6/12/08

Follow Up, Vol 2 - Seeing a Larger Picture

On the same theme as the last entry (Follow up), here is another excerpt from the book, Accepting the Sales Challenge:

Seeing a larger picture will help a salesman spend his time wisely, by learning who to talk to and when, rather than going every which way with no thought or vision of where or when. I use an example of this often in teaching auto sales. Most auto salesmen think of the person they are selling in terms of this one sale. They see too small a picture. I try to teach them to see a larger picture by concentrating on who that person knows or can affect.

Everyone knows 250 people according to the world's greatest car salesman, Joe Girard. Thinking that one is making only one sale is a very short-sighted vision when selling one car. Since the person you are selling knows at least 250 other people, selling one car could turn into hundreds. In theory, 250 times 250 equals 62,500 people. Even if only 1% bought from you, that would equal 625 sales, not one.

I took Joe's 250 theory and modified it to be easier to understand because of our terrible recall. Now the memory knows 250 people easily, but recalling them would take days, perhaps weeks and a reasonable amount of searching for records, not to mention a major commitment on the part of your prospect. So I divided his number by ten and came up with 25. Now, I figure that everyone could recall at least 25 people and they are probably close enough to that customer or prospect to at least be influential to a small degree.

So, if a salesman has sold 100 cars since he's been in the business and each of them knows 25 people, we now have 2500 prospects instead of 100. Notice the multiplication factor. One hundred became twenty-five hundred. Now even if we deduct for those who have moved out of the area or switched to a different product or were unhappy for some reason, this still leaves us with a whopping number of possibilities here. And we haven't even taken into consideration the 25 people that each of those prospects know. That would send the numbers into outer space! But, you have to see a larger picture in order to understand this as being important.

Now this doesn't just apply to owners, does it? Every prospect would have the same potential (remember that it takes many prospects to create one sale). Mining for gold is fruitful if you know where the possibility of gold being is. Only then can you mine it effectively. The big picture will help you to see the obvious with a different feeling than before. One person's obvious is another person's hidden, one person's vision is another person's blindness. Sometimes the obvious escapes us. I've missed it for a long time, but I see more each day. Jim Rohn says that everyone should take Obvious 1 and Obvious 2. Understanding that there is a larger picture will be all the help you need to begin seeing it and then adding to it until you see it with clarity.

Big Picture thinking will improve your attitude. In an airplane, attitude is your plane's position relative to the horizon. I think that people's attitudes are like that. They are relative to the horizon of the picture we see individually. As one expands the picture, one's attitude must change in relation to it. It seems cause and effectual to me. One who sees a larger picture, a clearer vision, will have a better attitude in relation to others who do not.

No comments: