the
farm" as you can see the plow rows get bigger. A real nice job by the pilots by
keeping their cool and turning the aircraft away from populated areas. No one hurt
and no one killed but the dirty bird did cost the taxpayers a "few" million dollars.

FOREST GUMP EXPLAINS THE MORTGAGE MESS

Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes of chocolates.

Criminals on Wall Street stole a few chocolates from the boxes and replaced them with turds. Their criminal buddies at Standard & Poor rated these boxes AAA Investment Grade chocolates. These boxes were then sold all over the world to investors. Eventually somebody bites into a turd and discovers the crime.

Suddenly nobody trusts American chocolates anymore worldwide. Congress now wants the American taxpayers to buy up and hold all these boxes of turd-infested chocolates for $700 billion dollars until the market for turds returns to normal.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street criminals who stole all the good chocolates are not being investigated, arrested, or indicted.

Mama always said: 'Sniff the chocolates first, Forrest'.

Quote of the day from a fund manager: "This is worse than a divorce... I've lost half of my net worth and I still have my wife."

The bailout, a different perspective. Back in 1990, the Federal Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits in Congress who couldn't make money running a whore house and selling booze?

Run, Forrest, run!

By Guest Columnist Geoff Frisch of Frisch Ideas, Atlanta, GA

MOTIVATED BUYERS

By Hank Trisler

The greatest waste of time in a salesperson's life is the non-motivated buyer. Motivated buyers are those who badly need or want to buy what it is you're selling. They buy quickly, decisively and with an absolute minimum of haggling. The more motivated they are, the quicker and more decisive they become. Non-motivated buyers can't decide, always want to see another house or another model and generally suck up a lot of time. You think maybe the guy in the picture is a motivated truck buyer?

Since all we really have to sell is our time, we want to segregate the motivated from the non-motivated and spend as much time as possible with the former and as little time as necessary with the latter. Here's the problem: Few buyers come into our lives with signs around that read: "I'm Really Motivated."

That being the case, we need some identifying actions to help us know who is really motivated and who is just shopping. I'm going to use a few real estate examples here, as this is a field in which determining motivation is absolutely essential to one's survival. We'll have to extrapolate to other industries.

MOTIVATION HURTS. People are always asking how they can get motivated and I wonder why. Motivation is when you don't like the position you're in and badly want to change it. Motivation isn't something that one person does to another, but something that occurs internally. Getting motivated is not something I want to do to myself on purpose, but it happens to me without any conscious action on my part. I don't want to hurt on purpose. The more motivated I am, the more extreme are the actions I will take to get satisfied, or unmotivated. When I get the itch, I'll do whatever it takes to get it scratched.

MOTIVATED BUYERS ARE IN THE MARKET CONSTANTLY. If you really hurt, you work hard to make the hurt go away. If you have a buyer who is sitting in a motel with a wife, two kids and a cocker spaniel, you can bet he's going to do his damnedest to get out of there. If he's not looking at homes with you, he's looking with your competition, or calling Owners For Sale, or driving around town shooting For Sale signs.

My son, Howard, recently got the hots for a new car for reasons still obscure to me. He haunted automobile dealers, stroked salespeople, drove everything he could get his hands on, scoured the newspapers, surfed the Internet and generally drove everyone around him nuts. He really wanted a new car. If he worked that diligently at his business, he'd be a millionaire by now.

MOTIVATION IS SHORT TERM. Managers all over the world have told me, "I don't want my people to go to one of those ‘Motivational Seminars.' They get all pumped up, run out in the parking lot and can't find their cars. Motivation doesn't last." That's true, but neither does a bath.

We can't continue in a state of hurt forever, so we will find ways to scratch the itch, or make the itch go away. It all happens in the unconscious mind. My informal studies tell me that motivation can be kept at a peak for maybe a week, tops. If that highly motivated homebuyer you have can't find what he wants in a week, he'll rent a house or do something else to make the hurt go away. People just lose the fever.

After about a week of looking at cars, Howard decided a new one was just beyond his reach, so he decided to slick up his old car and drive it for a bit more. It happens to our buyers all the time.

MOTIVATED BUYERS ARE DISLOYAL. Buyer who really hurt don't care who makes the hurt go away, they just want it gone. If you deal with the truly motivated, prepare yourself for the fact that you may lose them to other salespeople. It wasn't anything you did wrong, it's just that the other guy was there with a solution at the right time. In the long run, however, you'll make a lot more money dealing with motivated buyers than with loyal buyers.

Here's the key: If a buyer is truly motivated, he'll love you if you let him know that you're going to make the hurt go away. Call him early every morning and tell him what you're going to be doing for him that day. "Hi, Al, three new homes came on the market today and I'm going right out to see if any of them might be right for you. Where will you be if I need to reach you?" "Good morning, Frances. I don't have the answer to that software problem yet, but I'm going to be working on it this morning and hope to have an answer for you by early afternoon. I'll call you as soon as I have it." "Hey, Howard, I have a lead on a car over in the valley and I'm going to see if we can get it for you. Don't go anywhere. I may need to get hold of you."

If your buyer is still motivated, he'll appreciate what you're doing on his behalf and may express his gratitude by holding still until you can solve his problem. After all, if he's convinced that you're working hard for him, he doesn't need to work so hard for himself.

