Paul J Rose's Merchandise Rant

Calling all Time Thieves

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:04:00 +0000

Throughout the course of any given day I will receive email for a bunch of stuff I don't want. Now I'm not talking about all the offers for enlargement, weight loss, stamina and all that stuff that only a moron would buy, I'm talking about invitations to conferences, special offers for hotels, updates to software that I don't actually own anyway, and all the other crap but falls just to the right side of 'polite' spam. But it is still spam. All of our in boxes are stuffed and we spend so much time every day simply clicking on the delete button.

This blog however, is not to complain about these people. It's never going to stop, and at least the reputable ones offer the facility to unsubscribe. This blog is inspired by a conversation that I just had. I called to introduce my company and the very nice man told me that they don't ever buy merchandise but that I was welcome to send him an email.

Now I've talked about this before - people that ask us to send in catalogues when they tell us that they don't buy. Well this is no less offensive to me. You see this very nice man was under the impression that he was letting me down easy, and of course email is free, so there's no real damage done right?

WRONG!

Let's look at all of the negative things to come out from this:

I have to take time out of my day to write an email that is not likely to ever even get opened, let alone read.
The client will receive an email that he will not read and will almost instantly dismiss as another piece of junk.
My database will log communication with a potential customer which will come to nothing, hence I have to make notes to that effect so that neither I, or any of my colleagues will waste any of their time on calling this company.
The client's nose is put out of joint ever so slightly when an email comes in that he does not want to read, thus interrupting his day, his workflow and his thought process.
I feel a sense of resentment towards said client for showing no respect for my time and a complete lack of ability to simply say thanks but no thanks

Let's take a look at the positives

At least the email was not unsolicited.

Hardly an even balance is there? Why are we so afraid to just say no? Thanks but we don't buy merchandise. Listen, the worst thing that could happen is that any skilled salesman might start asking some good questions that cause you to think about your marketing strategy and perhaps even improve upon it. Oh no! How awful - you might actually benefit from the call after all!

Look, if, when you get a sales call, you can honestly say that you've considered all of your options and are simply not interested, then just say so, and go on about your day. Any professional sales person will not take it personally and will, like you, move on. Anyone less than professional will be delighted to send you that all important email. What a shame.

Feel free to share this with your colleagues, associates and clients - but only if they've asked you to do so!

My favourite objections

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:03:00 +0000

As a salesman, I am met with countless objections on a daily basis. Many are given in a polite, dare I say, apologetic manner, and those people are just plain lovely. Seriously, I get off of the phone, fully aware that I will not be doing business with that person but at the same time, slightly uplifted at having had a pleasant conversation.

Others, are just plain rude. You know the sort – people who say “We're all sorted thank you” before you even tell them why you're calling. It's fine, I've no reason to take it personally because these people don't know me, and they may well just be having a bad day, which instantly puts up a barrier to any type of sales call, whether they need the service or not.

Either way, there are some objections that I just love hearing, essentially because they are not really objections at all. As sales people, we learn to tell the different between a genuine objection and a person just trying to get us off of the phone. A less experienced, or even less confident sales person will thank them very much, hang up, look at their shoes, mope for a few minutes and then get back to work. A more experienced sales person will take the time to understand the true nature of the objection and then continue with the call if he or she feels it is warranted.

Let me make one thing clear – not all sales people are pests. Oh sure, the kid with one GCSE interrupting your dinner to tell you you've won a free kitchen makeover is a pest, but we're not talking about that guy today. No, we're talking about people offering goods and services to your business. Naturally, that is where we come in.

I was inspired to write this blog because I was on the receiving end of my favourite objection this week. “We already have a supplier thank you”. Well of course you do! How else would you get the stuff? If you didn't already have a supplier, it would mean that you don't utilise the service I'm offering anyway, in which case we can just as easily leave it there.

Clearly what you're probably saying to me is that you're not in the mood for a sales call, or that shifting suppliers is just too much of a hassle so you'll just leave things as they are. Listen, that's fine, and if your supplier is giving you the best service, the best prices, the best creativity and the best commitment to your relationship then of course you shouldn't shift. But ask yourself, when was the last time you ran a little checklist to make sure that they were giving you all that? What's more, how much damage would it do to try an alternative, just to see if they're any better? The worst that could happen is that your faith in your original supplier is reinforced, and that can only be a good thing.

Now I could wax lyrical about all of the other objections that are out there, just waiting for me to overcome, but I don't want you thinking that I'm sat here with a big book of scripts. I don't work from sales scripts because I don't like to think of my call to you as a typical sales call. I'm offering my help – yes it comes at a price, but the promotional merchandise surrounding what I do is just the tip of the ice berg. I am offering the chance to improve the outcome of your marketing, and surely an offer like that sells itself.

Courtesy Calls are Anything but..

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:17:00 +0000

You know, a good sales person needs a good opening line. Perhaps more important than that though, is the way in which they deliver it. Face it, if some bloke calls me up in the middle of dinner to tell me I've won a free holiday with all the enthusiasm as a balloon with a hole in it, then I'll very quickly switch off.

The problem with our call centre society is that the people calling us don't actually care. Why should they? They're targetted to make a certain number of calls within a certain number of hours and are likely to have no incentive to close more business or even foster a new relationship.

The worst offenders are the newcomers - thrown into a cubicle with a script and a list of numbers, they're poised for one of the two responses that you can give them - either that you are interested, or some reason that you’re not. And let's be honest, how often does the first one come up for them? I imagine the response of "Why I'm so glad you called, please do tell me more" almost never happens.

I had a terrible one the other day. "I'm calling from Kitchens Direct, we're doing free quotes in your area if you're interested." Simple response - I wasn't. Length of call, 10 seconds and have a pleasant evening. However (and there's always a however with me isn't there?) if there’s one thing that aggravates more even more than having my evening kebab interrupted, it’s people that flat out LIE.

Best example? “Good evening Mr Rose, I’m calling from insert faceless call centre here and it’s just a quick courtesy call to...........” Now the dots aren’t there to act as an ‘etc’ or an ‘and so forth’, no, they’re there because once I hear the words ‘courtesy call’ then all I hear after that is white noise. Give me an extra couple of seconds and my brain will actually start playing reruns of iconic TV shows from the eighties just to stop me lapsing into a coma. It’s sad really, because on reflection, Knight Rider really was rather weak.

Let’s take a look at why this happens, ideally without the use of an MRI to understand my brain. It happens because I don’t understand how any company with whom I have never done business would want to call me simply out of courtesy. It would make a nice world wouldn’t it? “Good afternoon Mr Rose, just calling to say hello and see how you are, no other agenda whatsoever”. Wake up genius, it’s not going to happen.

