Let's Close a Deal! | Christine Clifford

okay quick what's the first word you think of when you hear the word salesperson delight delight what else other words a charismatic automobiles car salesman pushy organized well we often hear words associated with salespeople like obnoxious pushy manipulative devious dishonest you know think back to the last time you actually placed a call to a prospect were they delighted to take your call or do they tell you to call back in six months or did they compliment you on your delivery and your information or did they not even bother to take your call well it doesn't have to be that way and part of the reason it's that way is because of something that Rick just talked about if I challenged all of you to take your business cards out of your wallet and lay them on the table the odds are that less than 1% of the people in this room have the word sales in their title we are consultants we are presidents we are executive directors we are Realtors we are neurosurgeons I'm an author I'm a consultant and so oftentimes we don't think of ourselves as salespeople but as Rick has pointed out we have been selling since the time we were old enough to talk we negotiated with our parents on whether we could watch cartoons on a weeknight whether we could have snack an hour before dinner as we got a little bit older we negotiated about whether we could have sleepovers on Friday night and gee that dent in the car dad really wasn't my fault and then we got into college and where can we go to college and so on and so on and as Rick said now we're negotiating with our spouses and our children and people on a day to day basis so the question here is not really am i a salesperson the question is how can I become more effective now one of the ways to become more effective is to change our focus how many of you have ever heard or used the term it's a win-win situation everybody pretty much heard that it's used very commonly in sales and what the win-win means is there's something in it for you and there's something in it for me but the truth to the sale is there is always a third party beneficiary in every single sale that you make as Rick said whether that's that your employees maybe it's your family maybe it's your charitable organization but there's always a third party beneficiary and if you can keep that in mind and change your mindset to the trifecta of the win-win-win you absolutely will become more effective so the other challenge is we need to define what it is that we're selling oftentimes are selling a product or a service and we seem to think that we know all the features and benefits about that but in reality we really need to dig deeper and we really need to clearly define what it is we're selling now out of all the things that I write about about defining your sale one of the things that's the most important one to me is understanding the motivation of your buyer if you don't know why that person is wants to buy your product or your service how can you possibly position it to them in a way that they want to say yes there's a whole bunch of reasons why people might want to buy from you they possibly have to replace something that's old broken outdated or inconvenient your product or service solves a problem if you can solve the problem you can sell it to the world just like our last speaker just said the product or service fills a need or a void your prospects are risk takers and they see potential growth for the future that happens with a lot of financial investors your prospects have outgrown the existing product due to growth perhaps your product is a gift to somebody the book wants to be part of the in-crowd the latest thing you know the iPhone something that comes out and everybody wants to have it the product has a perceived value of equal or greater importance to it's worth the prospect has an obsession about or a collection about the product they may be forced to purchase the product there may be a product recall and they've got to go out and change everything regarding their product the competition has dropped the ball why can't you be the one to pick it up and run with it and one of the last reasons why people buy from you is because they can money is no object so if you have clearly defined why it is that your prospects want to purchase from you you've got a much better chance of actually closing the deal so one of the steps I talked about many many steps in the book let's close a deal I talked about how to become a corporate spokesperson I talked about how to get corporate sponsorship for your products services and cos talk about using the media to gain notoriety and grow your business but one of the things that you have to do before you start pitching and preparing is you need to prepare the deal now what's one of the ways that you can prepare the deal you can work on your own packaging you can work on how you are packaging yourself most of us are selling the wrong things when we go out to pitch a product or service how many of you lead with features and benefits probably most of us we start out you know here's the features here's the benefits god forbid you start out with price because price is a quick way to kill kill a deal what should you be selling you should actually be selling your story why did you become an entrepreneur why did you start your company now I'm going to share a story with you about a gentleman who used to live here in Minneapolis and many of you may know him or know of him his name was Fred bet lock and he owned a jewelry store in downtown Minneapolis called bet lock jewelers and when I first became a entrepreneur and hung a shingle out on my door Fred came into my office