To improve your sales performance, adopt the Golden Rule mentality. The Golden Rule says to, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It also says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." The Golden Rule mentality in sales, says simply, "Sell unto others as you would have them sell unto you."
Different Strokes For Different Folks
What does this mean? Aren't there all kinds of different personalities that require different approaches and techniques? Well, yes and no. Practicing the golden rule in selling simply means that you sell to other people the way you would like to be sold to. You sell with the same honesty, integrity, understanding, empathy and thoughtfulness that you would like someone else to use in selling to you.
Seek First to Understand
If you would like a salesperson to take the time to thoroughly understand you and your situation before making a recommendation, you practice the same thing with your customers. If you would like a salesperson to give you honest information and to help you make an intelligent buying decision, you practice the same with your customer. If you would like a salesperson to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the strengths or weaknesses of his or her product or service, and that of his or her competitors, then you do the same with your product or service and your competitors.
Care About Your Customers
Perhaps the most important part of golden rule selling is the emotional component embraced in the word, "caring." Top sales professionals care about their customers. They care about themselves, their companies, their products and services, and they really care about helping their customers to make good buying decisions. If you think about the very best salespeople you know, you will recognize that they are caring individuals.
They Don't Care How Much You Know
If you think about your very best customers, you will recall that these are invariably people you care about, and who care about you. When you think about the people you buy from, you will recall that they seem to care about you more than the average. In every part of your business life, you will find that the significant people all have the denominator of caring as part of their character and their personalities.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, resolve today to sell to your customers with the same honesty, empathy and understanding that you would like them to use in selling to you.
Second, take time to genuinely care about your customers, their individual needs and their unique situations. Make people feel important and they will make you feel important.
What's Inside
Microtronic Components
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Understanding the Why in Life by Dr. Bernie Siegel
Many years ago my great grandfather told me of the persecution he experienced in Russia, which led him to come to this country. He siad the Cossacks would pursue him at night, when he was out teaching, and slash him with their sabers. One night he was on the hill above his village with his rabbi, the Baal Shem Tov. As they looked down they could see the Cossacks riding down and killing their Jewish brethren. They might have felt the same had they seen their loved ones being taken away to become slaves in a foreign land.
My great grandfather heard the rabbi say, "I wish I were God."
He asked, "Do you want to be God so you can change the bad into the good?"
"No, I wouldn't change anything. I want to be God so I can understand."
Remember our present problems are not new to mankind. Ninety percent of the natives of South America died when the explorers brought infectious diseases to their continent, and forty percent of Europeans died during plagues of the past. Man made wars and holocausts have taken millions of lives and with today's destructive weapons we are more of a threat to each other than are infectious diseases, which we can learn to resist. The question is not whether there will be difficulties and threats to our existence, but how will we deal with them and what can we learn from them.
When I was a young boy, several of my friends became seriously ill and one was hit by a car while bicycling to my house. When they all died I asked my father, "Why did God make a world where terrible things happen? Why didn't God make a world free of diseases, accidents and problems?"
He said, "To learn lessons." I didn't like that answer and I asked my rabbi, teacher and others. They said things like, "God knows", "Why not?". "Who knows?", "That's life", "To bring you closer to God." Some were honest enough to just say, "I don't know." This didn't leave me feeling satisfied or enlightened. When I told my mother what they said she answered, "Nature contains the wisdom you seek. Perhaps a walk in the woods would help you to find out why. Go and ask the old lady on the hill that some call a witch. She is wise in the ways of the world."
As I walked up the hill I saw a holly tree had fallen onto the path. As I tried to pull it aside the sharp leaves cut my hands. So I put on gloves and was able to move it and clear the path. A little further along the path I heard a noise in the bushes and saw a duck caught in the plastic from a six pack. I went over and freed the duck and watched him fly off. None of this seemed enlightening.
Further up the hill I saw five boys lying in a tangled heap in the snow. I asked them if they were playing a game and warned them the cold weather could lead to frostbite if they didn't move. They said they were not playing but were so tangled they didn't know which part belonged to whom and were afraid they'd break something if they moved. I removed one of the boy's shoes, took a stick and jabbed it into his foot.
