While it could be legitimately argued that most Americans are not terribly conscientious about dental hygiene and consume far too much in the way of sugary foods (especially young people) and therefore bear some personal responsibility here, this is not true of all Americans. Congenital problems such as Type 1 (childhood onset) diabetes can cause dental health issues as well as other genetic factors. I
t is also not true that dental crowns are a cosmetic procedure. While there are some cosmetic benefits to having dental crowns placed, the fact is that the primary reason for dental crowns is to restore function to damaged teeth.
In the meantime, the decision of whether or not to have dental crowns placed will continue to be a financial decision more than a health-related one for most Americans.
This said, the actual cost of dental crowns can vary tremendously. The price per tooth can range from $300 to $3000, depending on numerous factors - not the least of which is where and by whom the procedure is being performed. Other factors affecting the cost of dental crowns are:
- materials - complexity of the procedure (including additional treatment of underlying structure) - experience and training on the part of the dentist - office costs and fees - insurance coverage and deductibles
Even if you have dental insurance coverage, expect a fight from your insurance company when it comes to dental crowns. They make money only when claims are denied, not from paying them out; they will therefore will claim that your crowns are a cosmetic procedure, and not medically necessary. What you will have to do is:
(A) Provide thorough documentation of the medical necessity of the procedure (including a second opinion, if possible).
(B) Prepare to fight - and contact your state’s Insurance Commissioner, keeping careful records of all communications.
(C) If possible, be very noisy about it if the insurance company persists in being unreasonable. Write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, or try to get interviewed for a “human interest” story on the local TV or radio station. Most of these large corporations are very concerned about their image, and will quickly acquiesce in order to avoid public embarrassment.
Money - whether it’s in the form of increased revenue or decreased expenses - is what makes the business world go ’round. Save someone time and you’ve decreased their expenses. Increase the reach of their message and you’ve increased their revenue. Either way, you’ve helped them make more money.
Making more money requires a single sentence, and there - in the title of this article - I just helped you make more money. that was it.
Did you miss it? I’ll say it again: “Let me help you make more money.” If you can honestly say that to your B2B customers, you’ll be rich in no time. It’s guaranteed.
Stop thinking about yourself. Don’t worry about your own needs. Yes, I know that’s difficult, but having a focus on helping your customer make more money is the surest approach to wealth.
Bill Gates (the richest man in the known universe) didn’t say “Buy Windows software so that I can be rich.” he said “Buy Windows software so that your corporate productivity goes up.” Buyers beat a path to the door of the new company he named Microsoft. He offered the most cost effective solution available in the market.
He found a need and he filled it. Can you?
“Let me help you make more money.” It’s an irresistable offer to business buyers.
“Let me help you make more money.” It’s a conversation starter that works in any situation. If you’re worried that you don’t have a good “elevator pitch”, start with an offer of helping someone to make more money.
Turn to the executive in the power suit beside you and say “Let me help you make more money.” and you instantly have the full and complete attention of someone who barely noticed you a moment ago. Someone lost in thought, worried about the bottom line, trying to get ahead in the marketplace.
Every corporate executive, small business person and home business owner is looking for ways to make more money. It’s a universal concept and it’s one that you can capitalize on in your own business.
No executive on earth is going to say “No, thank you.” to an offer like that. You know the executive is going to say “Really? How?” and then you have their attention. At the very least, they’ll want to hear what you have in mind. Just capturing their attention brings you closer to a potential sale.
Then bring the deal home. Demonstrate the ways in which your offer saves money, time, increases the reach of a message, improves bottom line results - whatever it is that you’re in business to do. Help them see how your offer helps them make them more money.
Your choice of materials for store fixtures includes wood, metal, plastic and conglomerate materials such as pressed wood and fiberboard. Depending upon your budget, the weight and size of the product being displayed and the style of your retail establishment, one of these raw materials will serve your needs well. Custom metal store fixtures have become quite popular recently due to advances in methods used to improve the look of metal and a serious plunge in its price. Previously thought of as too heavy, too expensive or too limited in style, metal was frequently passed over for other materials more easily altered to suit changing style trends. It used to be that metal was used primarily for industrial-type establishments, but metal is now sought after for modern looking point-of-purchase displays, counters, garment racks and shelving systems.
