You, Inc. The Art of Selling Yourself | Christine Clifford

ladies and gentlemen best-selling author of eight books including you incorporated the art of selling yourself award-winning professional speaker industry leading salesperson and survivor certified speaking professional Kristine Clifford why did I write a book about you you Inc the art of selling yourself many of us sitting in this room today don't even think of ourselves as salespeople we all have fancy titles I'm a professional speaker and an author you might be the manager of information systems or administrative assistant or a nurse educator and many of us don't think we're salespeople but the truth is we have been selling from the time we were young children when we were little kids we negotiated with our parents whether we could stay up on Friday night watching cartoons or have a sleepover at one of our best friends houses as we grew up a little bit and got a little bit older we started negotiating a little further gee I'd really like to go to Disneyland for spring break mom or that see I got on my report card in history dad it really wasn't my fault and now that we're adults we're negotiating with our partners and our neighbors and our friends and our kids on a daily basis where are we going to go for dinner on Friday night and what movie are we going to see where are we going to spend our vacations what should we be spending our money on so on and so on and so forth so the question is not am i a salesperson the question is how can I become more effective now what's the problem with most sales calls the problem is that most of us are selling the wrong thing we look at a sale as a win-win in situation what's in it for you and what's in it for me but today we're going to talk about what I call the trifecta the win-win-win there is always a third party beneficiary in every sale and the beneficiary is usually the end result or the client that is buying our products and our service today we're going to talk about six ways to sell yourself more effectively and again why is that important it's because I found in my years of experience in a wide variety of industries working with an enormous amount of corporations and individuals that in the end what people are not buying is the benefits and features of a product they are certainly not buying it on price what they really are buying is you how did you as a salesperson make them feel all of us regardless of what our job is within this corporation all of us are creating images about the corporation whether we run into you at a grocery store or we happen to sit next to you on an airplane or we meet at a networking meeting just like this conference all of us are creating those images and it's from those images that we decide whether or not we want to do business with you so we're going to talk this afternoon about the six ways to sell yourself now what do I think is number one I think one of the most important things that we need to do as individuals and corporations is learn to tell our story and tell it well now why do I think that that's so important it's because stories are the way the human animal learns we see this all the way back to biblical times to Jesus and Moses and Mohammed one of our presidents Ronald Reagan was called the Great Communicator was that because the stories that he told were so eloquent and exquisite that the words he chose were so extraordinary not at all it's because he did with those silly movies he starred and did he told stories and when we were growing up we lived and thrived on stories we read Aesop's fables and the stories of the brother Grimm how many of you in here have children or grandchildren okay how many of you were children how many of you still are children okay now every hand in the audience is going up okay so I want you to all go back and think about a child in your life and think what are the first three complex two syllable words learned by most children anybody have a guess anybody right mommy yep daddy but interestingly enough the third word is story story mommy tell story daddy why is it that children learn such a complex two syllable word when there are so many thousands of others to learn from it's because stories are ingrained in our personality and we're here today to find out how you can tell your story perhaps no one knows the value of a story more than a gentleman who happens to come from my home state Minnesota now this man's name was Fred BETT lock and he owned bet lock jewelers one day Fred showed up and he said boy I am really in trouble how badly are you in trouble Fred I'm a quarter of a million dollars in debt well we gave Fred a homework assignment we told Fred to go back and gather as many stories as he could about the customers who had come into his shop or the pieces of jewelry he had sold well Fred did his homework he showed up on Friday and he was armed with stories dozens of them so we took six of those stories and we whittled them down to about a hundred and twenty words apiece and then we had them printed on some beautiful cardstock and we had matching envelopes made to go with them and then we tied them together with a beautiful ribbon and slid them into the envelope and then we nailed these stories to anybody that lived within a 30-mile radius of fetlock jeweler who had a combined household income of over back in those days fifty thousand dollars because we knew that we weren't going to get Fred out of the red by selling the