sat down and said Christine I am really in trouble and I said how badly are you in trouble Fred and he said I'm about a quarter of a million dollars in debt now I don't know about any of you when you first started marketing your businesses and hanging your shingle on the door but I had three criteria for new clients when I went out into business on my own they needed to be able to hear thunder see lightning and have collateral well diamonds and emeralds and pearls oh my he sounded like a fabulous client so I decided to take him on but I gave Fred a homework assignment I told Fred to go back to his office this was a Monday I said he could show up on Friday at nine o'clock and I wanted him to come with all the stories that he could create about the products and jewelry that he'd sold about or about some of the customers that he'd serviced over the years well on Friday morning Fred was sitting on my doorstep at 8:30 in the morning he had done his homework he came armed with dozens of stories so we took six of those stories and we whittled them down to about a hundred and twenty words of peace and then we had them printed on some beautiful cardstock and we had a little matching emblem for each story put on top of the page and then we tied them together with a ribbon and we put them in a matching envelope and then on the outside of the envelope there were only three words it said bet luck Jewelers gems and it was a double entendre buddy that lived within a 30-mile radius of bet lock jeweler who had a combined household income and again this is over 20 years ago of over $50,000 a year because we knew that we weren't going to get Fred out of the red by selling the simple pieces the engagement rings in the wedding bands we knew we had to sell some of the higher price thirty forty thousand dollar pieces of jewelry so on a warm October day a number of affluent Minnesotans walked out to their mailboxes took out their mail there was the envelope and when they opened it up the first story on top was called a canary made her cry and the story read a leading Minneapolis jeweler had everything she could want including a very strict European bread idea of perfection she'd have given Torvill and Dean a 5.9 when every other skating judge would have given them a perfect 6.0 she found the heart of her anniversary gift at an estate sale in Berne Switzerland and brought it to us a fancy three carat diamond a beautiful yellow canary we took that diamond and then we took tiny Thai emeralds which we wrapped around each corner of the ring and they disappeared into the band and then we put it in a box and we called her to come in she arrived in minutes but she was so nervous she was too afraid to open the box so she took it and she left an hour passed then two then three finally we could wait no longer a clerk from our store called hers to ask did she love the ring the clerk from her store said oh I'm sorry she can't come to the phone right now she's so moved she's still crying within six weeks thirteen people six of them clutching the story of a canary made her cry waltzed in Tibet locked jewellers and walked out with existing pieces or advanced orders for pieces to the tune of three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars walked Fred right out of the red and into the black and into his fancy new digs in Palm Springs California where I encourage you all to go visit him because nobody knows the value of a story more than Fred so when your are going to sit down with a new customer a prospect a former client don't sell them on the features and benefits tell them your story tell them why you got involved in the business tell them how you did something remarkable for a family or why you're a fifth generation person involved in this family business tell me your story so now what's another way that you can improve your package you can create what I call knock-your-socks-off marketing kits now this just happens to be the brochure that I helped the Minneapolis Club put together because they wanted to appeal to a younger audience they wanted to get start some young members coming in here so when you're handing out your marketing materials you want your packet to pop you don't want to be lost in the shuffle so spend the money and put some dollars into your marketing materials now what else can you do to improve your package you can become an expert in your field you can absolutely become the master of one trade now traditionally when we are entrepreneurs we get pulled in a lot of different directions and I often say we become a jack-of-all-trades how many feel like you're a jack-of-all-trades a lot of hands are going up someone comes in and says oh your company ought to be doing this and all sudden you start doing that you try doing this and you try doing that but what you really need to become instead of jack-of-all-trades is a master of one and I'm going to give you another little story about how that can help your business my oldest brother Greg is a carpenter in the tiny little city of whitefish montana and when the economy was booming greg was busy working on all these multi-million dollar homes and then the recession hit and greg wasn't working at all now I went to visit him when this was going on and we got loaded into Greg's pickup truck and he started driving me around whitefish and what I noticed was that Greg was lovingly pointing out all this wood work that he did on these homes oh I built that deck there on that house so I put the shutters on that one Oh in this house I built hardwood floors and he'd go on and on and on the stair railings everything having to do with wood and so I said you know Greg really what you are is you are a master