"A goal is a dream with a deadline."
~Napoleon Hill
Good morning, I noticed you might have a requirement for some of the services we offer.
If there's anything we might be able to assist, we certainly happy to have a chat with you.
Please share a little brief about your requirement and leave us your email-address/phone number. We will review your requirements and get back to you with our past work details, testimonials, samples with best offer.
Looking forward to hear you.Thank you,
Enthusiastic young sales gal
Dear Enthusiast:
I understand and appreciate that you are "cold calling" virtually. However, there is nothing there in your communications that would entice anyone to respond. Sadly. Not even a statement on your service offering or a link to your website.
I suggest you follow my Blog and go to the articles on sales -- I have some nuggets there that may inspire you. I admire your effort and want to encourage you to carry on. I just sense a bit of blindness in your approach. We all have to make a living, but a few of us want to be great at what we do, understanding that the money follows later on.
What is your value proposition to a start up? How would they best benefit from your service?
What's the catch?
Are you tapped into social media? I go by the pseudonym @optioneerJM .. if you are, follow me, follow my blog (if you can find it, lol) and all my platforms. Like a scavenger hunt of a virtual kind. Let me know you've found me by being unique.
How's that for a challenge?
We all have to separate ourselves from being average to one who is remarkable,
Jeannette
Is that mean? Too harsh? Perhaps and most certainly. However, as a young gal starting out in sales, I had nobody take my arm and point me in the right direction other than kick me out the door and say: find customers, cold call!
Lucky for me, and likely for many others, I had a tenacity and goal for success. When I was about 22 I wrote a vision statement about goals that I found about 15 years later, when I had started to be recognized, and was astounded:
* Be successful at doing something I love: I started out in magazine advertising sales, graduated to bleeding edge document management via printing sales at the very infancy of one aspect of the cloud as we know it today.
* Live in a white house with a picket fence: I live in a white house with a chain link fence that backs onto a green pathway.
* Own and drive a Jaguar: I ended up with a silver Mercedes CLK 500 coup that was classic, classy and exuded class. Today I drive a Hyundai Accent (which is a story in itself that anyone with adult kids will relate to).
I understand today that the car or house do not make the person. Setting goals which often are aligned with dreams and writing them down are the glue that sticks everything together, but makes you accountable for what you think or say but more often only confirmed with proof.
I remember as a fledgling sales manager, having a seasoned sales rep under my wing who was firm on following in my footsteps because I had just been promoted to a sales team lead, tasked with creating more of MEs. Gord soaked it up and was a sponge. I never heard him ever accuse me of talking to much or too fast (I often get that when someone is not wanting to be in tune with what I am saying).
One of my first coaching sessions with him, when he said that, I asked: "Why?"
He said because he didn't think he should try to reinvent the wheel by trying untried things via stumbling, but by mirroring someone who had already demonstrated success seemed like the wisest approach. Wise probably. That isn't an ego statement. That is because when I started out in sales, I subconsciously tried to read or grasp on to follow someone else's example who had already proven to do what I was setting out to do. I see that now as beautiful instinct. I achieved acclaim, awards and recognition not because I was so special or gifted, it amounted to a driven desire to REALLY want to pay attention to those that have already paved the way.
Most definitely, I asked questions of the people who worked with the sales people on their advice on what defined sales greatness. More often than once, I was told that I was already on the first step: asking others for advice and their feedback or opinions.
Seriously, the archaic, traditional sales "experts" defined all the tricks and tips that appeared revolutionary were just plain dumb.
Cutting corners is a sport that only schemers and used car salespeople use. Eventually, they blow out so much steam, that they deflate or are fired because they cannot deliver on the over promises they make or the grand tales they tell.
Asking questions is the one key ingredient that only the finest, best, sales professionals discover. They stumble upon the magical formula by accident at first. They are fueled by wanting to actually deliver on the dreams or goals of the person they are selling to. Instinctively, they know in their subconscious that if they could only deliver a small portion of that goal and not only build upon it but execute beyond either their's or your own possibilities, does the money, fame, awards and recognition follow.
