Saturday, February 20, 2010

I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!

In a large hospitality sales room where the couple i was introduced to sat, i could tell they ,he anyway, felt like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Not only did he hold all of these
sales proceedings in contempt, he was making it very clear that he "KNEW' what we were doing.
What do you mean by that? knowing very well his steam vents would open even more at this prodding... look you got all these helium balloons and streamers and music trying to get us in the mood and other people might fall for it but not me... the whole room buzz died down as they listened attentively to his quick sale killing diatribe besides everyone knows what a scam time share is blah blah. Since at our expense (20 COUPLESx$300 each=$6000 to be lost not counting the various sales in progress) he decided to burn us bad, i decided since everybody was listening anyway i had an audience--ok i shouted back lets put up black curtains and funeral music that way we cant see the children on the beach and get depressed and furthermore
more than 60% of rooms on this beach strip are crime scare units to begin with .where families are staying in much better accomodations for a lot less than the roach-coach you lodged your family in- i apologize on behalf of all bad salesmen you have ever met that made you feel this way starting with you! what?! im not a salesman i hate them! he screamed. Yes you are, we all are we must sell ourselves in school, in romance, to our friends, sell our way out of trouble as teenagers ,to the traffic cop! we are all salesmen some better than others, we have to gain favor
continously from others to get what we want in life and furthermore my resort is full of happy members as you can see and im sticking up for my product because they do, you remind me of a friend who told his wife to be, as he sold himself to her that he would not chase other women, drink,smoke or gamble or party anymore once they were married. he was a lying salesman
as his wife can testify. the whole room rose and started clapping as he smiled and laughed and signed. The onslaught was something he did not consider in his emotional turmoil when he rode his white horse into battle and neither was the outcome. Obviously you dont behave the way i did unless you know what you are doing. You dont hunt bears with a club just because it worked once. In this case and in many more that i will detail for educational purposes later on , this event was caused not so much by his contempt but aggravated by the salesperson touring him who probably couldnt give away hookers on a troop train to begin with. She had actually told me
later , you almost ruined my sale.

Perceptions of salespeople

"The advertising quack...is the black wolf. aye, the bengal tiger of the proffesion.... he is full of
shrewdness and cunning, and he knows poor ,weak human nature like a book.
DR. WILLIS P. KING 1882

In the 2009, the South Carolina legislature regarding their code of laws and licensing has the
title 40 ,chapter 41 begin with
"PEDDLERS AND HAWKERS, HORSE TRADERS AND FORTUNE TELLERS.....
i had to look twice at the date to be sure i wasnt reading an article from 1858. It lumps us together as the bottom feeders of society.

In 1630 Nicholas Knopp was whipped publicly and fined 5 pounds for selling a scurvy remedy
"A WATER OF NO WORTH NOR VALUE WHICH HE SOLDE ATT A VERY DEARE RATE"
I can see it now as multitudes of bilked customers take to the streets and start a whipping frenzy on about 30% of the population; peddlers-salesmen-hawkers advertisers-horse traders-car salesmen-fortune tellers-wall street suits!
I have heard that salesmen are needed to sell things that are inferior, not needed, dont work, because if they werent they wouldnt be needed. It just reflects human nature, lets throw some greed in there.

Intangibles definitely need salespeople. Take insurance, as i am writting this my home page has some ads for insurance '"WHAT IF YOU DIED TODAY'"----fear as mentioned before is a powerfull motivator. Ignorance plays a part, if everybody was smarter we wouldnt fall for many
pitches. In large insurance groups the probability of you dying is 1%, so we have 1 million policy
payments and 10,000 deaths of which 20% of claims wont be paid because of tiny print.
Do the numbers.. what a business. This is what a succesfull (VERY) person told me about insurance once: i can take $200 a month and start a business and that would be my insurance, without giving it to these people, and dont tell me you can collect early, i can get better rates bla-bla. What he didnt know is that most people who collect early throw the money away!!! It is said that if all the wealth in the world was redistributed it would revert back to the way it was very quickly.
So the average guy needs to and wants to be told what to do--for his own good! This statement was made by Hermann Goering around the time Hitler decreed all women to leave the workforce and go back to the kitchen. Maybe some things wouldnt have happened if women were allowed in decision making --WHAT ARE YOU DOING? NO! YOU ARE NOT GOING
TO POISON A MILLION CHILDREN GO BACK TO YOUR ROOM!