All these so called courtesy calls are sales calls, so why not just be honest about it? Don’t call to tell me I’ve won a prize in a competition I didn’t even enter. Don’t tell me that my home has been selected for a free conservatory before you’ve established that I live in a flat on the first floor (I don’t any more, but that actually happened), and don’t tell me that you’ve got ‘people in my area’ when we both know that they’ll be in my area just as soon as I agree to an appointment.

What I just don’t get is why all these telesales people are trained in believing that their target customers are all complete idiots. It’s like they just don’t even want to try any more - a cheery disposition and a slick script is only going to work on the thinnest slice of the population, so why bother using it?

Just level with people - “Good evening Mr Rose, I’m calling on behalf of XYZ and I wanted to take a few moments of your time to see if we can be of any help to you with regard to life insurance”. Crisp, polite and to the point, that person will not get the phone slammed down. They will get told that I already have an insurance broker, but I will not feel as though my time was robbed from me by some liar in a call centre.

But why not make it even more powerful? Send out a gift in the post and then call to see if they received it and what they thought of it. It's honest and a great way to lead into a conversation that could turn into a sale. Oh sure, most people throw junk mail away - but aren't they the same people who are going to turn down your 'courtesy call' anyway?

Targetting fewer customers with a slicker campaign will yield a better result - it's not rocket science, so why are so few people willing to try it. Sales is not a mere numbers game - quality will win over quantity.

Well that was this week's courtesy blog. Did I say courtesy? Let me try again. I hope you enjoyed this blog and took something away from it. If you did and would like to return the favour, I would be much obliged if you would contact me to talk about your next marketing campaign and how I can help you with it. See? Honesty.

I have a million things to do today

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:03:00 +0000

Miss me? Well, that's something I suppose. The fact is that with organising our stand at Confex, working on our stand at Confex and then following up all the enquiries we got at Confex, this blog has taken a bit of a back seat for the last few weeks. To my loyal fans, I thank you for your patience. To everyone else - good morning.

And now to this week's blog

We all know the feeling. We get into the office a little bit early because we know that we have ‘a million things to do’ that day. So we write our list, put things in order of priority, assign a set amount of time to each task and then set to work.

And then the phone rings, and the whole plan goes splat.

Sound familiar? Of course it does, because we’ve all been there, but the fact is that our approach to the situation is invariably wrong. It all starts with the frame of mind that we bring into the office when we arrive. A million things to do? Hardly. Chances are that you have a lot of tasks to take care of and you already know that there is just no way that you’re going to finish them all before the day is through.

Except that you don’t know that. You can’t possibly know that because nobody can see into the future. The trouble is that you’ve created this mountain of work in your mind that you genuinely believe cannot be conquered, but it actually can.

Now this isn’t some motivational talk designed to tell you that ‘if you think you can, you will”, accompanied by a smile the size of Wales and jet fighters flying overhead shooting T Shirts at the crowd with a rockin’ sound track. Nope, this is just some bald guy telling you how his day is panning out.

I’ve got a lot of work today. I’m thrilled about that. Having nothing to do means that I am not only bored, but I am also not in a position to feed my family. What I don’t have however, is a mountain of work. What I have in front of me is a road – paved with tasks.

This road is long, but it is flat, smooth and straight and best of all, I can see the end of it. I pick up task number one – it’s the task that absolutely must be done right now. The task didn’t tell me when it needed doing – I decided that when I told the customer that I would have the information with him in the early part of this week. I didn’t say ‘Monday’, even though that would have made me look fantastic in the eyes of the client. I told them ‘early next week’ to allow for any distractions.

When I first thought about this task, I figured that it was going to take all day to get through. It didn’t. It took a few hours yesterday and then about half an hour on Tuesday morning. Forward thinking as I sometimes can be, I got into the office at 8.30 that morning, so by the time I was finished, my (and everyone else’s) working day had only just begun.

Then it was on to task two. This task required about 80% total focus, so whilst I will have made myself available to answer the phone, I didn't check my email until it was done. Now I was not expecting any urgent mails – but then, how can anyone expect something urgent? By its very definition, it is unexpected. None the less, if I’m worried that my clients don’t think I’m coming back to them immediately, I can always turn on an ‘out of office’ assistant and tell people that I am away from my email for the next hour and if the matter really cannot wait that long, that they should call me. Remember, I said that I was still answering the phone.

The moral of the story? Relax. You don’t have a million things to do today and what’s more, you don’t necessarily have to do everything on your To Do list today. What would happen if you took care of some of it tomorrow, or even asked someone else to help you take care of something?

Think about that for a moment before you move on to your next task. Your day will fly by and I promise you that you will feel productive at the end of it.

Previously...on Merchandise Mania

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:21:00 +0000

Don't you hate that? When a show that you've been loyally following since episode 1 feels the need to catch up all the new viewers with everything that's happened so that they might make sense of it? I mean, it didn't help with 'Lost' did it? More importantly, the longer they take catching you up, the less new story they have to write.

It's bloody lazy writing. If I wrote a top telly show it would start like this:

"Previously on Paul's Show - stuff happened, and if you forgot to tune in or set your Sky Plus box, then go and download it - just don't ruin it for everyone else.".

Anyway, here's the next installment on Merchandise Mania TV. It's not really important to know what happened previously, as it's not really a serial drama, but it's still fun to watch. Enjoy.

It's Time to Switch

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:38:00 +0000

For quite some time now, I’ve been with the same energy provider for both my gas and electricity. It’s not really a question of loyalty, it’s just that they set up the direct debit in such a way that leaving them would cost me an absolute fortune.

That was up until recently, when I discovered that my account was no longer in arrears. Naturally, I went straight on to the nearest price comparison site – well I say nearest, obviously their location is of little consequence to me – and decided to see if I could get a better deal and unsurprisingly, I did.

Naturally I put the wheels in motion to get my supplier switched over, whilst simultaneously dreaming about what I would do with the £348 I had saved, until I realised that £348 is about 2 weeks’ shopping at any mainstream supermarket so my plans of an exotic holiday or a new X Box Kinect flew straight out of the window.

A few weeks later, I received a phone call from my current supplier- I think we all expected that didn’t we?

“So sorry to hear that you want to leave us Mr Rose”, well don’t take it personally love, I mean you’ve got a few million customers on your books, surely one of us leaving won’t make that much of a difference.

“Can I ask why you’re leaving?” What does she expect me to say? I’m just not sure the relationship is working out? I want to see other providers? You’re smothering me?

“Someone else is offering me a better deal.” Obviously.