of fine woodwork so instead of marketing yourself as a jack-of-all-trades carpenter let's create some marketing materials that that cause you to rise to the top of your field so we created these special business cards on stationery that looked like wood and we drew up this flier the again that looked like wood that said nothing more than greg master woodworker and guess what happened to Greg's telephone it started ringing off the hook now people would get him in their homes to put in their hardwood floors and while he was there would they'd say Oh Greg by the way do you know how to fix broken furnace or a windows falling off in my basement or all they'd come up with lists of long things that had to be done and did Greg know how to do those things and could he absolutely he did them and he charged for them but he wasn't putting a single amount of his resources and as entrepreneurs our resources are our time our money and our people if we have any that worked for us he wasn't putting any of his resources into marketing himself as a carpenter he was getting spin-off business and as of this very moment my brother is working on a multi-million dollar home outside of the city of whitefish with three subcontractors underneath him so that is the value of creating what I call niche notoriety put yourself as the expert in your field the go-to person that everyone will turn to when they need your type of product or service now there's one last thing I'm going to talk about today because our time is fairly limited in terms of improving your own package and that is what I call working your weaknesses there's an author out there that made millions of dollars selling a called building your strengths but you know I'm going to use an example of myself I'm a golfer and I go to the practice range not nearly enough but when I do I take four clubs out of my bag I take my 8-iron my 6-iron my 3-wood and my driver and I go position myself there on the practice range and I hit ball after ball after ball straight out into the you know field and invariably all these people walk by and go Oh Christine you've got such a beautiful swing and I always say thank you and then I get out on the golf course and hopefully I hit my beautiful drive which I usually do and then hopefully I will hit my second shot but if it's 30 to 40 to 50 feet short of the green guess what happens to me i chunked my ball into the sand trap I try to get out of the sand trap I chip over the green I get on the green i three putt why because I keep working my strengths instead of going to the practice range and working on my putting and chipping I do what feels good to me I do what what I get compliments on and so really what we need to do is analyze where our weaknesses are and try to work those weaknesses so we've talked a little bit about packaging ourselves and our products but is now it's time to come to make connection so that is really what Club entrepreneur is all about and that's really how we get an enormous amount of our business in this world now we've all heard about the theory of six degrees of separation if I chose you and we chatted and you know within six people we find out that we somehow knew each other I think that's five too many I think you really need only one degree of separation if you really want to be closing deals you have to find a person who knows the person that you're pitching to in order to close the deal now I am going to give you a great story from my past about how I turned a resounding no into a very positive yes for about four years I used to host a celebrity golf tournament here in the Twin Cities to raise money for my cause which is Breast Cancer Research and we always were looking for a headlining celebrity that could not only play golf but who could entertain our guests at the event and one particular summer I was at the National Convention for an association I belong to the National Speakers Association and the headline entertainment for that group that particular weekend was none other than Grammy award-winning country-western singer Larry Gatlin with the Gatlin Brothers now Larry has kind of faded off a little bit into the distance but at the height of his career he won best artist of the year best album of the year best song of the year you know who's the Gatlin Brothers were a pretty big thing back in their day and I also happen to know that Larry was about a 2 or 3 handicap golfer so I sat there in the auditorium probably just like those of you sitting way back in the back of the room and thought God wouldn't it be cool to get to know Larry Gatlin well there was probably about a thousand other people there that night that thought the same thing because I couldn't get anywhere near him but I did get the name of the gentleman who had been responsible for bringing Larry to the event that night his name is neato Cobain and I had networked my way through the National Speakers Association enough to know needle quite well at that point so I get back to Minneapolis in about three months later I opened the Star Tribune and there's a little announcement in the Variety section that Larry Gatlin is coming to town to star in a play at the state theatre called the Civil War and I thought wow I'm going to call neato so I put some calls out to neato I sent him some emails asking him if he could possibly make an introduction to me for Larry and this was about three weeks out and so the days passed and the weeks passed and I'd put more calls in finally we got to be about two nights before Larry was scheduled to come into town and my phone rang now neato by the way is Lebanese and did not grow up in our country so I answered the phone and this was the response