The ideomotor effect

If you ever read about or contemplated the validity of esoteric principles like ouija boards,
kinesiology, and hypnotic suggestions to name a few, scientists call it the ideomotor effect.
Although we might not be aware it, we can be influenced by suggestions and ideas by others or thru our own observations to definitely affect body motor behaviour. The basic understanding
came about in the 1850's when scientists went after the moving tables in the sceance rage back then. Ancient man understood this, as radiesthesia is older than the hills. I had in my possession
for many years a pendulum made of every metal known, alloyed this way in order to "tune" to any frequency. It came from france from the 'house 'of the famous french monk who performed
miracles in the 1930's. The parents of lost children he found, would not take kindly to the naysayers who tried to pooh-pooh his methods. In 1988-89 i read in the L.a. times of how mormon water witches found water where 2 consulting firms and various government agencies
tasked to the water finding discipline failed to do so. In a tea party i was invited to in arizona in 1974 i met various members of a metaphysical society-one of them showed me in the desert
3 hours away a vein of chrysacola he discovered with a coat hanger. This reminded me of the famous dutch gentleman who could read your body with a coat hangar as well. What is strange
is that people have been known to receive radio wave music thru their metal dental fillings!
And we wonder why we hum a tune and its the same when we turn the radio on. We could carry on forever with all this but the point i wanted to make was that there are people out there who know more about ourselves and natures hidden side than you could imagine and they sometimes
use it to great advantage unbeknown to the ignorant. In sales there are tricks bordering on lunacy but they work or they wouldnt be used.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

5 wise men

WHO
WHAT
WHERE
WHEN
WHY
THESE SIMPLE WORDS ARE EASY TO REMEMBER.

They clarify action plans-get to the point-put in perspective unclear situations and bring emphasis to the matter at hand. This simple guide is used by many people in order to write,
think, plan and figure out other peoples hidden agendas.

3 w's and the 5 wise men

It is said that in most encounters, and you can see this for yourself, that there are 3 outcomes available, and i use this word because you have a choice.
WIN-WIN
WIN-LOSE
LOSE-LOSE

