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Finding Your Voice in Selling – Part 1

by | Mar 29, 2013 | Uncategorized

A Proven System

It is pretty common for people to start their own business under the name of an established company.  You see this all the time in direct selling companies that sell their wares through home parties or through a persons network of family and friends.  You find it in financial services companies who hire agents to sell insurance policies.  You taste it in when eating a sandwich in a franchised restaurant.

All these have some type of system — rules, tips, guidelines, best practices — to make you successful.  The implied message is “Do this and you will make money!  Your risk will pay off, and all this will be worth it.”

For the most part, they are right.

Somewhere in each of these companies is a team of people who have combed through all the data, listened to all the stories and come up with what tends to work best.

The first and best piece of advice I can give you here is to throw yourself into whatever system you have been given.

  • Work the phones like they recommend
  • Put ads in the paper like they recommend
  • Send emails like they recommend
  • Talk to prospective clients like they recommend

Until you have gone through the width and breadth of their system, you will have no right to say, “This isn’t working for me.”

I was having a meeting at Panera earlier this week and I sat a few tables away from an older, well polished individual who was offering an industrial version of a be-your-own-boss position (probably as a manufacturer’s rep) to a guy in his mid-30’s.  No doubt the guy offering the opportunity had some type of proven system to offer the prospective salesman.

  • Here’s how we find prospects for our products
  • Here’s what we say on the phone to get an in-person meeting
  • Here is how we quote our products

The new guy would do well to listen to the voice of experience.

The Rest of the Story

Some of you are saying, “Jason, I’ve been there and done that. Their system does not really work for me.”

  • Maybe you were sold a bill of goods on how fantastic the system was.
  • It could be that the system works well for others, but just does not work for you.
  • Perhaps you don’t have a system at all because you are not working under the banner of another company.

Either way, you find yourself at a crossroads.

“Do I stick with it, or do I bail?”

In my next article in the series I will cover how to find your voice in selling.