“Well we’ve got some great deals on at the moment so if you just give me a second I’ll see what we can do for you”.

NOW STOP RIGHT THERE. At this point I actually got quite angry. This woman has just effectively admitted that her company are ripping me off. They have better pricing structures available but it is only at the point of my leaving that they’re prepared to offer them to me?

Then the letter comes – please call our freephone number to discuss your transfer. Except they don’t want to discuss my transfer, they want to have another crack at keeping me on their books. I put forward the same argument and they point out that, as a company with several million customers, it’s not possible for them to keep everyone advised of their best options.

CRAP. No, sorry, but that really is crap. OK – calculating the best deal for everyone every quarter is not practical, and I accept that. However, how about putting some information on the bill that sends me to a website where I can check that I am paying the best price? If that was an option, surely everyone would take it wouldn’t they?

It got me thinking about customer service. Are you giving the best service and prices to your customers at every single opportunity, or do you up your game when they’re about to leave you?

The fact is that if you have room for improvement, then your new and improved way of working should become policy. We can all strive to be better in what we do, but our default should not be to be regularly working at 80% capacity, holding on to that 20% for when the proverbial hits the fan.

The beginning of the year is an excellent time for you to review all of your client relationships, and just how powerful would it be to call a customer and tell them that whilst you were pleased to have helped them in 2010, that you’re looking for ways to help them even more in 2011. Don’t try and sell them more stuff – just offer them more help and the rewards will create themselves.

So here we go with 2011 – I realise I should have said that last week but I figured I would give you all a bit of a break from my incessant ranting, just for a little while. And now that your break is over, who wants to be my next victim?

I don't have all the answers

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Well, I promised you at least one more blog before Christmas, and here it is. Despite the fact that the majority of our customers are now relaxing for the holidays, we will be on hand to help those poor souls who forgot to order their important January merchandise and have nowhere else to turn – so if that’s you, feel free to give me a call.

I want to talk about something interesting that happened to me in Tesco the other night. Now when I first started this blog, all those years ago, I mentioned how I was unlikely to ever shop in somewhere like Lidl – and not for the reasons you think either.

Well since then, I’ve discovered the joy of Lidl shopping, and it really can be a joy. The quality there is superb, the prices are fantastic and what’s more, it can be an adventure comparing European brand foods with the more recognised UK stuff and realising that, more often than not, it tastes exactly the same and in many cases – a lot better.

However, they don’t stock everything and I needed to pick up some chestnut puree so that Shelly could make her chestnut stuffing. It was her mother’s recipe and she really does do it proud, so darling, if you’re reading this – here’s to another great stuffing!

So back to Tesco, where it’s late at night, snowing and altogether unpleasant. After roaming the aisles of where logic dictated I would find the chestnuts, I was still sporting an empty basket. At that point I decided to ask for help, and I use the word ‘help’ in its broadest sense here.

“Excuse me”, say I, “can you tell me where I might find the chestnut puree and also the whole chestnuts – you usually sell them in vacuum packs?”

“Well you’ll find loose chestnuts in the whole foods section but I haven’t really seen any other chestnuts come in so I expect that we’re not doing them.”

STOP!!!!!!

So you’re one of the biggest supermarket chains in the country, and my local has expanded to such a ridiculous size that you can now by light aircraft in Aisle 37, next to the beans, but you’ve not seen chestnuts A WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!!???!!!

Obviously my real response was a little more reserved but it did get me thinking about something. Why didn’t she just tell me that she didn’t know?

Seriously, the lady is working in a shop that sells literally thousands of products. If she had the mental capacity to remember all of them, along with their location, then one would argue that she is woefully over qualified to be stacking shelves in the middle of the night in Tesco wouldn’t they?

I am perfectly happy for people to not know the answer, just as long as they take a moment to tell me where I might be able to get the help that I need. Bluffing your way through an answer is just plain wrong – the customer will not end up getting what he wants and will be more irate for the extra hassle of following up on bad advice.

So what do you tell your customers when you don’t know the answer to their question? Are you terrified of being thought of as less than an expert in your field? If so – why? A true expert opens himself up to new pieces of information every single day, and every once in a while, a vital piece of the jigsaw puzzle will be missing. Well, it’s not really missing, it’s just that someone else has it and we need to give them a call and get it.

We’re told of all of the truly powerful words in sales like YES and THANKS, but I’d like to add another phrase to that list – the phrase I DON’T KNOW. Going that extra mile to find out things for your customers is what separates you from the people who offer up a guess and then cross their fingers that there aren’t any follow up questions.

Here’s a clue to those people – there won’t be any follow up questions – because your prospective customer has already walked away.

On behalf of all of us here at Merchandise Mania, I’d like to wish you all the best of whichever holiday you choose to celebrate and I look forward to hearing from more of you in 2011.

Training - it's not just for staff

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:30:00 +0000

How much does your company spend on training? OK, that’s a fairly ordinary question and no doubt it will have created a spectrum of responses. Well, I say spectrum, whereas I mean about three.

Well how about this then? Who does your company spend their time and money on training? Chances are, like most sensible companies, the people that you train are your own staff. That would seem to be the smart thing to do.

Indeed, at Merchandise Mania we even set up a training programme where staff could learn about the procedures in play in other departments. It’s an effective programme, because by learning just how much work someone else in your company has to do on a daily basis, you can gain more appreciation for the fact that the favour you asked them to do four hours ago hasn’t been done yet!

But I’ve come to realise that there is a whole group of people that we never really take the time to train. I’m not talking about getting in training companies, setting up seminars or correspondence courses. No, I’m talking about the simple imparting of information which would enable them to do their jobs and communicate more effectively.

Have you figured out who I’m referring to? That’s right (unless you got it wrong), I’m talking about your customers. In a world where knowledge is power, have you ever stopped to think about just how much your customers don’t know about how things work in your organisation?

Seriously, if I had a pound for everyone that called me in the second week of December asking for stuff before Christmas then I could happily fly off somewhere warm. I’m sure you have similar stories but have you ever stopped to consider that it might actually be your fault?

What if, the last time that client ordered from you, you gave them a special price or delivered the goods early or some other ‘extra mile’ gesture. Did you tell them that what they’d received was NOT the norm? Oh sure, good customer service should come with every order but if your very first deal with them was at a discounted price, what’s to make them think that they can’t get a discount from you every time they order?

As for deliveries, if something usually takes 3 weeks and you did it in 3 days, did you point out the extraordinary lengths that you went to in order to make that happen, or did you just tell them it was “all part of the service”?

Your customers need to be trained on how things work around there. Their demands are not unrealistic because history has shown them that you can work miracles when you really have to, so they now expect miracles every single time.