yet Christine this is the neato Cobain and I'm so sorry I haven't called you but I have been out of the country and I can have no time to talk to you right now but Larry Gatlin is going to call you good luck and good bye Clark I literally had my hand on the telephone receiver when it rang again and I picked it up and I said hello this is Christine and I heard the biggest Texas twang I have ever heard in my life and all apologies to any of you who might be from the south as I tell the rest of the story yeah yeah Christine yeah this is Larry Gatlin and I don't know who you are or why I'm calling you but nito Cobain asked me to call you and I do anything neato tells me to do so why am i calling you well I was so you know flustered I had no time to prepare I hadn't even known he was going to call me that I vomited all over him I started telling him wouldn't it be great for him to come up here and play golf at the historic mint Akata Club and wouldn't it be great for him to entertain our guests and I went on and on and on and on and on and when I finally stopped and came up for air there was a long pause and Larry said you know Christine I get asked to play in about 200 of these golf tournaments every year and and I'm sure your cause is a good one and and by the way what's your cause well again I hadn't thought of the win-win-win I was so busy thinking about what's in it for me and what's in it for him that I forgot about my charity so I told him I was a breast cancer survivor and I was raising money for the American Cancer Society and Larry said Oh Christine congratulations you're a survivor you're a survivor I'm a survivor we're all survivors he goes I'm going to just share a little story with you it's public knowledge I'm a recovering alcoholic and drug addict and and I got to tell you I've only got two objectives at this point in my life I want spend time with my family oh did I tell you I got a brand-new little baby granddaughter name's Paula she's just the cutest little thing and then my other objectives I need to make some money for my family in my band I lost quite a bit of it you know back in the day so I'm sorry I'm just I'm really going to have to say no well then I did what I always do when this situation arrives I do something called the 3 R's I retreat I really and I really thought about what Larry had said to me and I quickly thought of some solutions now just that morning Sun Country Airlines had donated five round-trip airline tickets to my golf tournament so I said Larry I've been listening to you now I understand that one of your objectives is you want to spend time with your family so how would you feel if I flew you your wife your daughter your son and long little baby Paula up to Minneapolis to watch you play golf well there was a long pause and then Larry burst into laughter he said sugar I gotta hand it to you no one has ever made me an offer like that before but my little polish he's only six months old I I don't think she wants to be flying to Minneapolis so I'm sorry sweetie I'm still going to have to say no well I did it again I retreated I really ate it I reappropriation the Blowfish many famous people had come and played in my golf tournament and donated their time but I had some money in there in fact it had accumulated over the years because that budget had never been used so I said Larry I heard you how about if I offer you $10,000 well now you're talking sweetheart you must have some kind of media kit a golf tournament of yours why don't you bring it down here to the Grand Hotel I promise you I will take a look at this tonight and I will get back to you well then I flew into high gear I did something I call percolating the deal percolating the deal is putting that something special extra together that gets the person in a position where they just say I just have to have it so I started to create knock-your-socks-off gift basket for Larry now I had a profile on Larry I knew that Larry was a husband a father a grandfather recovering alcoholic golfer Grammy award-winning singer songwriter I had all these profiles so I immediately drove over the minakata Club where they hosted our golf tournament just the day before the USA Today sports section the headline had blared Titleist introduces new pro-v one golf ball and takes the nation by storm so I ran up to the golf pro and I said Doug do you have any of these new hot pro-v that just came out and he said Christine we got a case in and they sold out in a minute I don't have a single ball I said you've got to find some for me I told him what was going on so he sheepishly led me into his office and pulled out his little private drawer and there in his drawer was his little box of 12 balls that he'd kept for his personal stash and he gave them to me but as I was walking out I saw this little display and hanging on the display were two little leather pink golf shoes for babies so I bought them and I wrote a little note dear Paul I hope you grow up to be as good a golfer as your granddaddy and then I zoomed over to Barnes and Noble and bought chicken soup for the golfers soul and I had a story in that book so I autographed it and then I came downtown to Minneapolis to the IDS Center where back in those days the best coffee and chocolate shops were situated in the IDS and I wrap this all up into a big basket and I drove over to the Grand Hotel and then I did something else I do when I am making a pitch and doing my preparation instead of playing devil's advocate and thinking about all the things that can go wrong with my sale I play angels add the it I try to think about all the things that can go right with my sail and so one of the things that I knew had to go