Sometimes, Where There’s a Way … There’s a Will!
From an early age we are taught that almost everything worth knowing has already been thought through, which suggests that we should accept ‘past thoughts’ and move into the future accordingly. No doubt you remember from school that ‘i comes before e, except after c’…so where does that leave words like seizure and leisure? See what I mean. Then there are sayings like ‘knowledge is power’, which if taken seriously means that all older people are far more powerful than younger people. The truth in fact is that ‘giving knowledge is power’, not merely having it. If you leave most consumer products on the shelf for too long they lose their efficacy, and the same thing happens to people who have knowledge and fail to use it for the benefit of others…they go stale! And so to the point of this article: the saying ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’ is true, however there is another thought to consider too, representing an opposite view. People that are held back in their work because of a lack of will, can often be helped considerably when they learn of a better way to move forward. Here are two examples of sales staff becoming less negative as they discover a more positive way to help their customers, their companies and themselves…
• A small credit union had difficulty getting staff to sell additional products such as home insurance, personal loans, mortgages, etc.
The problem was that ‘members’ would come into a branch to make a deposit or withdrawal, or to enter into a similar type of quick transaction…and the credit union staff did not know how to sell additional products to such people, without appearing pushy or irrelevant, or using up too much time.
We solved the problem by providing staff with a new, simple, positive ‘way’ to make sales while helping members at the same time…and they liked this ‘way’ of doing business so much that they created record sales thereafter! All the staff said was this: ‘By the way we are promoting home insurance this month and, while I assume that you have insurance, I imagine that you would be interested to know if it could be organized to work much better for you…and so we are offering to briefly look at what you’ve got to see if it can be much improved…is that OK with you?’ It was in fact OK with the majority of ‘members’, and in the process the credit union staff felt that they were providing a very worthwhile service to their customers! Importantly, many members had their insurances and loans improved.
• In another case, company reps faced the task of winning more [retail] customers with a new product that they were selling. The problem was that the retailers had an equivalent product and so they consistently said ‘no’ to the reps. Not surprisingly, the reps lost heart (will!) and their sales pitch got weaker and more apologetic. Working with management, the sales team and progressive customers, I created a ‘service’ called ‘PLAN 20’, a service to be presented by reps to determine if a 20% net increase in sales could be created for the retailer…involving the new product. The reps ‘knew’ a 20% increase was not a big deal and for their part the retailers had nothing to lose and much to gain. So the reps presented an opportunity, not just a product, and results improved for everyone.
Knowing what held people back before, paves the ‘way’ to drive them forward now!