The result? A client that, whilst you’re grateful for their business, you regard much more as a hindrance than a help. It is within your power to change things – you just have to level with them. “I’m delighted that we were able to shrink the lead time on these by so much but please do bear in mind that this was the exception and not the rule. When you’re looking to place your next order, please make sure you leave a little bit more time – or better yet, why not order twice as many and rest easy, knowing that you have enough?

The next blog will be on Christmas Eve – yes we will be here and working hard. Well, I say hard……..well, I say working….

The truth might set you free..remember MIGHT!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 13:07:00 +0000

I thought I would start this article a little differently than most. You see, in a lot of cases, when people are doing things for charity or asking readers for a little bit of extra ‘help’, it’s shoved in a little paragraph in italics at the end of the article.

In essence that seems fair enough, but if I don’t manage to hold your interests until the end of this page then two things are clear – first, that I’ve obviously run out of interesting things to say, and second, that my chances of getting anything from you are somewhere between slim and none.

Well, none of that nonsense for this bald headed sales person. At the end of April, I shall once again be running in The London Marathon. Now I hate running. I don’t do it in my spare time, I don’t find it “really clears my head” and given the choice, I’d rather sit down and listen to an entire Dido album – and that is pretty damn bland.

None the less, I am running to raise money for Dreams Come True – a great charity which help realise the dreams of terminally and seriously ill children. You can sponsor me – no, you SHOULD – no, you WILL sponsor me (Jedi mind trick – see what I did there) at www.justgiving.com/pauljrose2011 and thanks in advance for your generosity.

And so to the topic of this week's blog. In the last few weeks, our industry has been plagued by scams. People have purchased merchandise on dodgy credit cards, fake addresses, and all that sort of nonsense.

The scams themselves actually got me thinking – not so much about the criminal nature of certain people, but more about the nature of telling lies. You see, when you look a little further, so many people are telling little lies to us, every single day. They’re not evil (well, most of them anyway), it’s just that a polite excuse seems to be the accepted norm.

Think about all of those lies that we sales people have to hear every day. “He’s in a meeting at the moment”, “We’ve got your catalogue and we’ll come back to you”, “Send me your information and we’ll keep it on file”. AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!!! Why do we just assume that a polite lie is so much less offensive than a little bit of brutal honesty?

In a meeting? Seriously, how many ‘meetings’ can any one person realistically take in one working day and yet still be productive? I have one meeting per week and it’s held at a time of day when the phones are not likely to be ringing. Fact is, we know they’re not in a meeting, but we just blindly say thanks and leave a message any way – what a complete waste of time.

“Send me your information” – WHY? We all know that the ‘file’ your going to keep it in is currently sat under your desk housing three empty plastic cups and yesterday’s sandwich wrapper. Don’t these people realise that it actually costs us money to send out catalogues? That’s the thing – they do, and yet because they consider us a nuisance, they lose no sleep putting us to extra, pointless busy work.

My manner has often been described as ‘acerbic’, the less well read just simply opt for ‘rude’. I don’t really have too much of a problem with that. Sure, no one likes to be thought of as rude, but I just prefer complete honesty with people because it saves us all so much time.

I don’t want brokers to send me their information in the post only to follow up with countless phone calls – I am not interested and I tell them from the outset. They call and tell me that they don’t want to sell me anything, they just want to send me some information. Fine, but I’m not going to read it, so why don’t we just leave it there.

If you’re not interested in taking a sales call, isn’t it better to let the person know that? How about replacing “He’s in a meeting” with “He has no need for your services”? Sure, the caller might get their nose put out of joint, but any professional sales person will dust themselves off and make the next call.

Deep down, you’ve done them a favour – they won’t be wasting valuable call time on someone who is not buying. They’ll never really thank you for being so short with them, but in time they won’t remember you anyway, so who cares?

We are a society obsessed with saving time, and yet we allow some misguided sense of politeness to waste the very thing we’re trying to save. So be direct – I’m not saying we need to start being rude to each other, dropping our manners and generally becoming nasty people – I’m suggesting that the next time you consider telling a small fib just to make things a little easier, that you consider just how much more powerful the truth would be.

A new and exciting product

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:57:00 +0000

I'm a cynical bloke me. Anyone who has put up with this blog for long enough will tell you that.

Oh sure, there was a time when a pen with a coloured light inside it could get me all giddy with excitement. When I first joined the promotional merchandise industry, going to trade shows made me feel like a kid in a candy store. Well, on day one at least. By day three I'm very tired and working on the very clear premise that I have seen it all before.

You see, eventually, it's not the product that's important, but what you do with it that counts. A cleverly branded mouse mat can be the start of a very effective marketing campaign, but I've told you all of this before.

Because every once in a while, a new product comes along which gets me genuinely excited. Often my colleagues will laugh at my enthusiasm, and that's fine, because proving them wrong can be a very sweet victory.

Today, I want to tell you about a new product in which I am very excited, mainly because I can see so many places where it has practical applications.

If you work in a busy office, this will improve productivity. If you work in the leisure industry, this will increase customer spend. If you work in the travel industry, this will make your customers happy. Not all of them, I hasten to add - but enough of them to make this a worthwhile investment.

I'm talking about The Vapestick.

This simple stick essentially replaces cigarettes. It uses a small amount of liquid nicotine - which in and of itself is a simple stimulant, and about as harmful to your system as a cup of coffee. Using a micro processor, the 'vaper' can feel as if he or she is smoking a regular cigarette, except that there is no smoke - it's water vapour. There's no smell, no ash, no second hand smoke, in fact none of the negative things associated with smoking, which means it is totally legal to smoke indoors.

Think about it. If you have lots of staff regularly nipping out for ciggy breaks, then this means that they can stay at their desks and keep working. How about a busy casino? Smoking and gaming go hand in hand, but your players can't stay at the tables any more thanks to the smoking ban - well now they can.

Some airlines are now making them available for purchase too, and the beauty of ours is that it can be completely personalised with a full colour print.

Whilst there are full starter packs with a retail value of around £50, we now have a disposable model which we can supply for only £6.99, including branding. One of these is the equivalent of more than two packets of cigarettes - so think of the savings there.

I'm excited about this product and I want to share it with as many people as possible. I can tell you that I am not a smoker. I do enjoy the occasional social cigarette or cigar, but I can take it or leave it, and I find vaping fun.

Call me today and I'll tell you all about it.

Another Exciting Episode

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:13:00 +0000

Back by popular demand (my Mum likes it) is another installment from Merchandise Mania TV. Once again I've been roped in to getting in front of the camera, except this time I wasn't in a stripy purple shirt that induces migraines when set against a green screen.