BOTH ARE HAPPY
ONE IS NOT
BOTH ARE NOT

Many times we are in control and dont really recognize our potential in the final outcome.
By making concessions ,that probably dont matter anyway, you never want the last option,
if at all possible.
Heres an example. In a fast paced sales scenario where freebies are involved, particularly
where the company pays for them and the clients are unaware of the provenance of the gifts.
Anyway because i like the business my clients gave me , i would indulge them with as many as possible. If they cancelled i was stuck with the extra gifts out of my own pocket. Because the clients would talk to one another and compare their purchase they would invariably go back to the other salespeople and claim foul, creating a tense situation that created in some cases more cancellations and fellow workers who would like to talk to me in the parking lot. I was asked by a superior to stop creating problems by giving away things the others could not. I was also accused
of being weak and going past the close. The next morning (i usually gave the pep talks in the morning) i told the 2 big bosses that as soon as the meeting was over i was going to collect a check off-site and they needed to hear this so i could get going to get the money(the money had nothing to do with the meeting and they didnt ask as greed and urgency also tends to fog issues)
On a board i illustrated the $74,000(a lot of money for the time and place!) i made last year and the loss of $2000 in out of pocket gifts on my behalf to my detriment. 20% was the office average for cancelations, some had 10 or less some had 30 or more! i had 10% and only gave away 3% of my money, yet i had more referals ie, free sales and maybe thats why i was always in the top performers. The whiners on the other hand had many cancellations and because of their abominable sales skills and lying not to get ahead but just to stay alive created more cancellations for everybody because the reality is they are here to take the leftovers and practice and learn this just like we did to get where we are now. The fact that the other performers gave almost nothing away reflects also their selfishness in helping the newbies and to add insult to injury were taking advantage of them for their own gain, to make it worse they were put up to this by them to begin with. By publicly exposing the current state of affairs in the office and possibly initiating employee performance reviews hidden by managers with secret agendas (some of these dwezzels had them for sex and other party favours). As you might or might not know many companies have an organizational chart that doesnt show the nefarious
human nature element within. Since i had neglected to follow up on that pre-paid funeral plan, i added that i would personally train these people and guarantee them better income or i would
leave with the first one fired! I continued to do very well and was made training manager.
My adversaries were stunned by this turn of events, not only might their crews be audited,
their little snivel-ass games that they created as big shot-celebrities left their minions like mushrooms-fed shit-and in the dark. Now exposed and angry i offered them percentages on their crews for performance which quickly brought them around. One who decided to continously hang on to his game started to object but i fixed it quick by proclaiming WHAT?
YOU DONT WANT TO SAVE YOUR FRIENDS? as the room turned to hear his answer.
Anyway take the win-lose scenarios in each sentence here-it actually would look like a slot reel in vegas but the last pull would have to be a winner. Many emotions were in play here, and they were dealt with like judo -use your opponents force against him. This discourse might be too complex but i can give much simpler parallels--tim took tinas cookie(he wins - she loses-)
tina crowns him with empty cookie jar(she wins -he loses) mom intermediates and splits cookie in half(win-win) WRONG! tim never forgot this injustice, she favored tina always ! Both of them perished in a most mysterious accident years later.

The approval of others

Im standing at a corner waiting for a taxi, somewhere in central america, next to the crowd waiting for buses and taxis, is an old man displaying his trinkets for sale laid out on a blanket.
The item that got my attention was a keychain with a small revolver, from a hack shop obviously
as i could see they were handmade out of brass. Employees and associates would always receive
little gifts and souveniers from me from any travels i made. So i cut a deal for 5 of them, carefully fiddling with small notes and change to pay for it(you dont dicker and claim broke as you you peel off hundred dollar bills) then All of a sudden people started buying the rest of almost everything he had, as i departed in the taxi looking out the back window. What took place here was here is this white clean looking foreigner with money to spend ($10) and with enthusiasm for finding a good deal. Almost a celebrity endorsement. Moments before they looked upon his wares with disdain and contempt. Having the savvy to buy things, i once found these keychains for sale in a similar shopping pavillion :) but these were flat stamped nickel
cutouts of popeye and olivia hinged with tiny rivets that if manipulated properly would present
them in a way never seen in the cartoons. Along with this purchase order i picked up other
stamped action keychains featuring a donkey with no social redeeming qualities whatsoever.
They are great gifts and were around for years, i gave one to a client(this was the tipping point of a $15,000 sale) he was proud to exhibit his new toy to a woman in a career outfit who was not impressed , to say the least, at the alarming speed he could generate with the action figurines.

More greed tales

In the 1930's "REPS" would canvas gas stations promoting a board game consisting of slotted punch outs with numbers to pick. In exchange for a dime, you might win $1 to $20. The big prize was $100. All of these amounts were a lot of money back then, even the dime. If the merchant
was not too keen to pay the small fee for the boards, the reps would leave a free sample, and come back later, much later in order to set the hook. Because the merchant collected, say $4,
and payed out $2 or nothing at all, the hook was not only set but sticking out thru the cheek and nose, as the rep came to visit again, usually a week or two later. Most of them had pocketed say
$15 to $50 and payed out say 10 to 40%. After 2-4 months, they stopped worrying about the biggie-$100, Because they had profited $200-$300 already. The factor here was this money
was a large part of their profits in relation to gas, sodas, candy. One fine sunny day (timing is of the essence here.) a little kid or nice lady with a flowery hat and summer dress punched out the
$100! It happened that day to 63 stations which is $6300! Only 3 people divided it,as the reps weren't in on the game. What a set-up! Part of the plan was knowing the merchants would sooner or later talk to each other worrying about the big prize-clem down at possum trail had to pay the $100! What did he make? would always be the question, oh he made $372, so he still had $272-- so the fears were allayed until that one sunny day.

