May 12, 2008 Newsletter | Performance Based Results

May 12, 2008 Issue
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Welcome

This has been a very exciting Spring for PBR. A number of companies have joined our client roster and we are looking forward to providing continued sales and leadership skills and expertise to our entire client family.

As you read this newsletter, I will be presenting a program on Strategic Sales Leadership in Singapore with many participants from leading Fortune 1000 companies throughout Asia attending. Although it seems like an exotic adventure to travel to the other side of the world, I am always amazed by how similar we all are and how we face the same sales and leadership challenges.

I’d like to share with you another recent venture, a bit closer to home. I had the great opportunity to participate in an exciting new presentation with Selling Power. As you know they are the most trusted and #1 resource for professional selling skills, motivation and sales management. The presentation, entitled: Handling Price Pressures is a comprehensive series of interviews led by Selling Power Live host, Jeffrey Gitomer. Six sales experts, including myself, give advice on how to minimize price obstacles. My segment is on how to put up your dukes with price bullies. It’s called Don’t Cave Under Price Pressure. I encourage you to buy this program and add it to your selling skills arsenal. Listen to an excerpt from the Sales Power interview.

As an added bonus, we are offering a 20% discount on all our sales success products at the PBR Store. This is an incredible opportunity to benefit from our selling tools at incredible savings. Hurry, the offer only lasts until May 26th.

Best regards,

Feature Product – 20% savings
Top Sales Questions for Maximum Results

This deluxe audioBook interactive program offers sales prospecting and customer retention techniques to improve your bottom line by simply — asking the right sales questions. Learn at own location, at your own pace. The perfect scenario to develop and practice new sales questioning skills. Go to the PBR Store.

Here’s what you get:

Two audio CDs.
Printed Workbook Guide.
Our 30-Day Action Plan – Four weeks free sales coaching support from Paul Cherry, himself.
All Sales Products – 20% Off.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

Engage hard to reach prospects.
Build powerful business relationships.
Leverage more opportunities.
Increase profitability.
Shorten your sales cycles.
Close more business.

Click the arrow to listen to an excerpt from the program.

Feature Article:

To Keep Buyers Coming Back, Don’t Be Nice… Be Real Read online.

BY PAUL CHERRY I know a neighborhood hardware store where they never have sales. They don’t offer frequent-buyer cards, easy credit terms, or free coffee and doughnuts on Saturday mornings. The shelves are dusty, the parking is terrible, and the help is crotchety. In fact, they seem to violate most of the rules of good customer service. They’re nosy. They argue with customers. Once, I walked in looking for an extra-long drill bit, and the clerk all but refused to sell it to me.

“What do you want it for?” he asked.

I didn’t think it was any of his business, but I needed the bit and didn’t want to get on his bad side. So I explained what I was trying to do.

He gave me a long look. “I could sell it to you,” he said. “But He gave me a long look. “I could sell it to you,” he said. "But it’s not gonna work.”

“It’s not?” I asked.

“No, it’s not. Let me tell you why.”

Of course he was right. And I hated him for it.

The store’s been at the same location for close to 50 years, and as far as I can tell, it does a terrific business. There are plenty of other places to buy hardware: bigger stores with more selection and better prices. So what keeps people coming to this one?

I think it’s those crotchety, opinionated salespeople.

These days, many salespeople are polite, efficient and helpful – and utterly anonymous. It’s not their fault; they’ve been trained that way. They sell from a script and never take a chance. You might as well be talking to Robby the Robot.

Not so at the corner hardware store. For better or for worse, you never walk away from the counter without feeling that you’ve just engaged in a deeply human interaction. Sometimes I’m amused. Sometimes, frankly, Im a little annoyed. But in the end, I keep coming back because I feel somehow connected to them. They’re an institution, and the neighborhood wouldn’t be the same without them.

Building Loyalty

Lots of companies spend lots of money trying to unravel the secret of customer loyalty. They relentlessly measure customer satisfaction on every dimension imaginable: Was the service prompt? Was the salesperson helpful? Could anything have been done to make the buying experience better? The assumption is that most customers defect because they were dissatisfied in some way. So if you can keep customers satisfied, they’ll stay loyal.

It turns out that assumption is dead wrong. Customers who say they’re satisfied walk away all the time. In fact, a recent study from the Gallup Organization found that customer satisfaction, as it’s traditionally measured, does nothing to boost repeat sales. Read the rest of the article at the PBR website.