Modern metals are lightweight, easy to work with, attractive and Last much longer than most other materials used for store fixtures. Freestanding and mounted shelving units, called gondolas, are now made into merchandise display systems in a variety of galvanized metals. Gondolas are useful for displaying merchandise ranging from videocassettes to shoes and clothing to cosmetics. By using bonded coatings, custom metal store fixtures can imitate any appearance you’d like, even wood, at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, they almost never require any specialized maintenance beyond simple cleaning with a damp cloth. For price, durability and style, today’s metal store fixtures can’t be beat.
Some of the newer custom metal store fixtures are designed to imitate standard slatwall panels. Instead of pressed wood or fiberboard, strong, thin metal sheets are produced with holes or grooves that will support a variety of attractive accessories that enable hanging and shelving displays for many products. Whereas the weight of the product is factor when using slatwall panels for displays, custom metal store fixtures can support far more weight without bending, cracking or diminishing the overall appearance of the display.
Store Fixtures Info provides detailed information on metal, antique, wholesale, and used store fixtures and store fixture parts. Store Fixtures Info is the sister site of Mannequins Web.
Do you remember that fable - one of Aesop’s, maybe - about the Emperor who wore no clothes, and the nice young man that paid the ultimate price for audaciously pointing that out?
Now, let’s fast-forward a few millennia, and recast this fable in a 21st century look and feel. To make things as simple as possible, let’s just go ahead and assume that the entire world of training is one big Emperor, and the multitudes of people who experience that training are, collectively, that Nice Young Man.
But this is where the similarities between these two tales should stop.
In the old-fashioned version, as you know, that exasperated young man - a kind of early ancestor to the whistle blower — pointed out that the Emperor wore no clothes; and he suffered dearly for it. Eventually, however, other folks caught on - Knights and Dukes and Lady’s and other important regal people - and things turned out okay in the end. The Emperor was dethroned; or at least, given a bathrobe.
In our modern version, however, things are not unfolding with such bold, visible steps. Today’s Nice Young Employee - which, as noted above, is the collective mass of modern trainees - isn’t saying a word. Not even coughing. S/he isn’t even excusing himself from the training room right before the ice breaker, and returning seven and a half hours later during evaluations.
No, s/he’s doing something altogether more devastating than his ancestor who merely inspired a revolution. S/he’s detaching himself from your company, bit by evil bit, second by agonizing second.
I agree with you.
It really doesn’t get sadder - or more ironic — for training and HR professionals than this. Here you are investing in someone, spending time to develop their skills and increase their capacity, and there they are, playing hangman on the handouts, mentally crafting the opening lines of their next cover letter, and popping red-striped mints every 15 minutes to maintain a sugar sustained semi-wakeful state that will invariably lead to collapse by about 2:15pm.
Future historians will reflect upon this phenomenon as “an interesting development in the early 21st century”.
Current Sales Managers (and those who love them), however, choose a somewhat different approach to summarize this, and it goes like this: AHHHHHHHHHHH!
Why so many H’s?
Because Sales Pros know - better than they deserve to - that there is an ironic wisdom emerging here that goes like this: if your staff is not effectively trained, then they might leave your company. But what happens if your staff isn’t effectively trained, and they don’t leave your company? They’ll become an albatross to themselves and to your sales success.
So you lose on both ends. Something must be done. And quick!
The Problem, The Hatred, and the Blame
So what’s the problem? Why do your employees fear training? Is it your fault?
These are important questions, and they can all be answered in a row: the problem is that your trainees aren’t approaching the training with the right perspective; your employees hate training because of this same reason; it’s not your fault at all.
At least, it’s not intentionally your fault.
And there’s another really good question that many will ask: can it be fixed?
The answer: yes, absolutely!
Your task is to get the biggest bang for your training dollar; and for that, most of you will look outside your company walls. This is perfectly normal and largely successful (when it’s successful), because people who know how to train are invariably going to be in a better position to do it than those who don’t.
So far, so good.
But how to you actually go creating the most effective training experience? Here’s how.
The 4 MOST IMPORTANT Factors in a Successful Training Experience
1. You must enable trainee buy-in.
Psychiatrists have been telling us for years (er…or they’ve been telling a good friend of ours…yeah…a friend…) that a patient has to want help before help can be provided. Fair enough. The same axiom holds true in the training world. You must provide your trainees with the right training framework. And what is the right training framework? Easy: they must want to be trained.
