Eric Barker tackles.................

 

.............................persuasion:

If humans were rational, persuasion would be easy. You’d just present your argument like a neat little tray of facts, and they would accept it. But persuasion isn’t all about logic and evidence. It’s about emotion, identity, mood, status, pride, resentment, what they ate for lunch, and whether they’ve decided you remind them of someone who was mean to them in eighth grade. You can be completely correct and still get treated like you’ve just announced you enjoy kicking puppies.

facing it.............................

 The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.

-Cal Newport

sale pending.......................

 The commercialisation of modern life has been the subject of lamentation ever since it was first remarked upon, and ambitious theories—commodity fetishism, conspicuous consumption, the affluent society, and countless lesser attempts—have arisen from the natural revulsion that intellectuals feel towards the "getting and spending" of others.  But something new seems to be at work in the contemporary world—a process that is eating away the very heart of social life, not merely by putting salesmanship in place of moral virtue, but by putting everything—virtue included—on sale.  The cynic, said Oscar Wilde, is the one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  And in a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas he described sentimentality as "the bank holiday of cynicism". Wilde's quips tend to be more exciting that truthful.  These, however, are exact.  Cynicism and sentimentality are two ways in which things of value are demoted to things with a price.

-Roger Scruton, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture

Belief.......................

 There’s no need to sign up for the endless uphill battle of marketing against a positive trend. Sell something you believe in, to people who are eager to believe in it as well.

You’ll do your best work on behalf of an audience and a cause that deserves it, appreciates it and applauds it. If it’s just a job, you’ve sacrificed your best energy for a paycheck.

Pick your client, pick your future.

-Seth Godin, from here

Be careful out there......................

 Ben’s rule number one of the unfortunate realities of the investment business is a talented sales staff will trump a talented investment staff when attracting capital from investors.

-Ben Carlson, from his Investments as a Status Symbol post

Resign...........................

If you add up the time you spend where it's none of your business, or none of your concern, or that you cannot affect the outcome (news, TV reruns, and other crap) you could have been the greatest salesperson in the world or a syndicated columnist, or an author.  But no, you'd rather piss your time down the drain thinking that you're some kind of savior to mankind when in fact, it's just the opposite.  Save your own ass first. . . .
In 1972, when the twins were born, I was in a rotten marriage, I was broke, and I was studying positive attitude daily.  I first read the phrase resign your position as general manager of the universe.  I have searched back and cannot find its origin.  I wish I could.  I wish I could tell you that I created this phrase, but I can't.  What I can tell you is that I have used this philosophy as one of the building blocks of my success.  The reason I have saved it for last is because it is the least evident and the most difficult.

-Jeffrey Gitomer,  The Little Red Book Of Selling

Value first..........................

My sales philosophy is different.  It's called "value first."  Simply put, I put value in the hands of my potential customers before I ever ask them the buy anything.

-Jeffrey Gitomer,  Little Red Book of Selling

Execute......................

I am consistently amazed and disappointed at the small number of people willing to execute the simple daily self-disciplines needed to reach higher levels of success.  They know it will bring them the success they dream about, yet they fail to execute. . . .
The victory we call success goes to the best prepared, self-believing, right associated, self taught, responsible person, who sees the opportunity and is willing to take a risk to seize it - sometimes a big risk.

-Jeffrey Gitomer, from his Little Red Book of Selling

Praying..........................

................................................................for another success story.

thanks

Paging John E. Smith................

"However, for the first time in my working life, I am tasked with literally making my living through using whatever enterprising skills I have to create relationships.  No paycheck occurs, unless I sell, first myself, then a “deal” to others."

Hoping you're having massive success!   Please check in.

The generous long game..............

"If you show up and show up and show up, and care enough to learn to connect, you will have a skill for life."

-Seth Godin, as culled from here

Ah, sales the old-fashioned way..........................

   -as taken from the May/June issue of the Commercial Investment Real Estate magazine

Say it isn't so...............................................

.................................Be interesting to see how this turns out.  I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that a good salesperson is a value-added proposition.

Hard to disagree with this..............

....................(although I'm a bit surprised they haven't offered help re-cycling all the damn boxes around here):

Amazon’s laser-like focus on creating value for consumers and keeping them satisfied with low prices, huge selection, speedy delivery and great customer service goes a long way towards explaining its phenomenal success as a retailer, which gets reflected in the meteoric rise in its stock price and market capitalization.

-Mark J. Perry, as excerpted from here

True this...............................

Those who can tell their story in an engaging way will have a leg up on the competition. Everyone is in sales.

-Ben Carlson, from this post on Selling Intangibles

Don't drop the curtain...................

.........................................on bricks and mortar retail quite yet.   Balanced story here.  Excerpt here:

 "A report by retailer researcher bazaarvoice found that shoppers who interact with a retailer via multiple channels, such as through a mobile device and by visiting an actual store, spent 18-36% more than those who dealt with just one channel, no matter what that was—leading us to believe there is a place for both. And, judging by the coffee situation and other trends we are seeing in the marketplace, experience is becoming a more important part of the shopping situation."

via

Three problems for the wide world of retail......

.............I was well aware of the first two.   The third is kind of interesting.   Breakdown on the retailing world's woes here.

via

The Amazon Doctrine.................

..............wreaks havoc across a wide swath of the retail world.  Mark Perry is on the story - here.  Doctrine here:

Above all else, align with customers.

Win when they win.

Win only when they win.

One of the glories of the Intertunnel..............

..............................................is that you can learn really neat stuff without even trying.  For instance, "Wheeler's which."

On marketing and sales.................

"Because marketing is everything. It’s the promises we make, the work we do, the people we connect with, the folks we lead, the hard decisions we make, our values, our ability change the status quo…that’s all marketing."

"Just about everyone is selling a good or a service, whether they realize it or not. And right or wrong, people are susceptible to a good story or narrative. So if you’re like me and weren’t born to always be closing, this is something you have to work on."

-Ben Carlson, as pulled from this blog post