About writing the book After selling merchandise and services from the time I was 9 to the time I was 23, I kept a lot of notes. I had been sent to so many sales seminars; Dale Carnegie, Earl Nightingale, Zig Ziglar and on and on. They all said the same thing: have your product clean and ready or have extreme knowledge of your service. Be Prepared as the Boy Scouts would say. I remember, at one of these seminars, I was talking to L Ron Hubbard. The author, and founder of the Scientology religion. These people were all positive and had the same lines everywhere they went. They all had one basic philosophy: ABC; Always Be Closing. I had heard this for years. I was 23 and had a doctor’s appointment. I walked into his office, he asked me where it hurts and did it hurt if I bent it this way or that way (it was my wrist). I had no idea if he was going to put a cast on it, give me a shot at the spot or give me pills. He opted for some pills. He wrote something down on a sheet of paper, handed it to me; I went to my pharmacist and bought the pills. As I was waiting I realized that was the greatest sales job in the world. My doc asked me where it hurt and gave me a prescription to fix it and all I had to do was pay for it. I took that philosophy and stopped the nonsense of always be closing. The right thinking is, always be opening, just like my doctor did. Sk Questions: find out where it hurts. I was selling copiers for a company named APECO. They were terrible. Good bad or ugly I had to sell them. Our regional manager came down from Cleveland and wanted to go on a few appointments with the sales people. Nobody wanted to be with him. He was scary; bad skin, 350 lbs. and talked too loud. I wanted his job so I volunteered to take him with me. In an office building, he gave the “Watch me and learn” speech including the ABC law from beginning to end. We walked into an attorney’s office and asked the secretary who made the decisions on new office equipment. She brought us to one of the attorney’s office. We introduced ourselves and Rich (Manager) started talking about this big plastic fish hanging on this guy’s wall. That went on and on. Finally he asked the attorney if he needed a new copier. The answer was a no and I lost a half hour out of my life. The next office we went into, over his objections, I told him I would do the work. It was another law office. The secretary and the two of us sat down in the buyer’s office. I took out a pad and started asking questions; just like my doctor... I asked the buyer if changing the toner bottle was very messy. He never did it, I knew that, but the secretary piped up, it was dirty and created all kinds of problems. I wrote these notes down. Is it as fast as you need? Both the buyer and the secretary said no. Is it too loud? The answers came back just the way I wanted them to. I told them I had the medicine to make them feel better (the machine that would do the job faster, quieter, cleaner, etc.). They loved it and had the prescription filled (That was my sales order). I knew sales had nothing to do with closing, it’s all about OPENING. I did so well, I started giving corporate sales seminars. I went from that company to one based out of Philadelphia, using the same philosophy (Scriptomatic, Inc.). They loved it; I kept getting better at it and found myself being flown all over to teach it. I thought during my travels, I should keep notes of funny or difficult customer sales. I did. After another 15 or years went by, I had a 3 book encyclopedia of anecdotes, long stories and major successes. I sat at my desk and thought “Who in the world would buy these? I know I wouldn’t want to”. At that time, I was flying to Chicago what seemed like every other week. I put off doing anything about those books. After starting my own business, I found those 3 volumes and figured out if I took out all the trips, sales calls, funny and disastrous sales events and made it the size of a reader’s digest, I might sell a few. It took me about a year to finish. I kept thinking of all those one hour flights to and from Chicago. I had read every magazine on the planes, and then, even was taking my own books with me to read. I felt if I could write a book that in a one hour flight could change a salesperson’s life that should be my mission. I put it together, designed a cover and was ready to have a publisher just throw money at me for the right to publish my book. The agents I found only wanted published writers as well did the publishers. I decided to print and publish it myself. I made 10,000 copies of “Hammer ‘Em”. A few of our salespeople were dealing directly with the home offices of Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, etc. No major interest. I was dealing with Dun & Bradstreet and approached them. D & B has offices all over the world. They seemed to like what I wrote and bought many books. Amazon bought some, but they paid us extremely slow and in year two of our sales, they decided that making a profit off of their products wasn’t enough, so they charged us a fee because they could. We told them no thanks. The book is still sound logic but doesn’t address email or the internet; none were around at that time and it has errors that Word didn’t pick up. Can you imagine someone actually talking to someone else? I can. I did it for over 50 years and was pretty good at picking up on wishy-washy buyers; buyers who would never just tell me “Pass”. They can do that in email now. I read my book every year or so as I forget what’s in it. There are just so many good sales stories to tell. Our email specialists will have no good stories to tell ever, I’m afraid. It’s hard for me to speak on the phone anymore, so I come in, do paperwork, make offers with our buying staff, website work and whatever else needs done by someone glued to his chair. I really miss the yelling and negotiating with our customer base. That’s the how and why my first book was written. #bookwritten
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 10:45:21 +0000