Monday, February 15, 2010

sales axioms and clever ways.

Right or wrong, good or bad, the following are true techniques humans use on one another, especially in sales.

the takeaway (we want what we "cant" have)
the choice close (easier to pick one out than one choice only)
pain - gain (people will do more to avoid pain than to gain i.e. loss of $)
approval of others-(who wants to be the first or only one to buy?)
tie downs (isn't it, shouldn't it , couldn't it? gets client nodding against his own will!)
yes chute (now do you see why we have so many customers? what are you going to say--no? while everyone around you is enjoying their hula hoops.
keeping up with the Jones (we buy things we don't need and cant afford and really don't want- to impress people we don't even like)
tweak emotions(this is where the true performers work and are in the top ten % sales in the world and if you didn't get the 5 bells section this will cost you $600.00 to view and learn)
curiosity killed the cat(see above :)
w.i.f.m(whats in it for me? sales is the exchange of goods or money satisfactory to both parties)
dirty laundry(i think everyone has it and can be used in sales.)
communication skills(75% is visual -10-15% spoken- heard.)did you get that?
recon( I'm giving to many things away here so lets move elsewhere.

human nature page 3

So we have seen how greed gets us in trouble. It is human nature. it is part of survival.

Liars
people lie more and more everyday to co-exist with the complicated rhythm of modern life.
A Landmark study showed we lie because it works, and is part of suvival but in relationships and sales it can be your downfall because you can be boxed in. here is a joke-- a guy in the locker room at the golf club says to his friend /hey joe since when do you wear a girdle? have a hernia or something? ive been wearing it since my wife found it in the glove compartment!

They say "buyers are liars" we as salespeople know this--how can you have 5000 contracts under your belt and not know this? inexperienced customers have a very weak defense against
someone who has done the sale thousands of times a year versus one or two encounters. so your feeble attempts to lie will only embarrass yourself into a sale- sales people, well the pros anyway
pretend to not know you are lying and let yourself deeper in the trap.
Its like a veteran beat cop, what were you thinking by lying to him? dont you think he has seen and heard thousands of lies? you only make it easier for him to provide you with matching
bracelets and a free ride downtown. Same in sales. Dont let greed get the best of you and find yourself lying to get out of it. Actually veteran salespeople have a mini-degree in psychiatry,
finance, private investigator, and law firm. Its almost like a court case, both sides are prepared
and one will triumph. Anything you say can and will be held against you. Modern science provides us with the polygraph, and a new technique like ekg called the ah -ah factor where only the culprit will recognize his deed and reflects on the recognition ekg , i believe one person has been convicted already with this technology. Another one reads thermal images in the eyebrow
nose region, apparently blood rushes there when youre lying or very nervous, i think they are using it in airports already. In the old days in ancient china a suspected liar was given dry rice
in the mouth and if it came out wet you got to see another chow mein, if it came out dry -well, it was chicken chow mein, because we've all experienced cottonmouth when confronted with a lie.
In ancient europe liars in detention were given a twig with the warning-hold it in your hand
because the guilty one will cause the twig to start growing a bud. We will wake you in the morning too see. Supposedly the guilty one would scrape any hopefull bud off with a fingernail
before he slept, in case it started growing before they woke him. Predictability. Modern cops also know the guilty sleep better in detention than the innocent.

human nature page 2

If you picked 3 which most people do (TRY IT) you did what 75% did.

