Often I find that I gain spiritual insight while reading or listening to motivational or sales training, and just as often find great sales training insight while listening to spiritual training. When I was doing a lot of public speaking, I often found seminars in nearly everything, movies, sporting events, watching people rise to the occasion. However, once I was thunderstruck by the power in James 1:8 "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways."
What does that mean? I have heard more than one preacher teach this lesson, unfortunately none really stuck with me, none reached me and got my attention until one day driving down 465 listening to Byrdie Yager speak on this topic. She is a very wise woman, well versed in the scriptures, in business, and in human relationships from years of experience that would be hard to duplicate. When I heard her talk it caused me to do a double take, pull off the next ramp, stop my car and listen over and over again. What she said was "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways," and what that meant to her "You can't hold two diverse and opposing thoughts on any subject at the same time." In other words, you can't as a sales person talk to your clients about how this is the greatest product, home, neighborhood, widget, whatever in the world, and then talk to your co-workers, spouse, friends, bartender, whoever what a dog it is. You can't hold two opinions at the same time. If you try, and many do, then you are double minded, and unstable, and your clients will instinctively know it. They feel it at a subconscious level, it is if they smell it on you.
My belief has long been that sales is nothing but the transference of emotions. I believe a sale is made in every meeting, either they are sold to believe about your product just as you do, or you were sold to believe their reason for not buying just as they do. The first part of that is what we are going to discuss here. Do you want your prospect to believe the same way about your product as you do? Do you? I hope so, if not maybe the next sale you need to make is to you, or find something else to do. Unless you have the emotional disconnect of a con-man, which I hope you don't, what you really believe is what will be the guiding force in each transaction.
The reason this hit me so hard was it was the end of a story that I had told and taught for years, but in my telling it, I missed the most important part. I took a job trying to revive a community that had so many mistakes made in the launch that it was almost like asking Lazarus to come forth. It was a beautiful community called Lake Charlevoix. It had been languishing for 6 years with only 3 sold homes in it, with 7 specs that were 5 years old. Our next door neighbors were morning drive time radio personalities, Bob and Tom on WFBQ, who often would speak of the sun rising over the for sale signs at Lake Charlevoix. I am not sure that I could have survived the first few months of trying to turn it around, if not for all my friends in the building, Real Estate, and mortgage business that would laugh out loud at me when I told them where I was. There is no better motivation than being laughed at! It took a while, but we turned it around to where one day I was called by the sales manager from a custom community on the West side and wanted to meet and discuss marketing ideas for his community. I agreed, but asked how he heard of me. His response blew me away, that both BAGI and MIBOR told him that I was the best at marketing high end communities. I didn't laugh while he was on the phone, but thought if that was true, it might be scary since I was winging it by the seat of my pants. All I really did, was what I always did to turn around communities that were slow, was to "change the attitude." In other words, no one heard anything about my community but great news, I would employ the 3' rule, where anyone who came within 3' of me was going to hear about the "great news" of the new and improved, exciting, successes that either had just happened or were about to in my community! It didn't matter if it was someone who was lost looking for directions, the print shop, the Subway shop, every one of the 1,100 Realtors that I handed out a flier to their desk every week, every builder I tried to convince to come and build in Lake Charlevoix.
What I thought the moral of the story was the story of concentric circles in a pond, when you throw in a pebble and the circles go out, and then bounce back from the shore to where the pebble was thrown. I believed this was the story, I had told so many people that I was the best (that was the marketing campaign, everyone knew nothing else had changed so I sold me in partnership with the community) that it came back to me. I have taught this over and over, how you must put the positive message out everywhere, with everyone and it will come back to you.
When I heard Byrdie, and the double minded man, and realized I missed the point of my own story. It dawned on me, there was someone in everyone of those encounters who heard that positive message, who heard how great it was, it was me. I never heard my voice say anything but edifying, positive things about my community and product. No one on the planet believed in my message as dearly as did I, so when my clients heard it they were able to catch my belief in the transfer of emotions.
If you are not satisfied with your sales, you might consider thinking this idea through. I swear by it for myself. You can do it!
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