Sales solution

Sales people give so much lip service to being solution minded. They can recount all the verbiage. Me? I love seeing it in action! Yesterday, I had an appointment to meet a sales person at Panera Bread in the late afternoon. It's warm, it's sunny....I want something cold to drink. A young lady asked if she could help and I quickly said, "how about a decaf iced tea?" Sorry, iced tea here has caffeine. Yikes! I can't drink caffeine this late! I turned away and thought I'd just get a glass of water....lost sale for Panera! But, no! Manager Erick turned to me and said "I've got an idea. Let's brew a decaf hot tea and I'll give you a cup for ice and you've got what you want and it will be freshly brewed." Can you imagine? He didn't try selling me on a bottle of water or a soft drink, he listened to what I wanted and then found a solution using his product and with an additional benefit. Now that $2 sale didn't make or break Panera yesterday, but for me it was a tremendous testament to the power of solution selling. Think about your day today. Are you helping your clients to find solutions?

Sales motivation

What is the source for motivation? This is a question that stumped me as a young sales manager. The first hire I ever made was a recent college graduate, had an extremely well known name in our market, was so bright and engaging. I was sure I had hit a home run. As days turned into weeks, weeks into months, it was clear he wasn't going to make it. I simply couldn't understand why. He never had any trouble getting into see a client. His clients enjoyed him, they just never bought anything from him. He couldn't make the "ask". Now we could turn this into a tip into how to close a sale (maybe in my next post!), but this was clearly a tale of someone who had all the talent but didn't want success. He had all the tools, all the resources and he had ME! I wanted so badly for him to succeed. The problem is he didn't really care about succeeding. With my first failure told, I can now tell of countless successes of sales people I've worked with who maybe weren't the brightest, didn't have the sharpest skills, but would literally walk through walls to help solve a client's problem. Where does that inner burning desire to win come from? My first sales manager told me most top performers had overcome some great tragedy in their lives that pushed them to succeed. I don't buy that. So one-percenters out there; clear up this mystery. Where does your inner drive and motivation to succeed come from?