Greatest Sales Question Ever Asked (eBook)

Brent E. Long (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
160 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-9920985-1-8 (ISBN)

Infos

In today's marketplace, 'sales' is still thought of as a game that people play. The Sales Profession is still looked down upon to the point that salespeople still struggle to place the word 'Sales' on their business cards. Salespeople are seen, and often treated, as less than honorable, commission-hungry, money-focused people who wake up in the morning just trying to sell anything and everything to anybody and everybody who will take the bait. All of this creates a tension between the salesperson and the individual prospect to the point that both want to avoid that awkward process of buying and selling as much as possible. This book aims to change that. This book aims to challenge the heart of the salesperson, thereby changing the rules of engagement, while redefining the sales profession. What we learn from The Greatest Sales Question Ever Asked can radically increase revenue generation while restoring honor upon honor to each sales professional and the sales profession as a whole. This is not a book you read and put on the shelf - this is a book you read and practice over and over again. Are you ready to be challenged like never before when it comes to your heart for Sales?

David is a graphic designer, hand-letterer, illustrator, and artist based in Columbus, Ohio. He is passionate about design, wildlife, and swimming and enjoys exploring all three. He comes from an analytical family so he loves using his design skills to problem solve. When he's not designing you can find him reading a good fiction book, sketching animals at the zoo, or getting a swim workout in at the pool!

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In today's marketplace, "e;sales"e; is still thought of as a game that people play. The Sales Profession is still looked down upon to the point that salespeople still struggle to place the word "e;Sales"e; on their business cards. Salespeople are seen, and often treated, as less than honorable, commission-hungry, money-focused people who wake up in the morning just trying to sell anything and everything to anybody and everybody who will take the bait. All of this creates a tension between the salesperson and the individual prospect to the point that both want to avoid that awkward process of buying and selling as much as possible. This book aims to change that. This book aims to challenge the heart of the salesperson, thereby changing the rules of engagement, while redefining the sales profession. What we learn from The Greatest Sales Question Ever Asked can radically increase revenue generation while restoring honor upon honor to each sales professional and the sales profession as a whole. This is not a book you read and put on the shelf - this is a book you read and practice over and over again. Are you ready to be challenged like never before when it comes to your heart for Sales?In The Greatest Sales Question Ever Asked, you will not only discover the practicality and the power of asking really good questions, but you will be directed to The Person who asked this most-amazing question. The Question will not only equip you and instruct you, but will also challenge you and cause you to wrestle with much of what you have been taught to do before, during, and after your sales calls. Sales is a behavioral-based profession, and this book will cause you to properly align your core beliefs with your sales behaviors so that your target audience can clearly see your heart of care and compassion and customer-focused intensity coming through in the questions you ask them in the course of relationship building. ARE YOU READY TO EMBRACE GROWTH IN YOUR SALES LIFE? ARE YOU READY TO JUMP ON A JOURNEY YOU WILL NEVER WANT TO QUIT? ARE YOU READY TO RADICALLY TRANSFORM YOUR IMPACT IN THE MARKETPLACE WHILE GROWING A FAR-REACHING REPUTATION AS A WORLD-CLASS, SERVANT-HEARTED SALES PROFESSIONAL?

Textauszug

Chapter One

My Own Healing

I grew up in an old-fashioned home where we worked with our hands to do hard, physical labor on the farm and used our brains to solve complicated problems like…

“How are we going to keep the 300 pigs in the barn alive on Christmas Day when it is 22 degrees (F) below zero and their water is frozen?”

• I carried 5-gallon buckets of water from a 4’ deep well about 200 feet from the barn all day… all day!

Days like that had me thinking and dreaming about what my life was going to be like once I left the farm. I was going to be somebody. I was going to play college football, and I was going to be really good, and people would know who I was based on my ability to play a game. I was very physically strong for my age all through my early years. I was going to use my physicality to make a ‘name’ for myself.

Never once did I ever think about or dream about growing up to be in Sales. Who does that? Since becoming a Sales Coach I have continued to say that if I was in a room full of 100 people and I asked for a show of hands for all those who wanted to be a salesperson when they were 5-6-7 years old, the one who raises his or her hand is lying. No one grew up wanting to be a Salesperson. No one!

The only salespeople I ever knew when I was young sold seeds (that my Dad bought for planting in our fields) or farm equipment (John Deere, of course) or Mack trucks (which we used to haul cattle all over the United States) or insurance (we hated insurance). I remember the John Deere Dealer (as he was called back then) also had a small pond where he lived next to the dealership. We used to go there and fish quite often. I just knew Kenny as someone who owned a business where my Dad bought stuff who also allowed us to fish in his pond. Never once did I think he was in Sales.

As things worked out, my college football dream was shattered with multiple back surgeries (March 1984, July 1985, August 1988) that resulted from a cracked vertebrae (and lots of stupid decisions!). I was told my “physical days” were over. I needed to find something else to do to make my name known and become who I wanted to be. With the fact that I was not going to get a scholarship, my Dad was slowly dying from cancer, and I was determined to remain in college, I knew I had to get a job. And I did… multiple jobs… all involving sales.