Seriously, Doris in Wardrobe really is skating on thin ice.

Enjoy.

The Level Playing Field

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 09:20:00 +0000

Well, it finally happened. Yesterday I turned 40 years old. To some, I am officially middle aged, whereas to others, I am now a sad old man, mourning the good years that are now behind him and essentially just waiting to die.

Some of those birthday cards were just plain mean.

Well I’d love to suggest that with age comes wisdom, but frankly I just plan to keep on spewing out the same nonsense in the desperate hope that someone will read it, think to themselves “hmm, he has a point there”, and then order a generous amount of promotional merchandise from me.

There it is folks, if you’ve ever wondered why us bloggers do it, the reason it pure – revenue, and lots of it please. These blogs, tweets and all other manner of nonsense simply drive traffic. I could type out a recipe for chocolate cornflake cakes at this point and it would still be useful in the fight to boost my company’s profile.

Fortunately for you, I actually enjoy coming up with something interesting to say and every once in a while, I actually succeed. Sure it’s rare, but if you stick around for long enough you just might find some gold in here.

Today, I wanted to talk about the way buyers compare sellers, and how, in many cases, it seems a little flawed to me.

At the outset, people’s primary focus is price. That’s fair enough, we’re all trying to save money wherever we can. Trouble is that if you start there, then you’re often blinkered to everything else that matters.

The biggest issue, is that at the start of any race, every competitor is equal. Think about it, no one is interested in the runners’ position at the start of the race are they?

People need think more about the end result. What will the service be like? Will someone be taking them through every step of the process? Will they be left at any point wondering what’s going on? Ultimately, will they get the goods on time and will they be of an acceptable standard?

All really important questions, and yet when a lot of people go out to look for suppliers, they still look at that start line and based their decisions on what they see there.

The message here is that you need a better checklist. Yes, price will be on there, but if it’s in massive capital letters at the top of the page, you are going nowhere fast, because what you save today will go horribly wrong if you’re not careful.

A longer term view is crucial in the development of your business, so make sure you have one.

The Importance of a Good Read

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:09:00 +0000

My wife went to test drive a new car on the weekend. She thought that the staff in the dealership were amongst the nicest car dealers she had spoken to. She thought that the price of the vehicle she tried was reasonable, and was quite competitive compared to other cars that she’d seen. She enjoyed the test drive and was quite happy to ask pertinent questions of the sales man in terms of extras, finance agreements and so on.

We left there with lots of literature giving us facts and figures.

She doesn’t want to buy the car.

But this blog is not about the car – it’s actually about the literature. Right now there is a brochure shoved inside the passenger side door of my car. It won’t get read again, and what’s worse is that it didn’t even get read in the first place, and this got me thinking.

As I prepare to go on my holiday at the end of this week, I’ve been making a point of calling all of those companies who asked me to send them some information. So far, not one of them has given me any business. I’m not bitter about that – frankly I accept it as the way of the world, but it does strike me just how many of us are wasting a fortune on printing up information that will never get read.

Think about the last time you were committed to seriously making an important purchase. I’m not talking about browsing or being ‘on the fence’ – I’m talking about seeing something, liking it, reaching into your wallet and actually buying it.

How much literature did you check out first? What did you do about all of the important questions that you had to ask? Did you consult with the brochure or the sales person?

These days, many of us will go online to check out reviews of certain new products before we buy, and if we’re lucky enough to find an impartial review, so much the better. But that’s all we need to read. The rest of the sale requires a personal interaction between you, the product and the person selling it.

I’ve written in the past about how ‘polite’ people ask us to send out information as a means to simply get sales people off of the phone, but it seems that there are a group of people who would rather hand over a brochure than have a real conversation, and as a salesman myself, I just don’t get it.

My recycling bin is filled with catalogues I will never read, and yet the people sending them never even bothered to ask me – they just spent their money and hoped for the best. Well I don’t work that way. If you ask me for a catalogue, I’ll make a point of asking you what it is you’re looking for and then I’ll talk with you about it – trust me, it’s better for everyone that way.

Right – that’s the last blog for a couple of weeks. I’m off to Israel with the family, and just so we’re clear, I didn’t pick the hotel out of a brochure!

Train your customers, not just your staff

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 23:01:00 +0000

My company prides itself on being investors in people. Not in the traditional, get a certificate and brag to all your mates type way, just in it's strong belief in training.

Each member of the team has the chance to learn about what goes on elsewhere in the company. It's incredibly useful, because by gaining an understanding of what people in other departments do, we can all work more closely together to create the best possible customer experience.

Trouble is, there's one person in that chain of command that a lot of companies don't bother to train at all. Have you figured out who it is yet? Oh come on, it's written in the flipping title of this thing, I mean it's not like I'm trying to make this difficult!

That's right genius, the customer. How many of you actually take the time to train your customers? More importantly, how does that training work?

You see, in any given day, there will be people that make requests of you which you would prefer to politely decline. Well, I say "politely", because sometimes you would just rather be plain rude, but common sense usually steps in to save you.

None the less, you do what you can to help and right there is where the problem begins. Your customer now has an expectation of you. They know that you're prepared to jump through hoops every time they call because they are the customer and you are oh so grateful for their business.

Except if you were to be truly honest, you're not grateful. The time you spend adhering to their near impossible requests is not matched by the amount of money that they're spending with you. It's just not fair to expect these things of you, but they do. Trouble is, it's not really their fault is it? No, it's your fault, and it's because you didn't train them.

Be honest, how scary is it really to have to tell a customer that if something has a three week lead time that needing it within 4 days really makes no difference. You're the expert here - if you think it can be done, then do your best to do it, but if your years of experience tells you it can't then simply tell your customer that this is the case.

Similarly, if a client expects you to run around all afternoon producing reams of quotes with no real focus or direction, take the time to explain to them that you would first like to get their focus in place before you put in all of the work.

Ultimately, the people who take umbrage with such a response are not really serious customers. You're not losing business because the business was not there in the first place.

But what about the good customers who need you to go the extra mile? Well of course you should, but at least make sure that they know and appreciate what you've done for them and that you would really rather not make a habit of it.

Are we still working in a world where people believe that the customer is always right? Yes they are the life blood of your business, so why not treat them as an intrinsic member of your team and train them on how things work around there. They will thank you for it and in the long run will undoubtedly put more business your way.

Think about it, when you wanted to get their business you took the time to learn about their operation. Now that you're partners, shouldn't that information flow both ways?

When they understand and respect you, the headaches just melt away and work becomes easy. You know what you need from them and more importantly, so do they.