If it’s going to help them increase sales, convince them of how wonderful this will be. If it’s going to increase their capacity to earn more commission, tell them. Work with your outsourced trainer before the actual training event and promote these benefits.
Remember, please: negative expectations from trainees will pollute even the most well designed training, just as the world’s best psychiatrist can’t help our… friend…overcome his fear of circus clowns.
2. You must know what the problem is, and what the solution will be.
This one sounds too simple to be true. But you’d be amazed to see how often this factor is overlooked. Do you know what needs to be fixed? Is it deal-closing, or relationship building? Do you want to improve ROI? Motivate? Cut down on process redundancy? Align communication from different units, functions; heck, even cubicles and floors? If you don’t know what’s wrong, you won’t know how to solve it.
Or worse (and yes, there is a worse here), you might actually create problems by trying to solve the wrong thing. Scary, yes, but it happens. If you’re trying to solve a team-building problem by promoting individual accomplishment in your training, then you’re actually making things worse. And on top of that: you’re paying for it! AHHHHH!
3. Measure and monitor your sales metrics. All of the training in our solar system is regrettably not going to improve your sales metrics if you don’t know what those metrics are, what they should be, and whether or not you’re moving in the right direction. You want to measure before and after the training to gauge effectiveness.
4. Who’ll own post-training?
One of the greatest advancements in the language of business is that people are now told that they own certain tasks. So who in your company will own the essential task of post-training?
What?
Post-training. You may have successfully taken care of #1, #2, and #3 above, but what happens a week, a month, or a year after the training ends? Who will ensure that its legacy lives beyond the actual training experience? Memories fade, and enthusiasm wanes. You must elect someone capable of this ownership task, and empower her/him to do what is necessary to ensure that post-training gains are achieved over the long-term.
Training is not a 4-Letter Word
Please remember: as a decision-maker and training change agent, the problems that we’re solving here aren’t your fault. The perception of training has changed dramatically in the last decade; and it’s something that more and more people - especially skilled/knowledge workers - are disliking; even resenting.
Yet what hasn’t changed, and what will never change regardless of how dramatic things get, is that training is an essential part of a successful enterprise. The strategy is therefore not to fly the white flag of human resource surrender, but to approach training with total success in mind. Implementing the four steps noted above will firmly put you on the right track, and head you in the right long-term direction.
Many new to the Web dream of building a successful online business. It’s not uncommon to find these newcomers putting up cash for a “business opportunity” that “sounds” good. They may even try a couple more before coming to realize these programs earn money only for those they bought from.
Next, they may buy into a package containing a strategy for growing a particular online business. And some such programs do provide what is needed. Yet failure is more likely than success.
Why Success Eludes Many
A common cause of failure comes from a lack of understanding about what it takes to do much of anything. LEARNING is required. There’s WORK to be done. And you’ll need to SELL successfully.
These are “stop” words for many. They feel they know enough now that further learning should not be required. They are not keen on work. And the idea of selling is somehow abhorrent. “Learn,” “work,” and “sell” stop such people dead in their tracks. Success is denied, online and offline.
Yet the essence of any business is selling. And there’s work to be done behind the scenes to keep the business operating smoothly. What’s more, there is a continuing flow of things to be learned in order to keep up with the times and ahead of your competition.
A Different Look At Selling
Selling is what business is all about. Profits come only from sales. Without an effective sales effort, profits will not amount to much.
But you may be looking at this word in a limited way. Selling doesn’t necessarily mean stalking the Ford showroom floor or peddling encyclopedias door to door.
Think about most things you buy. How are they “sold” to you? Often indirectly. Here’s an example.
How Your Local Hardware Store Sells Like Crazy
After entering the store, chances are you wander about, checking out this and that, collect a few items, then pay and leave. Just exactly who “sold” you anything? And how did they do so?
Simple. The store owner has stocked his shelves with the products you and his other customers need. And he’s gone to some length to make it easy for you to find what you are looking for. What he’s done is “offer” you the products he is selling.
One more element is required, but it can hardly be called selling.
If you can’t figure which of two pipe wrenches to buy, a clerk will be happy to explain the difference between them so you can make an informed decision. This isn’t a salesperson in action. This is a representative of the store owner helping you make the best choice.
