The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [29]
Have participants look at the whiteboard and rank their number 1, 2, and 3 choices. In other words, what do they think is the most important thing to do, the second most important, and the third. Have the group write down their answers, thinking through their choices. You’ve got 30 seconds, so go.
DO NOT READ AHEAD. STOP HERE AND DO THE EXERCISE.
Step 6: The leader of the group will then ask each person to give his or her choices. Next to each choice on the board, you’re going to write three slashes for a ranking of first choice, two slashes for second choice, and one slash for third choice.
Now tally up the totals. The highest number will be the group’s collective first choice and so on. The items receiving the highest number of votes are the ones you’re going to work to integrate using more workshops to do so. Cut it off at the five top training ideas—maybe six if you must have one more. Your whiteboard will now look like this:
Additional ser vice 1 |||| |||| |||| ||
Additional ser vice 2 |||| ||
Additional ser vice 3 |||| |||| ||
Additional ser vice 4 |||| |
Additional ser vice 5, etc. ||||
At the end of the exercise, you’ll have some clear winners; as you can see, 1 and 3 got the most votes.
Step 7: Implementation: There are 10 steps to implement any new concept for any company. We’re going to spell those out shortly.
Once you see what you can accomplish with workshops, you will no doubt be hungry for more. Do them every week, and in a year you’ll be an entirely different organization with dramatic improvements in every area of your business. Just stop every thing, once per week for an hour, to fix all the things in your business that aren’t the way you would like them or to add new improvements to strengthen your business or your profits.
Example
Let’s go back to the carpet cleaning company as a great example of each aspect of the workshop as well as the implementation. My carpet cleaner client sent me recordings of some of the salespeople talking to customers. I’m listening to this salesperson talk to a 78-year-old woman who uses a walker to get around. She’s calling to have her rug cleaned. They set up the appointment for the rug to be picked up and taken back to the plant (wall-to-wall has to be cleaned in the home), where they have a giant washing machine–like structure to completely submerge, clean, and expertly dry your rug. The conversation with the elderly woman goes like this:
WOMAN: Well, what about the pad under the rug? It’s kind of dirty, too.
SALESPERSON: How old is the pad?
WOMAN: It’s about 15 years old.
SALESPERSON: Oh, that’s too old. If we tried to clean it, we’d obliterate it.
WOMAN: Well, I guess I’ll have to go get a new pad.
SALESPERSON: Oh yeah. You’re definitely going to have to replace that.
Since I’m the consultant and I know how expensive it is to get new clients, I think: “They should sell pads. Heck, they’ve got the rug right there in the plant. They can put the rug on the padding, cut it out, roll it up, and send it right back with the rug. It’s a great up-sell.”
So I get the owner on the phone: “I have a great idea for you. You should sell pads.” He says, “We do.” I tell him, “No, you don’t, actually,” and I play him the recording. The owner brings the salesperson in and asks her why she didn’t offer to sell this old woman a pad. The salesperson says, “I didn’t want to seem too pushy.”
This carpet cleaning company actually had six excellent up-sell options. The problem was getting the salespeople to offer them. In addition to carpets, they can clean your couch or your bed. The technology of using hot steam to clean your carpet can be applied to the furniture you sit on (or your dog sits on) all day. Studies show that the average living room has five million dust mites in it. Our bodies are equipped to deal with those mites, but their feces