WHAT'S NEW?

By Hank Trisler

"So what's new?" asked a customer of mine at a recent lunch.

"You mean aside from Swine Flu?" I responded.

"No, like what's new in the world of selling? My guys have heard all your old stuff and want something new."

"Are they doing the old stuff?" I asked.

"Not particularly well," he answered.

"Then why would you want to teach them new stuff when they aren't doing what we already taught them?"

"Well, they said they wanted some of that new stuff, like that NLP I've read about."

Let me step out of this conversation to discuss with you a couple of issues I consider important at this moment.

1. There is nothing particularly new about NLP. Neuro Linguistic Programming was dreamed up thirty years ago by a couple of guys named Richard Bandler and John Grinder sitting up in the Santa Cruz mountains smoking God only knows what. They took the works of an old hypnotist named Milton Erickson and wrote a book titled Frogs into Princes. They threw around words like "representational systems" and "accessing cues" and purported a new system of selling. The greatest benefit to this system is that you could spend time watching the eye movements of your customers and trying to determine whether they were remembering, imagining or lying. This kept you from selling them and having to go out and find other customers.
   
   
2. Even if it were new, that doesn't make it good. The "Old Stuff" got to be the old stuff, because it was developed over time and has been proven even as it has been refined and distilled.

Let's face it, the selling business is very much the same as it was fifty years ago. Oh, vastly changed, but much the same.

The trappings have changed. We have the internet to get information we could only dream about having even ten years ago. We have e-mail and texting and cell phones and laptops and wondrous CRM systems in the cloud. The average salesperson carries far more horsepower with them than I had in a string of real estate offices years ago.

So how are things the same? It's still the same blocking and tackling. You have to go find people who might need what you're selling. You need to develop a rapport with those people. You have to ask a lot of questions to find out why they might want/need what you're selling. You have to show them how what you're selling will scratch where they itch. You have to ask for, and receive, a commitment. You have to follow up to assure customer satisfaction, get referrals and stimulate repeat business. Hell, pardner it's the same game I learned how to play in the fifties.

Gussying up selling with "new processes" is like putting stockings on a pig. The simple fact of the matter is if people do the basics and do them well, they will succeed. If they employ all manner of "systems" and spend their time watching people's eye movements, rather than selling them, they're going to fail.

I'm going to suggest to you that when you hear about new "systems" and "methods of persuasion," you avoid drinking your own bath water and take a good look. If we as salespeople, sales managers and sales trainers remain focused on the basics of selling and avoid the frills and the "new," we're all going to be a lot better off.

What do you think?