Back to Gord. His answer being defined that he wanted to do well, and he saw the easiest path to doing that was following in someone firmly established on the success train, with the idea that he may be able to progress faster, easier than stumbling around in the dark.
Again, I asked him: "Why?"
Now, some people do think that you're off your noodle when you ask the same question at least two or three times without guiding them or pointing them in the right direction of the answer you are probing for. I've been considered that often and still, almost always lately. That is because if you haven't established the right metrics, results, awards or recognition from peers, subordinates, bosses or leadership ... you won't be heeded. That can be frustrating. Especially if you know you have had a gift in defining the easier path and just want to help others get there faster with less pain.
Finally. Eureka. Gord asked me what I meant - why was I asking why? To me it seemed as elementary as writing that passage of goals as a fledgling college graduate who really had no idea where to go, how to start, or what I really wanted to do with that diploma or degree.
I really wished someone had asked me that before I even left home and headed out to post secondary. Back in those days (now I'm really sounding old), the expectation was you were going to go to school after high school, it was simply up to us on what that career would mean. Blessedly my mom, thought it would be a good idea to be a legal secretary so I would marry a lawyer. Years and years later, and even more recently, she has stated that she regrets not recognizing to tell me to pursue law. I have no regrets. I would have probably made a pretty good lawyer.
A lawyer is paid to orate, research, study character, evidence and sell others on their ability to help them achieve their goals.
Hahahaha ... well, folks. That is EXACTLY what sales people do. Yet, we cannot accomplish anything without asking the right questions.
Back to Gord. "OK, Jeannette. What do you mean by why?"
I am sure I smiled. I recognized that my Padawan (Star Wars trainee term) was ready to absorb my wisdom.
So, again, I asked why but this time, expanded it by asking "why do you want to learn from a successful example so you can climb faster, easier and farther?"
I'm sure I was frustrating. I have a knack of doing that. My brother-in-law told me recently that my family had discussed me stating that sometimes when I talk I am in the clouds and those listening are trying to grasp a morsel of what I am saying. That can come off being perceived as flighty and dumb. Dumb as a fox, some might say.
Realizing that Gord was in the palm of my hands and it was time to expand on the question "Why?"
So I asked him: "what makes you want to be successful?
For a talkative soul like me, taking a pause to allow someone else to absorb the question, formulate their answer, then say it is not something that I am often associated with.
As the note in that 22nd year was proof. I wanted to be successful because at the immature time, success was defined by the house I lived in and the car I drove. The magic was that it fueled my desire and motivated me to accomplishment. Not as a monetary value, simply as a testament to arriving at the end goal. Often it is a status symbol.
Lucky for me that day, Gord said that his goal to be successful meant making enough money so that his new bride could retire from a medical technician career, not work, begin a family and build a strong foundation of life the way he deemed important to him, his values and example from his own upbringing.
How cool! Seriously, how many super stars have such humble goals? Very few I must say. Most of the greats. Simply demonstrating that the ones with the most humblest of goals, stick-to-it-ness to achieve those goals, making good on promises are the ones that achieve it. The humble ones are really not bragging, writing big stories of accomplishments (that can be broken down easily by anyone with half a brain), and professing wisdom that only the loudness of their voices and exuberant tone gets people to believe they've discovered the holy grail.
My friends. There is no easy, miraculous path to greatness. Ask Steve Jobs, Wayne Gretzky et al. They got up maybe a little earlier, spent a few extra minutes studying, stayed later than anyone else practising. Not because they anticipated super stardom but from the sheer pleasure and passion that doing so gave them.
So. Then. If. You want to be great. Start out being humble and hungry to learn from others. Don't proclaim you have discovered a recipe for success and try to sell that to others. As Nike says: Just do it.
The proof IS by doing it, not talking about it. While it starts with asking questions. There is no better path or plan than to start out with a goal, define your path and then plan on how you will execute on it. More often than not, the best ones have goals aligned with love, family, health and happiness and NOT power, fame, money, possessions (I'm not an expert but I have a very strong hunch).
"Never lose your inquisitiveness." ~Jeannette Marshall