Simple really, isn't it? Have a good week.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Small widgets - big returns

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 08:06:00 +0000

Naturally, there are plenty of sales and business gurus out there that will tell you that the advice that they can give you will be the true turning point in the lifespan of your business. Of course, if you want the real juicy advice, you’re going to have to pay for it – anything from a simple book costing you around £15 to a seminar costing you several hundred.

Ultimately, these things all have one thing in common – if you want to do more business, then you have to pay for it. This is an accepted rule in commerce, and yet there are still people out there that believe that they can do all of their marketing for free!

Now it goes without saying (and yet oddly enough, I will say it) that there are some elements to any marketing strategy which don’t cost money – word of mouth, referrals, etc. But let’s be real for a moment – you’re only going to get referrals once you’re up and running, and those initial customers are going to cost money.

So, assuming that we can all agree that we need to invest in our customers, how can we go about keeping our costs down? Well, for this blog I’m going to talk about trade shows – mainly because it’s something I know quite a lot about.

In the past, I’ve spoken about not giving out gifts to everyone who comes by. There is real value in giving higher priced items to a smaller selection of genuine potential customers. To learn more about the metrics here, go through the archives and look for the posting entitled “Your money is no good here”.

But some people have a very small budget indeed – perhaps just a few hundred pounds, and this could mean that the higher priced gifts are not the best strategy for them. Is it all bad news? Of course not – we can still help.

There are plenty of simple exhibition widgets out there that cost under 50p each. We don’t need to go into specifics here, but you’re welcome to search through our on line catalogue by clicking HERE.

So let’s buy ourselves 1000 units and we’ll keep our total budget to £500 on merchandise. Now how much is an average customer worth to you? Is it £500? £1000? £5000? It’s important to take a look at your customers’ average spend because it’s a great way to gaze into your business’ crystal ball and forecast the future.

OK, let’s say that the average customer is worth £1000 to you. You’re going to give out 1000 gifts at a show and have a result only slightly better than absolute zero. That’s right, you get one new customer. Think about that for a moment – that’s a 0.1% success rate. If that’s what you think you’re capable of, may I interest you in a career in a non sales environment? Perhaps something with animals or mops?

So we get our rubbish return but, hey presto, we’ve actually made a 100% profit on our marketing investment! Not bad really – and that’s the worse case scenario.

So now that you can see, in a nutshell, just how powerful a small expense can be, isn’t it time you started thinking about what merchandise you’d like, rather than whether or not you think it will work for you?

Sometimes you just have to STOP!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 08:16:00 +0000

On more than one occasion, I have written about the power of keeping a positive mental attitude and a smile. A belief that your customers will say ‘yes’ to you affects your body language and your tone. Your confidence grows and the day just seems to flow perfectly.

Isn’t it wonderful that every day can be just like that?

OH NO IT CAN’T!

Of course it can’t. Some days, no matter how much of a smile you wear and a friendly approach you take with every call, some people just want to grind you down. It’s easy to dust off a simple objection – after all, we’re all grown ups and as professional sales people, we’ve learned not to take it personally.

Trouble is, we don’t spend every single call simply selling. We have to speak with suppliers who tell us that our orders are going to be late. We have to speak with customers who are pulling their hair out because they ordered 2000 units and only 1999 have shown up. We, all of us, will have days where the word frazzled just doesn’t even begin to cut it, and try as we might to hold on to cheerful grin and a pleasant outlook, it really can be a bit of a struggle.

It’s in times like these that picking up the phone and ploughing through a few more cold calls is, quite possibly, the worst decision you can make. Well no, to be fair the worst decision you can make is to storm into your bosses’ office and tell him just where he can shove his job. Poor bloke. It’s not his fault you’re having a bad day. Unless it is of course, but that’s a whole other story.

Calling potential customers from under a cloud is a waste of time. Your tone will be negative, and your objective will merely be to make calls so that you can say that you tried. Except that you won’t try. You won’t ask powerful questions, you won’t really listen to their responses and you’ll only give them about 10% of your attention at best. What a waste of time.

The best thing you can do when the world appears to be turning its spears on you is just stop. Go for a walk, go and have a cup of tea, go and ask a colleague if you can take a few minutes of their time to talk through some problems that you’re having. Whatever it is, for goodness’ sake don’t bottle it in and then take it out on the next potential customer.

You may not be obviously rude or dismissive to them, but you can bet that they will not feel any warmth from you. They won’t feel as if you’re delighted to be given the chance to work with them, and of course, they’ll take their business to someone who will.

It’s important to remember that everyone has bad days, but the keyword there is DAYS. How often have you had a good day and then immediately thought that it was so much better than yesterday? Exactly. Problems will rise and fall, but if you deal with them, ask for help and keep your emotions in check, things will balance out and you can look forward to your next really good day.

I hope that reading this blog will be the start of yours.

My Job Description

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:45:00 +0000

Every once in a while, it’s a really good idea to take a look at your own job description. I don’t mean the thing that’s printed on your business cards – some title that’s designed to give you a sense of purpose whilst simultaneously reminding you that it’s totally meaningless.

No, I’m talking about what you are actually paid to do. Those tasks which make up the bulk of your day, along with those ‘lesser’ tasks which are clearly less important, but must be done none the less.

When you look at it, it’s really quite a long list isn’t it? Mine certainly took up more than one side of a packet of Swan Vestas, so I’m rather pleased. However, that was not the real task, nor the purpose of this blog.

Now, grab a second box of matches and start writing down all those things which you’re asked to do which are NOT your job. Now I’m not talking about making cups of tea or occasionally helping out in other departments – we all have to chip in when we can. No, I’m talking about those things that customers ask you to do that you really should not have to.

I’ll tell you what prompted this blog. A few days ago I answered the phone to someone who told me that they were ‘just carrying out a costing exercise’. A costing exercise? What exactly is that? Yup – just what I thought, you essentially want me to tell you my prices so that you can phone around three or four more people, check my prices against theirs and then check all of our prices against your current supplier.

My role is to sell merchandise, and not to help my competitors to do the same. The person calling has openly admitted to me that they – a) base their decisions primarily on price and b) show no loyalty to their suppliers once they have them in place. Just how interested would you be in taking on a customer like that?

We are all of us told to be as helpful as we can to every new enquiry, because we never know where it might lead, but we all know that this enquiry was not going anywhere, and you can call me a cynic if you want to, but then if you’re a regular reader of this blog you will have formed that opinion a long time ago!

But how to turn this otherwise negative blog into a positive one? Well, once we know what our job isn’t, what do we do with the information? Do we start by telling people what we don’t do? Absolutely not. What we do is start to form relationships with companies and people who do perform the jobs that we don’t.