right was that Larry needed to get this basket so I paid the concierge start when t dollars to personally deliver that basket to Larry's room that night my phone rang it was Larry and he said Christine that's quite a media kit you've got there darlin not only am i coming to your golf tournament and playing in it but I am looking forward to doing so honey we got a deal and not only that there are two tickets for you in the front row of the State Theater you come down there watch my show and afterwards we'll go out to the Capital Grille for coffee and dessert so let's take that whole scenario that whole story that I just gave you how did I get from no to yes I had to go back and look at my third-party beneficiary there had to be a reason for me to be making that sale I retreated I really ate it I reappropriation thought about all the things that could go right with that sale so you need to set yourself up so that you cannot fail that is how I approach every sale I never take the first no as the final no I always go back and think what was I not listening to what did I miss is there a way I can overcome this objective there are lots and lots of things that you can do to close and pitch deals but there's one last thing that you must do in order to succeed and I learned this thing through very painful yet very powerful experience I learned this thing from 20 years ago at the age of 40 being diagnosed with cancer and being told I had about six months to live at that time in my life I looked back an experience of having a job with benefits bonuses salaries Commission and leaving that job to no real job at all just a dream I had of becoming an entrepreneur and starting my own business and I've taken a very big risk I'm going to share a story with you two weeks ago I was diagnosed with cancer again I will be having surgery on June 18th and starting chemotherapy and I have realised that the path to pleasure in my life has always been through pain that has always been in the risks that I have taken in my life that have gotten me to the point where I can stand up here before you today and tell you how to close deals you play this game with courage the courage to take risks in your life there's an author Gail Shahi who wrote a national award-winning book called passages and in that book she was doing the research for it when she came across 13 people who had a quality that she has coined a sense of high well-being now you might imagine as certainly I have and absolutely as she had what would those 13 people have in common that got them to this place of ecstasy in their life and at first it seemed like they had absolutely nothing in common some of them had advanced educational degrees ph d--'s master's degrees two of them had not graduated from high school some of them were extremely successful couple of them were on welfare some of them were very attractive others were quite plain and three of them had absolutely no religious affiliation whatsoever which might come as a surprise to some of you but then a pattern started to emerge and it was there in 1 through 5 and then 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 and as an author I can only imagine yells Jay he's anxiety as she gathered up the notes to the 13th person Gordon Mortensen and she sequestered herself in her loft for the evening and she had to be asking herself the question will it be here will Gordon substantiate my theory and as she poured through the notes on Gordon it wasn't there and it wasn't there and it wasn't there and then she got to the last two pages of the notes on Gordon and there it was Gordon had told the interviewer tell dr. Shahi that when I was 24 years old I took an enormous risk in my life the risk was so personal that neither dr. Shahi nor Gordon Mortensen have ever revealed it to the public and it's because of this risk that I took in my life said Gordon that I have come to this place that she calls a sense of high well-being you play this game with courage David Landis who wrote the book the wealth and poverty of Nations was challenged on why some nations thrive and others fail and he examined every culture going all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia to the current cultures of today and you think that he's not going to have a reason and as you pile through his 500 600 page book you get to the last two pages and he sums it up and he said it's not Guns Germs or steel that make the difference between the rich and the poor it's not power sources natural resources education any of the things that you might have read about or believed to be true in this world it's all in belief in this world the optimists have it the optimists have the ability to see things others can't see transformation art revival renewal and then he goes on to say the pessimists had the lone consolation of knowing they failed and being able to say they were right all along you play this game with courage so the next time you come to a fork in the road don't take the path of least resistance paths without obstacles rarely go anywhere instead take the road along the cliff the one without the guardrail because I can promise you this that the sheer exhilaration of the ride and the pride that you feel when you finish will fill you with even more pride and give you even more courage to take even more risks and that one day will bring you more money but every day will leave you early more fulfilled thank you Oh thank you so much thank you thank you

Channel: Christine Clifford

Views: 158,659

Rating: 4.8802891 out of 5

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Id: H7SJE6Jnf0U

Length: 34min 50sec (2090 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2013