The success of some online businesses depends upon a very strong sales presentation which may be most of the site content. However, many online businesses operate in much the same manner as your local hardware store. You can do the same.
Selling Online
It is common to “display” products with words, and often with pictures. Details of all kinds are available on a click. And there’s contact details if more information is needed.
This is not selling in the classical sense of the word. It is simply a matter of making your products available to those who want them. Then providing whatever other information might be needed. And helping as possible with tricky buy decisions.
Selling a new gadget to make cooking easier that people have never heard about takes direct selling. But stick with products people want and understand, and they will need only the information you provide to make the buy decision.
Learning Is A Lifelong Task
Many people have learning mixed up with what was expected of them during their school days. Everybody was supposed to learn the same thing in the same amount of time. Which is nonsense, for we are not all the same. For those who did not rank high come grade day, learning became associated with lack of success at least, if not failure.
But it’s different now. There’s no teacher hounding you. No curriculum. If you love stereo speakers, dig into the details and find how Speaker A differs from Speaker B. Then share it with your customers. Charts and tables may be the extent of your “sales pitch.”
This is learning. And except for keeping up with changes in the area in which you are doing business, this may be all that’s required.
So Who Wants To Work?
Hardly anybody. But we do. And while it is work to set up a system to automate purchases on a website, there surely is not much required to sustain it.
In your online business, you may have to deal with delivery in some manner. This is work. Pretty dull and boring for the most part. Then you have to handle off-the-wall requests from customers. And, of course, complaints. Such tasks are not fun; they’re work.
Run The Red Light
Don’t let such words stop you. Run right through them.
> Learn what you need to know as you go along.
> Sell yourself, your site and products in a positive, understated manner.
> Work as required to build and sustain a site that brings home profits.
If you are not prepared to sell and to learn new things as they come along, then forget about building any business, online or offline.
As for work, it’s hard to figure a way to avoid it. It’s what puts food on the table. The reasonable options amount to working for somebody else. Or for yourself.
You’re being lied to.
Everywhere you turn someone’s pushing down your throat the belief that the secret to earning big money online is to drive tons of traffic to your site.
But I’m here to tell you the truth.
Even thought traffic is huge, the real “secret” is converting more of your visitors into buyers. You do this by crafting yourself the best grab them by the throat sales letter and proposition, and you make it downright impossible for the majority to refuse.
Just look at the facts, and you be the judge…
Imagine you’re driving 300 visitors a day to your site, and sell 1 in 100 of your prospects.
Sure, you can begin a massive promotion and drive 900 visitors to your site, making 9 sales a day. Or, you can polish up your sales letter and turn 1 in 3 into buyers and sell 9 without increasing your traffic.
Just think of the money you’ll save, and make, on polishing your sales presentation.
Now that you know the importance, how do you put it to work? There are a couple of options.
First, you can hire someone to do the writing. Find a copywriter that shows you samples and writes in a style that you want on your site.
Second, you can do it yourself.
Start with a headline. Right up front give your products strongest benefit. Make a promise in your headline, and then explain how the promise and benefits work to the customers potential in the body of your sales letter.
Create the main part of your sales letter as if it’s so irresistible that no one can refuse. Give them strong benefits. Show them your product is a huge value that can’t be missed.
Close your sales letter with the disadvantages of not accepting your offer. In the beginning, explain the downside, and end the proposition with the down side.
Give a strong satisfaction guarantee, and you’ve got a sales letter that grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go until they input their credit card information.
Of course, this is a basic list of your sales letters goal. There are plenty of resources and articles online that will teach you the complete story on banging out a sales letter that works. Explore and learn. Never give up the pursuit of making a sales letter that puts money in your pocket. It’s the best time and money investment you’ll ever make for your business.
No one can deny that sales closing techniques are absolutely vital in face-to-face selling. But often, people ask me if they can apply my powerful closing techniques to online marketing. My answer is an unequivocal, “Yes!”
Of course, there are some closing techniques that are more applicable to the Web than others — but I’ll show you magical closing secrets that can dramatically increase your web sales, and rapidly increase your online income. This works best on direct response websites - i.e., those that focus on getting an immediate response in the form of an order or lead.