How powerful would this conversation be:

“Hello, I’m looking to get 6 T Shirts made up for my mate’s stag night on the weekend”.
“Sorry, our minimum order is 50”

Not very powerful at all, and certainly not very memorable. How about –

“Well I’m afraid that our minimum order is 50 Shirts but don’t worry because I can still help you. It just so happens that we’re partnered with Logo Shirts in the high street and I know that they can turn around an order like that on the same day if you’d like – let me just get you their telephone number and please do tell them that we sent you”.

Everybody wins, and perhaps most importantly, you’ll feel better knowing that your time went from being wasted to making someone’s day – not bad.

We all of us have a very long list of the things that we don’t do, but there are people out there who do do those things. They’d be grateful for the referrals and they’ll almost certainly find a way to return the favour, so try it out and see.

Episode Two from Merchandise Mania TV

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Merchandise Mania TV is on the air. Well, I say "air", obviously it's on the web. This week, your presenter is the very cuddly Jurgens Brune - a man who can comfortably ingest 700 calories before the rest of us have even had coffee. Enjoy.

The 100th Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:24:00 +0000

Well here we are - 100 posts old today. I wonder if Blogger will send me a prize as soon as I click on the Publish Post button. I suspect not. Let's face it, 100 is not the biggest number is some people's worlds, but I'm rather proud of it, so I shall take a moment to look up at the ceiling and smile.

Mmmm. That's better.

I had so many different topics on my mind this morning, which makes a refreshing change from the uninspired writer's block that had been plaguing me for the last couple of weeks. Clearly, this blog has become and opportunity for me to rant and moan about all that's wrong in the world of sales - not as a soapbox, but as a means to train and educate.

I've learned things along the way myself, and I'm still hopeful that I can take all of these musings and get some publisher to turn them into a book for me. Still hopeful.....still....

But I looked back at post number 1. In it, I said that I would bring what's new and exciting in the world of promotional merchandise. After all, the blog had a second purpose beyond my exorcising my demons - it was meant to drive traffic to the Merchandise Mania website and by using appropriate keywords like branded merchandise, corporate gifts and so on, all of those lovely search engines (yes, there is more than one out there) would send new customers my way.

So this week, I thought I would talk about product, and as we're coming into September, now really is the time to start looking at your diaries and calendars for 2011.

We have so many designs to choose from. Desk diaries, A5 and pocket, with a range of cover styles and different colours, we're bound to have the perfect diary to match your corporate image. What's more, our diaries can include up to 16 full colour 'tip in' pages, allowing you to advertise your products and inform your customers and staff.

Here's the thing. Have you ever noticed how there always seem to be one style of diary that's so much more popular than the others? Yup - this one-

There's a reason for that. It's the cheapest model and as such, the diary factories make substantially more of them than any of the others. What happens next is that a whole bunch of forward thinking companies buy the more interesting designs early and so by October and November, everyone else is left to buy what's left on the shelves.

It's not that they want this design - it's just that they have to buy diaries because their customers expect them, and they're too late to have any real choice.

The moral of the story? Oh come on, surely you've figured it out. Order your diaries now, whilst the choices are plentiful and the prices are decent.

Hope that helps. Here's to the next 100 blogs.

One more until we hit the magic century

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:29:00 +0000

You know, usually I write my blogs on Thursdays, but as I came into work yesterday I realised that there was nothing that I found truly irksome about which I could write. Oh sure, I could have told you all about some brand new product or a really cool pen, but for some reason I just didn’t feel like it. However, with only one more blog to go before I can boast my 100th post, I figured I would go off on a small tangent - all I needed was something to get me properly annoyed.

In the back of my mind, I knew it would only be a matter of time before something really bothered me and, as luck would have it, only 24 hours later, I find myself truly perturbed.

I am in the midst of putting together some designs for some pin badges, and the hope is that the company in question will give them out to something in excess of 10,000 people.

In an attempt to convey a sense of British pride, they asked that an image of the Union Jack be incorporated somewhere in the design. Now even though they loved the designs, certain people in management were concerned that the use of a Union Jack might have connotations of a connection with the British National Party. For those of you outside of the UK – The BNP is an extremely right wing organisation whose views are wildly unpopular with a good number of people living in the UK – myself included.

But my issue here is not with the BNP. I’d rather not show up on their radar thank you very much, and given what a public forum this is, the less I say the better. No. My issue is with the fact that my country’s flag is no longer consider a symbol of patriotism or of something in which we should be proud – it’s become a symbol of hatred.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not a strong supporter of all things British. I don’t proudly hang a flag in my window whenever there’s a major sporting event and I don’t really care less about the Royal Family. But what is happening to that flag is wrong.

I used to look at the relationships that Americans have with their flag and think that it was all just a little too much. Now I’m not so sure. I mean, what’s wrong with a little patriotism? What’s wrong with a little pride?

I’m not screaming from the rooftops about how proud I am to be British, but my country is not made up of racist hate mongers, and I’ll be damned if my flag is going to be thought of in that way.

Can I Have Some Business Please

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:04:00 +0000

Good morning. Let me start by saying that young Felix must have had a bad dream or something because he woke up crying at 4.30am and then simply didn't want to go back to sleep. The result is that I'm going to need prescription levels of caffeine to keep awake but if I did take the necessary amount of Red Bull, my chest would actually explode. The best thing I can do is type fast and think little.

This week, I want to return to the subject of social networking. Some time ago on this blog I pointed out what a waste of time Facebook appeared to be to me. More than a year on, my opinion has been ever so slightly modified.

You see, social networking truly is the opiate of the modern masses, and whilst there are still tens of thousands of people who choose to update their status with mindless drivel, there are countless more professional people who put these tools to good use.

Promoting special offers in tweets, changing Facebook status to talk about their latest projects and, of course, blogging, all do wonders at increasing one's ranking in the search engines. It's a darn site cheaper than paying for clicks and there are now even people who tout themselves as Social Media Consultants - a role that would have been laughed out of the office a mere two years ago.

Trouble is, all this blogging seems to invite a very long term view. I write this blog once a week, and I actually post excerpts from this, along with other posts, in a business networking site called eCademy. The immediate result is that people in the business world get a little more insight into how I think and what I might be able to do for them. That's great, and because I enjoy writing too, I keep doing it.

However, I've come to realise that all of these offers, opinions, video feeds, jokes and everything else have come at the expense of my making a very simple request of my readers, and it is this - can I have some business please?

Yep, it's that simple. A lot of sales people come up against this hurdle time and time again. They lay down all of the groundwork, building rapport, presenting excellent products and yet, when it comes to the crunch, they simply don't ask for the business.

