Do you have the courage to uncover what your clients or prospects perceive to be your biggest weakness?
            If you do, opening by admitting these weaknesses in your next meeting can be a very powerful strategy.

As I consult various media and their clients across North America, I have had the privilege over the past several years to meet and interview some of the most successful locally-operated businesses on the continent.
          And in my quest to find their common denominator for success I’ve discovered it’s fairly obvious but also rare.
            Some of you may remember the Old England Dan and John Ford Coley song “Love Is The Answer”……it really is!
            In my quest to find that mysterious difference between successful people and their less successful counterparts, the only common denominator I could identify was love……love in five key areas.
1.       Love your customers. Today, selling is simply serving. I’ve discovered that it is difficult to muster the dedication and enthusiasm it takes to passionately serve others unless you genuinely care about others. If you have an account that you just can’t learn to love, trade them with one of your peers for another account. I can guarantee you if you don’t like a particular customer, they sense it and you are leaving money on the table.
2.       Love yourself. It’s been said that selling is a, “transference of confidence”. If you do not care enough about yourself to hone your physical and mental well-being, you will not exude the confidence necessary to instill customer confidence in you. This is not to be confused with having a huge ego, it simply means you need to care about yourself before others can believe you care about them.
3.       Love what you’re selling. If you do not love what you are selling, please do yourself, your company, your customers and your family a favor and seek another career. You won’t be happy and neither will those around you.
4.       Love the company and the people you are working with. If you don’t, you will find fault in them and use their faults as an excuse for your failure.  And if the people you are working with are employees, the way you treat THEM will reflect directly upon the way they treat your customers.  
5.       Love home and family. Virtually every successful person I have interviewed talks about the need for “balance” in your life.  Without “balance”, there is a real danger of becoming a workaholic if the other four “loves” I’ve identified are in place. Plan at least one activity a day, even if it’s a phone call home when you’re on the road, to keep your home life happy and healthy.   

Many of you have had the pleasure of joking with my Office Manager, Angela, who also happens to be my wife. Once one of BMW Canada’s top sales people, Angela always maintained, “Until I can get a prospect to laugh, I know I have not broken the ice”.
           Nothing is better than the creative and appropriate use of humor to reduce stress and build solid customer rapport.
          According to Peter Warnok, a Professor at the University of Florida, “Humor is no longer considered a frivolous pursuit, as research in the behavioral, social and medical sciences has revealed a significant relationship between stress reduction, productivity and a healthy immune system”.
          Warnok asserts that “Humor can loosen fixed positions in the mind”…..sounds like the definition of “selling”, doesn’t it?
          I have always maintained a file of cartoons and jokes organized by the objectives or points they make. For example, I’ve got a file of jokes about advertising, one about salespeople and one on the economy. Each makes a point that I can draw from when approaching a difficult or stressful situation.
          John Wanamaker’s quip, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half” still makes a popular point today, more than 80 years after his death.
           Building your own humor arsenal can help you to get prospects to see things your way. But use humor judiciously.
        Professor Warnok has actually developed a “Degrees of Risk” model for the use of humor with “Laughing at self” at the low-risk end of the scale. Being only five foot six, I’ll often tell “short jokes” or being Canadian I’ll often make fun of my use of the word “eh?” when working with my American client’s. 
            My friend Steve McGavran of TOMA Research often uses low-risk humor to ease the tension during a cold call when he’s challenged  with, “What are you selling today?”, to which he replies, “Not much, and my boss isn’t very happy with me either.”
            At the higher end of Warnok’s risk scale are thing like “Practical jokes” and “spontaneous humor”. In other words, the humor should be at your expense, not the clients, and it should be well thought-out and planned, not spontaneous.
            So here are a few tips for effectively using humor to loosen the reins of your prospect’s minds;
1. Build a file of cartoons and jokes by topic
2. Make yourself, NOT the client, the object of your humor.
3. Prepare and plan the productive use of humor.
4. Play safe…never use sex, politics, race or religion to get a laugh.
Like Angela says, “Until you’ve made ‘em laugh, you probably haven’t broken the ice”.

There have been many definitions for “selling” but I find two in particular to be very profound;
1. Selling is serving.
2.  is a transference of confidence.
             “Selling is serving” says in very simple terms what sales trainers really mean when they preach, “becoming a sustainable resource”, or “relationship selling” or “partnership marketing”.
There are three things I like about this definition;
            First, to follow up on last weeks management tip, it demonstrates that we too must like our customers. If we do not like our customers, it is difficult to passionately “serve” them. If we sincerely care about our clients and their success, “serving” becomes an honor and a privilege.
            Secondly, recognizing that selling is serving re-positions the traditional, “service” call.
            For a call to qualify as a service call, there must be some benefit to the client in every call. Sales people who understand the sales and service link establish strategic objectives for every call, not wasting their time and the clients’ time with “touching base”, “dropping by” or “visiting”.
            And last but not least, I like the culture this definition creates versus the old “ABC’s of selling……Always Be Closing”.
            Selling by serving opens an ongoing relationship rather than thinking of the sale in terms of “closing”. If you are always closing, you will find your prospect’s door will be doing the same.
            “Sales is a transference of confidence” goes hand in hand with, “selling is serving”. If you know your product, your market and your client, you will exude confidence in you ability to serve.
          Confidence comes from knowing. Knowing comes from learning and experience.   If you are confident in what you have to offer your clients, they’ll be confident in making an investment with you.
          Both of these definitions of selling fall under another phrase I’ve long held to be true…….“No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care”.
          So caring enough about your client’s success to seek the knowledge necessary to be of service to them is really what selling is all about.

Increasingly stations are recognizing the “billboard value” of station vehicles in and about their markets.
            But these traveling billboards can actually impact negatively on your marketplace if their operators do not understand how important their ambassadorship is, or if you do not have a code of conduct for them to live by.
            How good is a mobilebillboard that just ‘cut off’ your best client?
            So here are a few things you may want to make certain are published in your current code of conduct. If you do not have a published code, write one and call a staff meeting to stress the importance of it.
1. Drive defensively. In fact, if you are driving a vehicle clearly representing your station, be overly courteous.
2. Keep it clean. Work out an agreement with a local car wash to ensure all of your vehicles, or any station-I.D’d staff vehicles, are kept clean inside and out at all times.
3. Parking manners. Do not park a station-identified vehicle in the “wrong place”. The wrong place includes seedy bars (even if it’s a client), handicapped spots, preferred customer locations or anywhere else that common sense tells you is not in keeping with a positive profile for your company.
4. Expose your billboard. If it’s not on the road, maximize your exposure by making arrangements to park your vehicles in highly-visible locations. And make sure all station identifiers are clear and current.
5. Obey the laws of the road (and the parking lot) and the laws of courtesy.
6. Make certain clients, your advertisers, have first option to provide station vehicles and staff-owned station-identified vehicles.
7. Keep your vehicles in safe and proper mechanical condition.
8. Smile when you are behind the wheel.
9.  possible, carry some small audience rewards with you in the vehicle to hand out at appropriate occasions.
10. Always have a cell phone or other communications in the vehicles which allow you to communicate news stories or ask questions of your studios and office.
            I started this tip by suggesting it had nothing to do with sales or management, but maybe giving a station t-shirt to a boy scout you spot doing a good deed, or allowing a client to take a preferred parking spot will generate goodwill with both your audience and your sponsors.
            `Billboards are expensive. Traveling billboards can extend your reach and create the impression your station is covering the market like a blanket.
            I encourage you to develop and monitor a station vehicle code of conduct and operations manual if you do not already have one.  If you do have one, take time quarterly to remind your staff about it.