Before we get started, I must emphasize that much of the sale is made in the presentation. The close is largely determined by how well you’ve presented the product to the prospect. Your objective, then, is to take the prospect smoothly past the point of closing, making it easy for him or her to come to a buying decision. You can accomplish this with the strategic use of questions.
The All-Important Opening Question
When you’re selling online, you don’t have the benefit of interacting with your prospect the way you would in face-to-face selling. Therefore, the first thing you say in your web copy has to be something that breaks preoccupation, grabs attention, and points to the result or benefit of the your product.
At any given moment, your prospect’s mind is preoccupied with dozens of things. Therefore, a well-crafted question will cause the prospect’s thinking to be directed to what you have to say.
Your opening question must be aimed at something that is relevant and important, and at something that your prospect needs or wants. What do sales managers, for instance, sit around and think about all day long? Increasing sales! Therefore, if your target market consists of sales managers, here’s an example of a question you can use as a headline or as the first part of your copy: “How would you like to see a method that would enable you to increase your sales by 20% to 30% over the next 12 months?”
When you ask such a question, the first thing that pops into the mind of the prospect should be, “What is it?” - whereupon you’ve captured his or her attention, and you can then begin to articulate how your product or service can solve the need posed by the question.
Plan your opening question carefully. If your opening question fails to break your prospect’s preoccupation and grab his attention, he will click away before giving you the opportunity to present your product or service.
Questions That Keep Them Involved
Questions are equally vital during the presentation, i.e., in the body of your web copy, for clearly explaining how your product or service solves your prospect’s problem in an easy, fast, or cost-effective way.
Therefore, install questions within your sales copy that capture attention. Keep your prospect involved, and keep his mind from wandering off in a different direction by using intriguing questions that grab his lapels and jerk him toward you. For the length of time that it takes a prospect to answer a question in his mind, you have his total attention. The prospect is drawn more and more into the sales process as your questioning proceeds. If your questions are logical, orderly and sequential, you can lead the prospect forward toward the inevitable conclusion to purchase your product or service.
Tip: Never say something if you can ask it instead! Think of how you can phrase your key selling points as questions. The person who asks questions has control!
Closing Questions that Presume the Sale
Just as questions are important at the beginning and the body of your web copy, they are even more vital at the end in gaining a commitment to action.
The key to asking a closing question is confident expectation. You must skillfully craft your question to convey that you confidently expect the prospect to say, “Yes” or to agree to the sale.
For example, you can pose the following question in your web copy: “When would you like to start using to multiply your profits?” In other words, you don’t ask if they want to buy your product, but when. This way, you’re asking for the sale expectantly, and the more confidently you expect to sell, the more likely it is that you will sell.
Tip: In crafting your closing question, include the benefit that your prospect will get from your product.
When you ask a compelling closing question, you diffuse the tension that normally creeps up on your prospect at the “moment of truth.” A prospect’s tension leads to the hesitance that kills so many sales - both online and offline.
To be truly persuasive in the selling process, learn to use questions judiciously throughout your web copy. Instead of trying to overwhelm your prospects with reasons and rationales for doing what you want them to do, ask strategic questions instead. When you take the time to plan the wording of your questions, your prospect will become more interested in your product — and consequently, you will make more sales.
Sean works for a major telecom company.
During one of our coaching sessions, he told me, “I’ve been diligent about following the sales process that my company believes is required to make a sale — but, for some strange reason, my prospects don’t want to fit into that process.
What am I doing wrong?”
Sean’s comment struck me because it spoke to years of traditional selling programs that promote linear selling — moving prospects along from one step to another until they say yes — as a “guarantee” of sales success.
But there’s an inherent conflict here.
Linear selling says that you have to impose a predetermined structure on building a relationship — but that’s by definition an unstructured process!
Suppose that the “next step” isn’t what the prospect wants?
“Wait a minute,” you might say. “What matters most is that I put as many prospects as possible into my sales process, and hopefully some of them will turn into sales.”
If you’re thinking that way, it’s definitely time for you to consider a different way of thinking.
Of course you can make sales using linear selling — but you’ll never know how many sales you’re losing week after week because you’re wearing the “blinders” of traditional selling.
If we fail to tune in to the natural rhythm of trust-building when two strangers become involved in developing a relationship…or if we try to force prospects into our process, we make the relationship about us and not them, whether we intend to or not.
And prospects sense that and pull back, because structured, linear sales processes don’t recognize the human elements required to build the relationships that ultimately lead to sales.