Nobody wants to go first
nobody wants to be second
nobody wants to be last.

It is neither good or bad to be predictable, but if you are potentially someones lunch every day 24/7 as an animal you wouldnt want to be predictable.

In sales, the more predictable you are the easier you are to sell, and the other way around the salesperson is more succesful by not being predictable.

One of my clients who was 72, was going to publish his last textbook (he was a proffesor who wrote college textbooks on psychology) he stated he would do so at the end of his career
to avoid all the flak that would come up.
The subject would be the bane of humans---- Pride and greed.

GREED

The malaysian monkee

In parts of asia, farmers catch monkeys by leaving a birdcage-like trap tied to a tree, with delicious rice mangoe treats inside. The monkey can easily stick his hand in, but cannot pull it out once his fist grasps the treat. Even upon the approach of the farmer he cant bring himself
to release the food in exchange for his life- they actually scream in horror as the human hand
slowly blocks out the sun descending to wrap around his neck. I hope you have seen the video
how they eat monkeys out there, they have a table that opens down the middle with a monkey
size neck hole, where the live monkey is placed. Now with his head on the table they shave his head, and like a 3 minute egg crack around the skull untill the live brain is exposed and proceed
to eat the live monkeys brain, while the body is dangling from the neck hole.

On reflection, doesnt it remind you of people looking for free stuff and getting sold something?
Hey, if we listen to their sales pitch, we get free stuff! Yeah- you will wind up on the table with them, but not in a chair. The deep sea maddof angler fish uses a luminescent lure protuding from his head, like a fishing pole and sucker fish investigate one after another, only to be consumed in a flash.

Somewhere i read about how this merchant family during the depression in new york city was, like everyone else, suffering with near zero sales with their mens suit store. This is how they survived. They had a hustler-hawker in the store front trying to get passerbys to go in; oh no thank you i dont have any money, dont worry just see what we have and when things get better
maybe you will shop with us! we have have free lemonade also. So the victim obliges and sips his lemonade as he condescendingly reviews the merchandise. Do you like this one? yes but like i said i have no money-i will get the price and in the future you can come back--being that there is no price tag he shouts to the back-hey lenny how much is this suit??!! lenny yells back 44 dollars
at this point the customer has already noticed the hustler is hard of hearing-he says what? 44 dollars! cupping his hear he turns to the customer 24 dollars! Greed takes over and he buys the suit because---well you get the point.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Human nature as viewed by salespeople

What makes us tick? And how can we use this knowledge to our advantage?

Everyday we intermingle with others -family,friends,acquaintances,associates,strangers.
there are dynamics at play that we might not be aware of, but if you are skilled in observing
the ingredients that determine the outcomes in these encounters you will have a much better
handle on life in general.

All of us are made up of past experiences that both parts of our brain use as building blocks to phase our personal view of life and how we interpret current situations that dictate our actions that follow. Some of our actions provide great happiness-others have dire consequences.

Since we are not born with a manual of life- the manual is written as you progress and pages are inserted for you by others whose agenda might not be in your best interest.

Inherited and acquired.

We inherit a lot before we even start collecting our own policies and procedures manual.
For me personally, the most startling thing i have read regarding the human experience
was a study done on zygote twins separated upon birth. They were unaware of their twins
and the study showed how alike they were. They smoked, ate ,drank,married, made, produced
had same jobs, hobbies all identical not similar. Very eerie to say the least. We wont discount free will just yet, but there are variable influences that definitely play a roll. Like father like son,as the saying goes. In additon to this our blood types say who we are also. It goes something like this;
type A;
oldest type, meat eater -hunter
type B
agricultural-hunter gatherer -nomadic to settlements
A-B
merging of both
O
modern man
RH
rare and is traced to the basque region
i will stick to science here, however there are interesting opinions regarding these people.

apparently the studies suggest attributes and influences of the blood types.
there are many other studies revealing basic makeup, weather, chemical influences,food etc.
A circumcised baby is forever hardwired to feel more physical pain than those not circumcised,
and can determine actions big or small relative to pain.

