Housing Giants - April 24, 2008 - (Page 12)

SELL By Rick Heaston, R.A. Heaston and Co. IT’S AN IMAGE PROBLEM Salespeople have more to overcome than a bad market. JACK CAREW, author of “You’ll Never Get No For An Answer,” tells an interesting story about sales and selling. Not a long time ago, Jack had to participate in a military academy service honoring one of his friends. Following the ceremony, he engaged the dean of students with a simple question: “What are some of the career choices your graduates choose if they don’t stay in the service?” The dean’s answer was straightforward. They had professionals – the type who go into medicine, law, engineering and teaching – and those who weren’t. They ended up in sales. Jack was shocked. As a salesperson, he had never thought of himself as someone who couldn’t make it; he had always thought of himself as a professional with unusual skills and resources. But then it struck him. He didn’t have an advanced degree in selling — and that made a lot of difference to the dean, who believed salespeople 12 HOUSING GIANTS.4.24.08 suffered in terms of professional and social respectability. Plus, Jack hadn’t succeeded in other professions. It bugged Jack so much he mentioned it to his publisher at Simon & Schuster, who related a similar story. The publisher talked about attending a prep school reunion. As his peers got around to discussing what they were doing for a living, he mumbled something about publishing, unable to say that he “sold” books for a living. And at that point, it hit him. The problem was image! IMAGE ISSUES Salespeople today have an image problem. That and our sales training programs are at the root of our problem. Sales training can be reduced to two forms: technical training and technique training. Technical training involves our product and involves everything from appliances to mortgages to construction methods. Technique training involves the things we do when dealing with customers, WWW.HOUSINGGIANTS.COM http://www.carew.com/about.php http://WWW.HOUSINGGIANTS.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Housing Giants - April 24, 2008

Housing Giants - April 24, 2008 Contents Viewpoint News and Moves Sell Workforce Housing The New Housing Demographics

Housing Giants - April 24, 2008

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