There is a great sketch from the old Bob Newhart television show where he is a psychologist who works for $5.00. (We use this clip in OOH Sales Mastery sessions from time to time to illustrate a point. If you are unfamiliar with it, you can find it on YouTube.) His method of treating his clients is to hear what they have as problems and then offer his advice to “stop it” in order to fix their own problems.
Hilarious sketch…but true. It seems so simple. How different would your life be today if you just stopped your bad habits, bad decisions, and bad actions? Such simple advice to receive, not always so simple to implement.
The problem that we have as adults is, most of the time we repeat wrong or incorrect actions even though we don’t like the result. Remember the oft repeated quote, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”?
We continuously find ourselves back in the same situations we hate to be in - effectively because we are acting like we always act.
• We are really nice to a prospect. We hear their problem and even though we know it is not the real root cause problem, we offer a solution. We lose to someone whom we find out later got the business by completely disagreeing with the prospect on what their problem was.
• We give free advice on how to fix a problem. We lose business to someone who refused to tell the prospect how to fix their marketing/advertising problems unless they were being paid for that guidance.
• We follow a prospect’s rigid buying process exactly. We lose to someone who went around the process and met with the decision maker directly and followed their own sales process.
And then, the situations come up again, and we handle it the same way.
“Stop it.”
For many years we had a client who came to us as their company’s top salesperson, even before they met us. After a short period of time in Sales Mastery he started one class by declaring “I’ve figured it out”! When asked what he had figured out…he proudly proclaimed that he had now determined that whatever his natural impulse was to do in any sales situation, he should do the opposite and that would be right!
Well, not in every situation, but pretty close…that number one salesperson at his company went on to consistently setting and breaking his own sales records year and year. He is STILL doing the opposite of what his natural impulses were…but it feels completely natural to do so now.
If your way isn’t working, stop doing it that way. If you don’t like the result you are getting, usually the opposite action is the right one. The problem is that the right way doesn’t always seem right or feel comfortable, so it is hard making the adjustment.
As we have said before, it’s your choice. You can suffer the pain of disappointment of less than stellar OOH sales results or you can suffer the pain of getting out of your comfort zone. Is this the year you throw caution to the wind?
Need help with sales skills or coaching to take your out of home company to the next level. Learn more about OOH Sales Mastery at oohmastery.com or Contact Dan Nausley at dan.nausley@sandler.com, 423.702.5579.
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Lisa & Dan Nausley and Reggie Piercy of Sandler Chattanooga have developed the OOH Sales Mastery Program after more than a decade of training/coaching thousands of OOH Operators across the country in sales, leadership, and executive coaching.
