Author Archives 
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How to Exceed Your Sales Quotas
The company set my quotas, but I had goals. Quotas and goals are not the same thing. My Goals exceeded the company’s expectations. The company’s vision was bottom line numbers, but I had a vision for my entire life and my sales goals were set to achieve that vision. Their quotas became irrelevant.
In 1983, the vision for my life was compacted into a short list, penned on the back of a photo of my future wife, and placed in a glass stand where I could see her and the list. Every item on that list has been accomplished or surpassed.
- Have a family
- Work out every day
- Save $1,000 per month minimum
- Generate $40,000 per month in gross profit
- Open my own company
- Buy a farm
- Build a home
- Work with children
Sally and I married in 1984. She had a five-year-old son from a previous marriage who became my son and has my name. We were blessed with two daughters born in 1985 and 1986.
Until Sally’s pregnancy with our third child, I belonged to a gym and worked out six days a week. Then I gained weight and became fat and happy; not the worst thing. Everyone said I had a rough pregnancy. So I built a workout room in our newly renovated home, got heavily into mountain biking, and worked out regularly until my first illness. That’s a story for another day.
I saved more than four times $1,000 a month and we moved into our first home in January 1985.
After reaching $40,000 per month in gross profit in my second year, I doubled that mark until I left the company.
In 1989, after looking at property for over a year, we bought a farm in Albemarle County VA, just west of Charlottesville.
In 1991, we moved into the old farmhouse and I opened my own company. Our offices were 100 Yards away in a rustic but charming white, clapboard sided feed store circa 1910. It has a green, standing seam tin roof with red shutters and a porch. The company operated at a profit from the first year and became a cash cow.
In 1996, after more illness, we built a home with a 2 ½-story carriage house for our offices.I coached baseball at every level from T-ball through high school for fifteen years and was president of the 16 to 18 year old league for five years. All three kids played baseball. The games were a family outing and we had a ton of fun flipping burgers and running the concessions stand. Whatever the kids were involved in, we were involved in.
Our home was the place the kids came to hang out. Twenty or more sleeping bags in our great room were common. Sally would make three-foot tall stacks of pancakes or French toast and our country kitchen would fill with hungry, giggling kids enjoying breakfast on the floor.
Sally danced for the Joffrey Ballet for five years during the 70s. In addition to being an incredible mother, she is a phenomenal teacher. While the kids were growing up, she operated a part-time ballet school. In 2005, I opened a dance school for her in our modernized Mayberry named Crozet.
Over 100 kids come through her school every week. Sally teaches children with special needs and is God’s gift to children. Last year we awarded over $10,000 in need-based scholarships and nearly $40,000 since opening.My duties encompass everything outside of the studio; I’m a walking hat rack. Yes, it was a huge career change, but my reward is having the kids here where I know they are having fun in a safe and loving environment. My favorite time is Saturday mornings when the preschoolers are here squealing in the studio.
List accomplished. I mentioned illness. Bad things happen like near death, bad enough to make you want to quit. Faith and goals kept and keep me going. Now there’s a new list that includes SalesDuJour, but the old one remains on my desk. It’s a beautiful photo with my list that reminds why I work and never quit.
So forget about the quotas. Why are you in sales? What are your life goals? What do you want your life to look like? Who do want included, do you want to have a family? Where do you want to live? How do you want to spend your time? What do you want to accomplish with your life?
Make a list and place it prominently. That’s your quota. Now do it and never quit
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The Lever that Removes Price from Negotiations
You have done a superlative job qualifying, establishing value and ROI, and have the customer’s agreement to both. Now price is the issue? You have invested time, effort, expense, and you’re frustrated, disappointed, and appropriately ticked off.
Don’t show your pain. Grin and bear it, because you’re at the beginning of the negotiations, not the end. When the buyer argues price, what they’re really telling you is, “I want what you have, and I need your help to justify this purchase.”
While in the midst of fear of losing a sale, we lose site of the customer’s own frustration and disappointment. Abandon fear and refocus attention on the reality that they have invested more time, effort, and expense than you. They have worked with other salespeople, researched the market, written justifications from cost analysis spreadsheets, and had too many meetings. They have a lot of skin in the game and they want to walk away with something for their effort just like you.
Price is the easiest solution, but you don’t have to take the easy way out.There is absolutely, positively nothing more powerful to leverage during negotiations than the buyer’s want of that “one thing.” The secret is finding out what that “one thing” is. One method that serves me well is offering a horse of a different color. Remove an option or feature, scale down the offering, or suggest something completely different.
- Can you live without a saddle?
- Would our smaller horse work?
- How about this nice mule?
If they consider any of the alternatives, problem solved, price is no longer the issue. And when the answer is, “No, I really want that “one thing” bingo! The buyer has given you the lever to close the deal. Even if they are stuck on one feature, you have successfully shifted the negotiations from price to the most important mechanism in sales, want.
Frank Bettger illustrated this in a story that when I read it over thirty years ago, changed my life and became a seed that grew thousands of healthy sales. A Chevrolet PR executive named William Powell bought a home in Detroit and said the realtor “was one of the smartest salesmen I have ever met.”
The realtor listened intently to Mr. Powell and discovered that he had wanted to own trees all of his life. The realtor drove Powell to a house in a wooded suburb that had eighteen gorgeous trees. Powell told the realtor to sharpen his pencil, because he could buy similar houses for less money. But they didn’t have the trees and the realtor continuously pointed to, and counted all of the trees.
“He sold me eighteen trees and threw in the house. That is real salesmanship.” – William Powell
A new customer named Steve visited our warehouse to inspect two near identical Cincinnati machine tools. They weighed over 60,000 lbs each with identical footprints of something over 20’ X 15’. One could machine a part 100” X 40”, the other 100” X 60”. At over 12’ tall, the 20” difference in height seemed negligible to Steve and the 50% higher price was difficult for him to swallow. Price became the battleground, for him.
He adamantly insisted that he “had to have the larger machine.” Steve told me that “one thing” to win the battle over price.
“The extra height is extremely rare” I explained. I recommended the smaller machine and offered him the same capacity in a lighter duty machine from another manufacturer, sidestepping price.
We went out to eat, talked about family, sports, politics, and everything and anything other than the deal. After dinner, he said he’d take the larger machine, full price. We became friends and did business together for years.
Find out what the “one thing” that the buyer wants, clamp on to it like a pit-bull, and don’t let go.
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Enthusiasm is the lever that moves a sale
Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Enthusiasm is the lever that moves a sale.
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Creating Inspiring Sales Presentations
When they were 17 and 18 years old, our daughters moved to South Carolina to perform with the Charleston Ballet Theatre, and our son moved to San Diego after graduating college. (more…)
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My First Lesson in Humility
Nearly forty years ago a seventeen year old, super salesman wannabe, emerged onto 5th Ave and 42nd Street from the NYC subway. (more…)