Well it strikes me that my blog has gone much the same way. So here's the thing - if you like what I write and you feel that the services that I can offer are relevant to your company, please get in touch so that we can talk about your promotional merchandising needs.

Pretty straightforward, but as I get close to the 100 posts mark, I thought it needed saying.

Have a good week.

Merchandise Mania TV is On The Air

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:03:00 +0000

In a change from our regularly scheduled programming, this week we bring you video. The new Merchandise Mania TV channel is now on You Tube and here is our first installment. Yes, I do talk about pens, so please don't hold that against me - there's some other cool stuff in here too!

Being rude saves me several hours a week

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:18:00 +0000

At least once a day, I get some kind of email newsletter sent through to me. I have not spoken with the sender in years, and I don’t actually read the content. The email will last less than ten seconds in my inbox before being consigned to the watery depths of my recycle bin. Incidentally, how politically correct is that? It’s not a recycling bin – it’s the trash. It’s not like my deleted files are going to be remade into something more useful is it?

Here’s the thing. Each one of these emails has an unsubscribe option down the bottom, but I don’t want to click on it. It’s not because I believe that, at some point, they might send me something useful – I mean, how would I know, because I’ve already told you that I don’t read it.

The reason I don’t unsubscribe is to spare the sender’s feelings. I don’t want someone to know that I am no longer interested in what he or she has to tell me, but I don’t want to upset them either.

Am I doing them a disservice? Absolutely. Any smart business keeps metrics on everything, and if they’re doing a mailing campaign, they want to keep track on just how many emails they’re sending out.

How proud the firm that can boast that they’ve just completed an email campaign to 50,000 recipients! Yeah, well – that’s lovely, but just how many people actually read the email and took advantage of the information or offer being shared? “We’re delighted to have had 15 new enquiries,” they say.

OK, so 15 is actually pretty good – but it’s only 0.03% - which is not so impressive.

The trouble is that we are a society of polite liars. We reject sales calls by telling people we’re in meetings. We tell people we’ll get back to them when we know we’re not really interested. We tell people we’ll ‘think about it’ when we’ve already made up our minds that the answer is no.

Why must we equate honesty with rudeness? Surely it’s so much ruder to let someone believe that they may be about to do some business with us when we know that they won’t.

Now there are plenty of people who think I’m rude. I tell people I’m not interested, or that I’m not going to take part in a certain activity. It’s not that I’m busy or have something more important – I’m just not interested. Certainly I often get challenged as to why, and that is a good conversation, rather than an attempt to close a sale.

I’m not suggesting that you shut every opportunity down before it starts to blossom, but you know as well as I do that there are whole bunch of things that come into you on a daily basis which simply stir no emotional response. They are blank space, and they’re stealing your life from under you.

Just think about how much of your busy time you could claw back if you just told people “no” instead of “I’ll let you know”. Sales people will stop calling, irrelevant emails will stop arriving and unnecessary meetings will cease to be.

Doesn’t that sound like heaven?

You're on a roll

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:33:00 +0000

Have you ever played darts? I don’t mean pinning a photo of some Z list celebrity on a board and aiming for the eyes – I mean proper, normal darts?

If you have, even just once or twice, then you’ll be familiar with the fact that if you throw them very quickly in succession, that the second and third dart are more likely to land quite close to the first one. It’s like your arm has some sort of targeting mechanism that works for very small periods of time.

Professional darts players know this too. If you ever watch them play, you can see that in the earliest stages of the game, when they’re trying to score as much as possible, that they barely pause between throws.

How is this relevant to you? Well the same could be said of sales people. Have you ever noticed that once a particular sales person gets a good order, that another two of three seem to come along almost immediately? To coin a phrase, these people are “on a roll”.

Gamblers have winning streaks, sales people have roles, but it all comes down to the same thing. Positive results have a sort of magnetism to them. You get one great result and you feel good about it. That positive, good feeling feeds back on itself and you grow more and more successful.

But it’s not all tree hugging, hippy crap – sure, there is something to be said for a positive vibe, but in isolation it’s about as much use as a pork pie at a Barmitzvah.

Feeling good and positive changes the way we act. We speak with more confidence, we smile more, we’re open to new ideas and conversations, hence we essentially become someone that others actually want to do business with.

Armed with this, it’s easy to work out how to turn your losing streak into a winning one. Just tell yourself that it’s finished. It happens to everyone and thanks very much but you’re done with it now. Now take a deep breath and then tell yourself that you are in the midst of another winning streak. Really take the time to believe it, and then pick up the phone and make your next sales call.

If you’ve convinced yourself effectively, you’ll notice a pleasant change in the way people respond to you, and before very long, that winning streak that you just made up will actually become real.

Good luck.

My Supermarket Thinks I'm an Idiot

noreply@blogger.com (Paul J Rose) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:01:00 +0000

Now I don't think it's fair to name names here - in fact it may even constitute liable, but I'm getting just a little bit fed up with my local supermarket. I'm faced with aisle upon aisle of special offers - buy one get one free, buy two for only £5, buy three and the cheapest item costs nothing and blah blah blah.

The trouble is that these offers are robbing people of their hard earned cash - buying two perishable items, desperately believing that they'll eat both of them before their sell by date and giving themselves a pat on the back for saving that all important 50p.

But the deals are all wrong, and to illustrate my point - here are three deals that I spotted whilst shopping last night:

Dairylea Cheese Slices - perfect for the burgers that you'll be doing on the BBQ this weekend. 16 slices will cost you £1.86. Not bad. However, 8 slices will cost you £1.25 and this week it's by one, get one free! What moron is going to be buying the 16 pack?

Caffeine Free Diet Coke - my wife drinks it so don't judge me. A pack of 8 cans for only £3.50, or if you prefer, you can take home a pack of 12 cans for.....wait for it.....£3.50!

Fabric Softener - 1.5l for just £3.37, or you can buy 750ml for £1.67. Hold on a sec - doesn't that mean that if I buy two bottles I actually save money? Well yes it does, and this is a major bone of contention for me, because these people are essentially encouraging people to go through more packaging. It's ecologically unsound to encourage us to buy 2 smaller bottles as opposed to one big one, and the argument against that could fill another blog all on its own.

The supermarket's response to these errors? "Well it's the price we're told to sell at," oh come off it, you're a major client to the suppliers, so you should be able to dictate the prices that you charge, don't go fobbing it off on some faceless distributor! Now I want to see how many more of these ridicuous offers are out there, so please send them to me, either as a comment to this blog or on an email, and let's see if we can collectively do something about this.

Remember, I won't name names - but every little helps.