Before a sale can happen, prospects need to feel that you’re comfortable moving at their pace and their process.
If you try to force changes in that process, you’ll only set off alarms that will pigeonhole you with the negative stereotype of “salesperson.”
That’s why I advised Sean to work on becoming aware of the milestones that prospects set and that will guide his path to a sale.
He needed to learn to build enough trust with prospects that they would feel comfortable telling him the truth of their process and their decision making path.
“I totally accept the principles behind what you’re saying,” Sean then told me, “but I need to know more specifics about what to say and do in a sales situation.” Here are some suggestions I gave him:
* Integrate trust-building language into your conversations with prospects so they’ll feel comfortable telling you where they are at in their process. For example, saying “Where do you think we should go from here?” invites them to tell you the truth, while “Why don’t we set up a next appointment to discuss our next steps” gives the impression that you’re trying to take control.
* Rather than asking prospects overtly what their decision making process is, use softer language that they can understand from their perspective, for example, “What specific gates do you anticipate you’ll need to go through as you consider the proposition of purchasing the software to solve the business issues we discussed?”
* Don’t probe or “fish” for prospects’ “pain” as part of your sales process. Prospects have learned through long experience that the appearance of caring is usually a verbal ploy designed to move the sale forward according to the salesperson’s agenda. Instead, speak genuinely and with sincerity to what you know their core business issues are. You can find out what these are by getting in touch with customers who have already bought your product or service and asking, “What three or four business issues drove your decision to buy our product?” Chances are, your new prospect will be dealing with similar concerns.
Consider these ideas, and try these practical suggestions. They helped Sean feel better about letting go of the old ideas he’d been taught.
Maybe they’ll do the same for you.
I just returned from speaking in Istanbul, Turkey where I bought, no, I was sold, a rug and in the process learned that real selling, and especially Team Selling, is alive and well.
The Turkish people are warm and friendly so it was not unusual to be approached by a nice looking, well dressed man in his late 20’s as we stood there reading our map. “You are looking for Blue Mosque?” he asked in broken English. “I can show you where entrance is. Come this way.” With that he started across the street and my wife, son Tim and I followed.
As we walked down the long sidewalk that leads to the Blue Mosque, our new friend said, “I am Azad. I am not tour guide, but I show you. You see that building over there? That is family business. After you see Blue Mosque, maybe, just by accident, we sell you a rug. Just by accident.” At this point I knew we were in for a great experience that is uniquely Turkish, and we were not disappointed.
The tour of the Blue Mosque was fascinating. We learned about the thousands of blue tiles that are used to decorate the Mosque in place of pictures, which are banned in Mosques by the Muslim faith. Azad, who seemed to have a story to accompany each topic, answered every question we asked in wonderful detail. As we left the Mosque we followed our host down a narrow stone alley to an area full of interesting shops. Azad pointed to the nicest store on the block and said, “This is my family store. I show you.” We were escorted into a room that was filled with beautiful rugs stacked, rolled and piled neatly in every corner. Azad introduced us to his Uncle, Habib, who owned the store and said that he would like Habib to show us around. With that, Azad left and we never saw him again.
Habib was very well dressed in a blue blazer and starched shirt and he spoke perfect English, which we later learned, he acquired at school in London. “Please, sit.” Habib said, motioning us to the couch. “Before I show you a few of my carpets, it is our tradition that we serve you something to drink. With that, one of his assistance entered carrying a traditional Turkish silver tea service with wonderful apple tea for three. Now the real show began.
Habib told us about the various styles, materials, patterns and origins of the rugs in his shop. For each type he mentioned, one of his cousins found a beautiful example and flew it out before us. I say ‘flew’ because that’s what he did. He was able to unroll a 5×7 rug and then spin it in the air so that it landed at our feet with the fringe perfectly straight and the carpet unwrinkled. One after another the rugs were spread out before us until there were easily several dozen rugs of every possible description piled on the floor. Finally, Habib asked, “Just so I can get a sense for your preferences, can you tell me, if you were to enjoy a Turkish carpet in your home, what size would fit best?” Gina and I agreed that the 5×7 would be best for a floor rug.