In the fall of 1984, I started coaching high school football. Back in college after my surgery earlier that year, I knew I also had to get additional jobs to pay for school. I tried several “jobs” but none of them cooperated with my back issues. The pain was too much for me to handle while trying to get my body to do things it no longer could do easily.

In the summer of 1985, I needed my second surgery (it is a long story, perhaps for another book) and I immediately got a job once I got back on my feet. I got a job in sales… selling a well-known product door to door. I remember coming home and presenting “my job” to my Dad… whose health was failing more and more.

“So, I got a job today, Dad.”

“Oh really, what kind of job?”

“I got a job selling __________.”

“Well, maybe someday you’ll get a real job.”

A real job? What is a real job? For a young man who was trying to hang on to a dream of becoming “someone” at a time when I was just trying to survive, that comment cut very deeply into my being – I felt like I had to check myself to see if I was bleeding it cut so deeply. I was doing the best I could do. I was trying to survive and pay my own way. My dreams were shattered and I had to pivot. I was able to get a job. But it was a sales job!

I lasted about three (maybe 3.5) months in that position. I didn’t like the things they forced us to do on a sales call. It didn’t seem honest and definitely dealt with stretching the truth. Only later did I understand just how much manipulation was expected of salespeople from leadership across the board. Made me feel like I needed a shower at the end of the day, or sooner… when walking from one door to the next.

Soon after, I applied for and landed another “sales” job working in a fitness center selling memberships and doing personal training. I could still work out and I held classes teaching military aerobics and sold tons and tons of memberships. I had a ton of success and was paying my way through college. I was also getting back into shape, so much so that I was competing in fitness competitions and working as a male dancer (better known as a dude who got paid lots and lots of money to dance at female-only gatherings.) This continued for a few years. I was making lots and lots of “sales.”

Fast forward a few years. I was still making sales, now living in a big city finishing college. I had made my way to The Ohio State University Football Team and gotten my varsity letter working as a student manager. I was using that to my advantage, preparing myself for a life in athletics as a Sports Agent. All the while I was paying for college with various sales jobs, and still getting paid very well to be in great shape physically with all the dancing gigs I got hired to do. On the outside everything looked shiny and wonderful, but all that glitters is not gold (as the old song states)!

As I was getting my certification to become a Sports Agent, still all wrapped up in the performance-driven identity to make a name for myself, I landed my dream job as the Director of Marketing and Business Development with a sports agency representing current and retired professional athletes. My job was to sell and market our athletes for all of their off-the-field endorsements and other revenue-generating activities. We had 15 NFL players under contract. I secured another 55 athletes under contract for autograph signings, speaking engagements, apparel contracts, business ventures, and other marketing opportunities.

Everyone knew most of our athletes… no one knew me. It was a brutal industry at the time. I was too young and naïve to last in it. I was not ‘cut-throat’ enough. I just thought we could be honest, honorable people full of integrity (all the while I am still banking cash as an occasional dancer) and do a great job serving our clients. Little did I know just how much this position contributed to my latter healing.

I navigated from there to multiple roles with multiple organizations, all in sales. An international educational organization, a local chamber of commerce, many of my own speaking engagements, contract sales for multiple short-term initiatives, etc. It seemed with my football coaching background, my sales background, my God-given ability to become best friends with total strangers in about 45 seconds, my sales successes and other skills I possessed kept pointing me back into sales. That’s when I was approached about becoming a Sales Coach.

A friend introduced me to a local Sales Coach who kept hounding me to join his group of independent Sales Coaches. He had been a wrestling coach and high school teacher before jumping out into sales. He had purchased a franchise and built a very strong base of clients. Others on the team had been track coaches or volleyball coaches or some other form of coach… and, well, since I had years of coaching experience and sales experience and speaking experience, it only made sense that I should consider joining the team. I knew I did not want to become an employee, so we settled on an independent contractor status.

My time working with the Chamber of Commerce had exposed me to various Sales Training organizations and I was fortunate to study many of the best-known groups around in the early 90’s. This gentleman referenced above was the best of the best, at least that’s what I believed at the time. He was really good to me and really helped me get my feet established on solid ground in the industry. Yes, I was selling for him, but he was starting to let me teach and coach in our sessions, as well as build my own base of clients. Things were going well. Then they weren’t!

I started to see little fingers of manipulation in the materials we utilized, and half-truths (or less) in coaching advice we were giving. Yes, I was participating in it myself, but it was wearing on me and I felt I was losing myself and my desire to help others grow their sales. Then I discovered that the organization was in a lawsuit/counter lawsuit with the franchise corporate office. We had decided to take all of their materials and change the language to make it look like our own while the owner was refusing to pay the franchise fee because he wanted to be free from their contract. This particular organization had one of the highest “churn rates” of franchises during that time frame, and were involved in lawsuits all over the country, it seemed.

Yes, I participated in that, and even helped come up with some of the language we used to steal their material. I was definitely making a name for myself! So much so that I wanted out. For almost a full year I wanted out. I had lost respect for myself, and for the owner. I started to realize that everyone who had ever left this organization to do something else had something wrong with them. There was some form of...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.2.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Marketing / Vertrieb
• ISBN-13: 979-8-9920985-1-8 / 9798992098518