He yelled, "Ow."
I said, "That's your foot now move it." I continued to jab until all the boys were separated...but still no enlightenment.
As I reached the top of the hill, in front of the old woman's cabin I saw a deer sprawled on the ice of a frozen pond. She kept slipping and sliding and couldn't stand up. I went out, calmed her and then helped her off the ice by holding her up and guiding her to the shore. I expected her to run away, but instead of running away she and several other deer followed me to the house. I wasn't sure why they were following me so I ran toward the house. When I reached the porch and felt safe I turned and the deer and I looked into each others eyes before I went into the house.
I told the woman why I had come and she said, "I have been watching you walk up the hill and I think you have your answer."
"What answer?"
"Many things happened on your walk to teach you the lessons you need to learn. One is that emotional and physical pain are necessary or we cannot protect ourselves and our bodies. Think of why you put on gloves and how you helped those boys. Pain helps us to know and define ourselves and respond to our needs and the needs of our loved ones. You did what made sense. You helped those in front of you by doing what they needed when they needed it.
"The deer followed you to thank you for being compassionate in their time of trouble. Their eyes said it all. What you have learned is that we are here to continue God's work. If God had made a perfect world it would be a magic trick, not creation, with no meaning or place for us to learn and create. Mankind is not yet ready for a perfect world. We do not know how to appreciate perfection. Creation is work. We are the ones who will have to create the world you are hoping for. A world where evil is to not respond to the person with the disease or pain, whether is be emotional or physical. God has given us work to do. We will still grieve when we experience losses but we will also use our pain to help us know ourselves and respond to the needs of others. That is our work as our Creator intended it to be. Life is a series of beginnings, not endings, just as graduations are not terminations, but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process and when we create a perfect world where love and compassion are shared by all, suffering will cease."
Let me tell you about people who have been my teachers. The first, a teenager sexually abused by his parents who now has AIDS. When he was about to commit suicide by jumping in front of a subway train I asked him why he didn't kill his parents instead. He said, "I never wanted to be like them." Love has sustained him and he is alive today.
How do we turn our afflictions into blessings? How do we use them to help us complete ourselves and our work and understand the place for love, tolerance and kindness? How can we learn as Jacob did from his experience of wrestling with an angel? Justice and mercy must be a part of how we treat those who hurt us, because when you understand you can forgive, and when you can forgive you do not hate, and when you do not hate you are capable of loving, and love is the most powerful weapon known to man. It is not an accident that we say; kill with kindness, love thine enemies and torment with tenderness.
If we are going to eliminate war we must love our children more than we hate our enemies. When we raise a generation of children with compassion and when parents let their children know they are loved, we will have a planet made up of the family of man where our differences are used for recognition and not persecution. We are all here to learn what it is to hurt and be hurt and only then will we be perfect enough to love and be loved. Someday we will all come to understand that in love's service only the wounded soldier can serve.
In closing, let me say that we are all the same color inside and members of one family. To paraphrase Rabbi Carlebach, "let us hope that some day all the Cains will realize what they have done, and ask for forgiveness of the Abels they have killed. In that moment we will all rise and become one family accepting that we are here to love and be loved."
My great grandfather heard the rabbi say, "I wish I were God."
He asked, "Do you want to be God so you can change the bad into the good?"
"No, I wouldn't change anything. I want to be God so I can understand."
Remember our present problems are not new to mankind. Ninety percent of the natives of South America died when the explorers brought infectious diseases to their continent, and forty percent of Europeans died during plagues of the past. Man made wars and holocausts have taken millions of lives and with today's destructive weapons we are more of a threat to each other than are infectious diseases, which we can learn to resist. The question is not whether there will be difficulties and threats to our existence, but how will we deal with them and what can we learn from them.
When I was a young boy, several of my friends became seriously ill and one was hit by a car while bicycling to my house. When they all died I asked my father, "Why did God make a world where terrible things happen? Why didn't God make a world free of diseases, accidents and problems?"