If his motivation has changed, he'll tell you. "Hey, pal, you don't need to bust your pick for me. We just signed a six-month lease, so we'd have more time to find just the right house." Don't be depressed. It was nothing you did. He just found a way to scratch his itch before you did. Motivation can return as quickly and unpredictably as it left. Tell him you'll keep looking for just the right home and put him in your contact manager for a call in two weeks. If you continue to call him every morning, you'll annoy hell out of him because he's lost his motivation. Worse yet, you'll be wasting your time with an unmotivated buyer.

Will you lose the occasional deal because someone got motivated in between your bi-weekly calls? Of course, especially if you haven't really sold him on the value of having you as his salesperson. If you have, he may well call you when the motivation returns, but even if he doesn't you'll make more money by focusing on finding a new, more motivated buyer. Buyers who lack motivation will waste your time and drive you to distraction.

How do you qualify for motivation, or do you?

Maggiano's Magic Marketing by Twitter

by Hank Trisler

My wife and I celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary on April 2. (We felt the day before was too obvious.)

We decided to go to Maggiano's, as the food is good and the service pleasant. There are several Italian restaurants closer to us, but we like Maggiano's. We invited another couple to join us.

While waiting for the wine to arrive, I tweeted on my iPhone: "Dinner at Maggiano's celebrating 31 years married."

Now why did I do that? Hell, I don't know. No one really cares about that or the fact that I play bad tennis, but someone told me I should tweet every time my dog rolls over, so I do. Besides, the wine hadn't arrived and I had nothing else to do but politely converse with my guests and I sure wasn't going to do that, so I tweeted.

Dinner was all we expected it to be and we went away happy. When I got home, I checked my messages on my desktop computer and found this from Maggiano's. "@trisler Congrats. and a very happy anniversary to you and your wife! Enjoy your evening."

WOW! Now how did they know? We had told no one, as we didn't want singing dolts bearing lighted cupcakes or any other sort of civil disturbance. We just wanted a quiet evening, which we had.

AHA! I'll bet they used Google Alerts, or something similar, to monitor Twitter for mention of the word, "Maggiano" and when I put it in my idiot tweet, they picked it up and responded.

Now that's powerful marketing. Notice they didn't ask me to go to their web site, they didn't offer me any special deals or discounts, they didn't yell at me or pitch me on anything. They just wished us a Happy Anniversary like one human being to another. I really liked that and I'll guarantee you that I'll be back and I'll tell my friends (both of them) about it.

How have you effectively used "soft skills" in your marketing?

TEN COMMON ENEMIES (10)

By Hank Trisler

Whew! We're heading for the barn. I'm NEVER going to commit to writing a 10 part series again. But the fact of the matter is that we've run through the first 9 of the 10 COMMON ENEMIES, leaving only a

LACK OF DAILY PRACTICE

It took a lot of practice for our friend on the right to be able to twist his body that way. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. If you practice swinging a golf club from the outside to the inside, you will perfect an ugly slice. First we need some instruction to be sure we’re practicing methods that are proven, or provably successful. Then we need to practice those methods every day.

The true key to professionalism in any endeavor is practice. Our practice can come in the form of cold calls, in person and on the telephone. That practice will make us stronger, and at absolutely no risk. You can’t lose, as you had nothing going in.

As long as we've come this far together, let's quickly sum up our trip.

Our EGOS make us think that what we have to say is more important than what the customer has to say. This leads us to

TALK TOO MUCH. The customer should talk 80% of the time, while we talk only 20% of the time. Our 20% should be largely questions to keep the customer talking. Talking causes

POOR LISTENING HABITS. It is far more important to understand than to be understood. From an income point of view, the pay is greater for asking the right questions than for knowing the right answers. Because we listen poorly

WE ASSUME WE KNOW WHAT'S ON THE CUSTOMER'S MIND. Assumptions are lethal in selling, as in many other areas. Because we don't know what the customer thinks

WE TALK ABOUT THINGS THAT DON'T INTEREST THE CUSTOMER. We need to talk only about those things interesting to the customer. We support the customer when they make statements that take us closer to our sales goal, and withhold support when they make statements that take us away from our sales goals.

WE INCORRECTLY EVALUATE THE CUSTOMER'S ATTITUDE. There are only three attitudes available to the customer: Acceptance, Objection and Indifference. Only if we know how to correctly determine the customer's attitude and then how to appropriately respond can we expect to achieve friction-free selling. Because we don't know the customer's attitude

WE DON'T ASK FOR COMMITMENT. We're afraid of being pushy, so we become a conversationalist, rather than a salesperson. The sales interview does not begin until we've asked someone to do something. Ask and ye shall receive. Don't ask and you don't get. That simple.

LACK OF WELL-DEFINED GOALS AND OBJECTIVES. Not just your normal annual goals that sales managers have been harping about since the beginning of time, but specific goals, descending in order of importance, on each sales call. The only reason we lose is that we don't give ourselves enough opportunities to win.

WE DON'T TAKE NOTES AND KEEP RECORDS OF THOSE NOTES. If we can't remember what the customer said was important to him, we'll talk about what is important to us and therefore should be important to him. That causes us to consistently miss the mark.

And lastly, A LACK OF DAILY PRACTICE, the problem of which is set forth above.

Defeat these ten common enemies and 2009 will indeed be your finest year ever.

Please let me know what you think of this series and how it might be useful to you.