inexpensive pieces of jewelry the wedding bands and the engagement rings we knew that we were going to have to sell the higher priced items so on a warm October day much like the one we're having here today in your beautiful city a number of affluent Minnesotans went out to their mailboxes opened up the envelope and there on the top was a story 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 and Bern Switzerland and brought it to us a perfect three carat canary a fancy yellow diamond we took that stone and then we took tiny Thai emeralds which we wrapped around each side of the stone and when we were done creating it we called her to come in she arrived in minutes but she was too anxious to open her ring box 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 in her store said I'm sorry she can't come to the phone right now she's still so moved she's still crying within six weeks thirteen people six of them clutching the story of a canary made her cry waltzed into bed 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 into the black into his fancy new digs in Palm Springs California where I encourage you all to go visit him because no one knows the value of a story more than Fred so the next time you sit across from a prospect or a new client or an existing client don't sell them on the features and benefits of your product or your service and god forbid don't sell them on price tell me your story tell me why you became a nurse educator because when you were a child growing up you had watched a member of your family take ill tell me why you opened your own hearing made Center because your 90 year old grandmother wanted to be able to hear her great granddaughter cry for the first time tell me why you became a banker because four generations before you were bankers in your family tell me your story and now I'm going to share with you a little bit about mine how many times have we been told to think outside the box I happen to believe you can't change your box your box is your box your box is your DNA it's what you were born with it's what you've been raised with it's almost impossible to change your box so I like to add the cake that you need to grow your box now how do you do that I'm going to use the how many of you remember the Grammy Award winning singer Paul Simon now some of you in the audience are a little too young to remember him he was part of a famous duo called Simon and Garfunkel and he was very very famous in his day well Paul Simon started getting very stale and he started writing some of the worst music on the planet including a song called Kodachrome and I know some of you older members are laughing at that so Paul Simon flew over to Africa and he started listening to the music and the drums and the instruments of a group called ladysmith black mambazo and he incorporated that into his life and he absorbed what he had heard and he Paul Simon came back to the United States and he crawled back into his box but he had learned new music and he had learned new instruments and he turned out some of the most extraordinary music of his career with lyrics like angels and the architectures spinning into infinity so don't change your box grow your box how many of you like to think of yourself as a jack-of-all-trades many of us think that I wear lots of different hats with all my different companies I have my hand in accounting and advertising and marketing and sales but the truth to the matter is if we are Jack's of all trades we are masters of none we need to focus we need to focus on one thing and do it so extraordinarily well that we become the expert in our field we become the go-to company the go-to salesperson the go-to person to get that thing done now let me give you an example my older brother is a carpenter who lives in the tiny tiny little town of Columbia Falls Montana now my brother hit the bad economy several years ago as did many of us and I happen to be visiting him and he had hardly had any work while I was there Gregg lovingly drove me around town and started pointing out all of the extraordinary wood work that he had done on these multi-million dollar homes when the economy was booming and thriving he pointed out decks that he'd built in stair rails and shutters and and shingles and I turned to Gregg and said you know Gregg what you really are is a master of fine woodwork so we came home and we designed a flyer for my brother that simply said master woodworker and we started distributing that flyer all over town and guess what happened Gregg's phone started ringing off the hook and it isn't that he didn't know how to do all those other things but he got his foot his foot in the door by becoming a master of one trade and then guess what happened to Gregg he'd get inside their home and they'd say by the way Gregg we've got this leaky faucet we've got a broken pipe down in the basement or a door fell off at the bedroom on our second floor can you fix those things for me well of course he could fix those things for them but he put all of his resources his resources being his time his money his people into becoming a master of one trade and then guess what happened to Gregg he got so busy that he had to start hiring people to work for him so don't be a jack-of-all-trades become a master of one [Applause]

Channel: Christine Clifford

Views: 142,635

Rating: 4.861187 out of 5

Keywords: educational

Id: Sv9XJ_zFMfA

Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 13 2012