He said, "To learn lessons." I didn't like that answer and I asked my rabbi, teacher and others. They said things like, "God knows", "Why not?". "Who knows?", "That's life", "To bring you closer to God." Some were honest enough to just say, "I don't know." This didn't leave me feeling satisfied or enlightened. When I told my mother what they said she answered, "Nature contains the wisdom you seek. Perhaps a walk in the woods would help you to find out why. Go and ask the old lady on the hill that some call a witch. She is wise in the ways of the world."
As I walked up the hill I saw a holly tree had fallen onto the path. As I tried to pull it aside the sharp leaves cut my hands. So I put on gloves and was able to move it and clear the path. A little further along the path I heard a noise in the bushes and saw a duck caught in the plastic from a six pack. I went over and freed the duck and watched him fly off. None of this seemed enlightening.
Further up the hill I saw five boys lying in a tangled heap in the snow. I asked them if they were playing a game and warned them the cold weather could lead to frostbite if they didn't move. They said they were not playing but were so tangled they didn't know which part belonged to whom and were afraid they'd break something if they moved. I removed one of the boy's shoes, took a stick and jabbed it into his foot.
He yelled, "Ow."
I said, "That's your foot now move it." I continued to jab until all the boys were separated...but still no enlightenment.
As I reached the top of the hill, in front of the old woman's cabin I saw a deer sprawled on the ice of a frozen pond. She kept slipping and sliding and couldn't stand up. I went out, calmed her and then helped her off the ice by holding her up and guiding her to the shore. I expected her to run away, but instead of running away she and several other deer followed me to the house. I wasn't sure why they were following me so I ran toward the house. When I reached the porch and felt safe I turned and the deer and I looked into each others eyes before I went into the house.
I told the woman why I had come and she said, "I have been watching you walk up the hill and I think you have your answer."
"What answer?"
"Many things happened on your walk to teach you the lessons you need to learn. One is that emotional and physical pain are necessary or we cannot protect ourselves and our bodies. Think of why you put on gloves and how you helped those boys. Pain helps us to know and define ourselves and respond to our needs and the needs of our loved ones. You did what made sense. You helped those in front of you by doing what they needed when they needed it.
"The deer followed you to thank you for being compassionate in their time of trouble. Their eyes said it all. What you have learned is that we are here to continue God's work. If God had made a perfect world it would be a magic trick, not creation, with no meaning or place for us to learn and create. Mankind is not yet ready for a perfect world. We do not know how to appreciate perfection. Creation is work. We are the ones who will have to create the world you are hoping for. A world where evil is to not respond to the person with the disease or pain, whether is be emotional or physical. God has given us work to do. We will still grieve when we experience losses but we will also use our pain to help us know ourselves and respond to the needs of others. That is our work as our Creator intended it to be. Life is a series of beginnings, not endings, just as graduations are not terminations, but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process and when we create a perfect world where love and compassion are shared by all, suffering will cease."
Let me tell you about people who have been my teachers. The first, a teenager sexually abused by his parents who now has AIDS. When he was about to commit suicide by jumping in front of a subway train I asked him why he didn't kill his parents instead. He said, "I never wanted to be like them." Love has sustained him and he is alive today.
How do we turn our afflictions into blessings? How do we use them to help us complete ourselves and our work and understand the place for love, tolerance and kindness? How can we learn as Jacob did from his experience of wrestling with an angel? Justice and mercy must be a part of how we treat those who hurt us, because when you understand you can forgive, and when you can forgive you do not hate, and when you do not hate you are capable of loving, and love is the most powerful weapon known to man. It is not an accident that we say; kill with kindness, love thine enemies and torment with tenderness.
If we are going to eliminate war we must love our children more than we hate our enemies. When we raise a generation of children with compassion and when parents let their children know they are loved, we will have a planet made up of the family of man where our differences are used for recognition and not persecution. We are all here to learn what it is to hurt and be hurt and only then will we be perfect enough to love and be loved. Someday we will all come to understand that in love's service only the wounded soldier can serve.
In closing, let me say that we are all the same color inside and members of one family. To paraphrase Rabbi Carlebach, "let us hope that some day all the Cains will realize what they have done, and ask for forgiveness of the Abels they have killed. In that moment we will all rise and become one family accepting that we are here to love and be loved."
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