In the 70’s and 80’s, there was a great television show called “Quincy.” This show revolved around a coroner who investigated deaths. Jack Klugman, a.k.a. Dr. Quincy, performed an autopsy on what appeared to be a death by natural causes and realized that the actual cause of death was murder. Once that determination was made, the rest of the show was focused on finding the bad guys and identifying the motive, not necessarily in that order.

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The other day I was working out in the gym when a guy asked me to spot him on the bench press. For those of you not familiar with the term “spot,” it means to watch and assist the lifter if they need help. Of course, I agreed to do this. As is customary when spotting, I asked him how many reps (number of times lifting the weight) he planned to do. He looked at me very puzzled and said he didn’t know. Humorously, I followed that with asking if he expected to do it once or a hundred times. He laughed and said it would be more than one, but not sure how many he would do beyond that.

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A man walked into the Fairbanks, Alaska, Nordstrom department store with two snow tires. He walked up to the counter, put the tires down and asked for his money back. The clerk, who’d been working there for two weeks, saw the price on the side of the tires, reached into the cash register and handed the man $145.

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Albert Einstein formulated the theory that says that space and time are relative concepts rather than absolute concepts. For example, consider a car speedometer reading at 65 miles per hour. How fast is the car going? This question seems like the beginning of the joke of who is buried in Grant’s tomb and you are expecting a punch line. No joke here, I assure you. As a matter of fact, most would respond 65 miles per hour. This is the correct answer if and only if you are comparing the car to someone who is not moving. However, if you compare that same car to the car driving next to it that is driving 55 miles per hour, your car is only moving at 10 miles per hour.

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We all know the customer is the most important person in our business, but sometimes we forget that the second most important person in the business is any employee that comes in contact with our customers in anyway. Plus the employee that contacts the customer face-to-face, so to speak, is the person who represents the business in the customers mind. If that representation is not a great experience for the customer, the business suffers.

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When you can get the prospect to think that they cannot live without purchasing your product or get them to think that they will be much better off purchasing the product / service from you instead of your competition you will close the sale.

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Did you know that you can earn residual income from other peoples work? It is legal, ethical and most importantly, it is true. Each and every time one of the people to whom you delegate the responsibility to moving a product does indeed close a sale, you stand to profit from that transaction without having to lift a finger. Imagine how much money you are able to generate with this concept.

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It takes something special to sell in a down economy. Unless sales people are properly equipped, it’s easy for them to get discouraged and give up, perhaps before they even get started. When salespeople stop selling, falling revenues eventually cause pain for all employees and can threaten the very existence of the business. That’s why it’s in everybody’s best interest to ensure that every salesperson has the one thing that will keep them producing sales in a down economy.

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When you are qualifying a prospect or finding the problems as I call it, you want to probe deep inside to find the logical and emotional reasons why they want what you are offering.

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There are thousands of companies across the world that would improve their sales with a few simple changes to their sales techniques. Often a few very simple steps make an enormous difference. So if you are confident with the product or service that your company offer but feel like you aren’t making nearly enough sales then you need to ask yourself why? It is often the case that you will see your competitors making more sales or achieving more client acquisitions than you even though they offer an inferior product. This is the point at which you really need to consider why this is happening. It is often the case that in this situation you have been using the same sales staff that you have done for years. They were the staff that have got you where you are today and this is often true.

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