Much has been written on all this and more but the point to be made is that some of our foundation bricks are already there for us, culturally and collective unconscious as well.

Am i wrong to propose most people dont understand love? With hormones bouncing in our heads like ping-pong balls with the ultimate goal of procreation at any cost? Or a relationship developed over time? We know it to be both and half the history of mankind if not more is written upon this part of our lives. Be that as it may the glandular secretions injected into our
bodies determine many outcomes beyond our control, to various degrees. A joke i heard demonstrates (for the sake of levity)this..what do you get with a woman who has esp and pms?
answer: a b***h who thinks she knows everything!! Before you lash back at me go to
sincewhenisthetruthasin.com.

There are at least 50 words describing positive emotions and 50 describing negative emotions.
Did you know 80% of purchase decisions worlwide are made emotionaly?

Allright lets get into it:

The human is a greedy, lying, cheating, nose picking,ass scratching,opportunistic,fornicator
disguised by thin veneers of civilization. Didnt like this statement? stick around.

I had the the chance to mingle with admen in new york, and heard the following about how to manipulate people in advertising.

there are core hardwired events past, present and future about humans that make us predictable. They are primordial and make up a lot of our behavior. This was in 1975.
It was hard for me to believe the back page ad space of a certain magazine cost $400,000.
this included the space itself, photographer, airbrush, and psychologist. You dont spend money like that hoping people see it and buy your product. They knew what they were doing, and we are talking about a lot of money here.
These admen knew the following about us humans:
our core hardwired self is influenced by ;
birth trauma
oral-anal
food
sex
death trauma

I am assuming you are familiar with subliminal advertising, but will recap some of its finer points here. Old film before video was 24 frames a second, put in the word "sex" on one frame only and you will not see it - but your unconscious does and remarkably sales go up. This event
did not go unoticed and the ad was withdrawn with susbsequent legal and moral antecedents
to this day. When we read a magazine, our eyes and in one second or less, glimpses the 4 corners
as such ,left top, right top, down to right bottom, left bottom and then center. This is revealed by laser tagging. You would think the center would be the central matter, not so. I mean it would be beneficial to know what the product is you are buying but the corners prey on our subconcious to fasten the product. A collection of popular magazines then showed the following
discoveries made: A sex act airbrushed into the clouds- a glass with 3 ice cubes spelling s-e-x.-
baby embryos in bubbles-phallic and vaginal symbols all over. The list goes on and on but prey on the above mentioned 5 human bells. Obviously things have progressed and are more sophisticated now, but lets mention one more to understand human nature.

Here was this ad for fancy expensive liquor on the side table next to a den type highback reading chair. You can see the room with the fireplace but not who is seated as the chair is facing back. Close observation revealed murky figures airbrushed in consisting of wolves, grim reapers, skulls, black sheets.

heres how it works:
who buys very expensive liquor?/ 50 years and up.
what magazine is it?/not teen beat- affluent male type magazine.
which of the 5 bells will be rung here? death scare trauma.
when will purchase be made? not right now.
why? the unconscious picked up the "core reminder" of a personal secret, hope, fear, aspiration and when the viewer
is at the store if he doenst have a strong brand preference, or even if he does these titillating little images from the unconscious tug at the conscious and sway. It can only be measured in sales, and you would not spend money unless results are shown.

Laser tags also show we stare at sexual areas al little too much, sex sells.
The idea is that when we go shopping we can be manipulated just enough to go that way instead of this way. Someone scoffed at all this once but were totally turned around when we perused many magazines. Usually the big bucks are the front pages and back. Yes i know the binding is designed to open to certain pages and all that stuff but we would be going off our true subject.
Before we continue, pick a number please............

1-2-3-4-

and ill tell you something about humans

to be contd. as soon as i can.