Again Habib asked, “If you were to have one of these beautiful carpets to enjoy in your home and pass on to your children, which style would you like?” His assistants moved carpets around until we had agreed on the basic style we liked. The process of elimination continued with up to three cousins flying rugs in and out of the display area until only four were left. Habib said, “Do you have a favorite among these?” We made our final choice and the cousins removed all except our favorite rug. Habib complimented our choice and assured us that we had picked the Rolls Royce of carpets. Knowing what a Rolls costs, I knew we were in trouble!
Now came the price. Habib opened his calculator and started entering numbers. In a few seconds he turned to us and said, “In US dollars, this carpet is $5,300.” Now I was prepared for a shock, but that was way out of line with our expectations, so let the games begin.
After many cycles of offer and counter offer, we finally set our firm price at $2,000. Habib said, $2,500? I apologized and assured him that my offer had nothing to do with the quality of his carpets but simply our budget and $2,000 was already $500 over our budget. We settled on $2,000 and walked out with our new rug.
But what had I learned? First, that Habib, Azad and his family were willing to spend a great deal of time with us before we ever talked price. The tour of the Mosque, the dozens of rugs, and the wonderful tea all added value to the sale.
We had also seen a great example of Team Selling. Azad did the prospecting, the cousins made the presentations and Habib was the closer. They worked together like they had rehearsed it a hundred times. In fact they had, and as a result their communications were flawless. Azad brings in 10 prospects each day and Habib has a 70% closing ratio.
We can learn a lot from the real pros in this world.
For a free copy of “5 Steps to Building a Great Sales Team”, please email article6@waterhousegroup.com and ask for article #6.
Stephen Waterhouse is Principal and Founder of Waterhouse Group (www.waterhousegroup.com). They specialize in helping companies increase their sales and profits. He can be reached at 1-800-57-LEARN or steve@waterhousegroup.com.
Re-Print Permission This article may be reprinted in it’s entirety if the following conditions are met:
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The Arti & Hotel is situated in the historical center of Florence, just a few steps away from the Cathedral and the Academy of Fine Arts.
Small and charming it welcomes its guests in a family type atmosphere; it has nine rooms all different from each other in colours and furnishings and equipped with all the modern comfort(air-conditioning, mini-bar, wi-fi connection free of charge, satellite TV, safe box and double-glazed windows). In the attic of the building there is a lovely patio with a small bar and the breakfast room as well as a gracious little terrace with view of the roofs of the city.
How to reach us:
FROM ROME
EXIT Autostrada A1 / E35
At sign FIRENZE SUD, follow Firenze centro piazza Beccarla.
FROM PERUGIA
At sign CORCIANO follow the motorway Raccordo Perugia A1 for 29.5 km
At sign CASTIGLIONE DEL LAGO follow the motorway Raccordo Autostradale Bettolle-Perugia for 18.9 km
At sign FIRENZE(A1)/ROMA/BETTOLLE/FOIANO DELLA CHIANA follow the ramp Svincolo Bettolle for 266 m
At sign SIENA/SINALUNGA turn left, follow Sp327 for 1 km
At sign FIRENZE/ROMA turn left, follow the ramp Svincolo Val Di Chiana for 611 m
At sign MONTE SAN SAVINO follow the motorway A1-E35 for 26.7 km
At sign AREZZO follow the motorway Svincolo Arezzo for 357 m
FROM ANCONA
Follow Strada Statale Adriatica for 2.5 km
At sign GRANCETTA/BOLOGNA-TARANTO follow the ramp Svincolo Ancona Nord for 1.1 km
At sign BOLOGNA follow the motorway A14-E55 for 40 km
At sign FANO turn right, follow the motorway Svincolo Fano for 554 m
At sign FANO SUD/ZONA INDUSTRIALE turn right, follow Ss3 for 38.4 km
Follow Ss257 for 51.3 km until CITTÀ DI CASTELLO
Follow Ss221/ Via Della Bastiglia for 398 m
At sign CESENA turn left, follow the motorway Strada Statale Tiberina for 14.4 km
At sign CESENA turn right, follow E78-Ss73 for 805 m
Turn right, follow Sp43 for 1.3 km
If you think that Arti & Hotel is not exactly what you are looking for, click here to visit our catalogue for Hotels in Italy, and make a search for another hotel in Florence: we are pretty sure that you can easy find the Florence accommodation that can best fit your need for a perfect stay in Italy.
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