TGIF...after a long hard satisfactory week.

I love Fridays! It's the day I can most easily make contact with my sales manager clients.....finish the week with a new business commitment from a client.... there is NOTHING better than a final order last thing Friday...Bliss!

I review the week...what have I achieved this week?....what have I learned?....what have I done to move my business forward?

And my reward is a round of golf (if I'm lucky), a coupleof hours of landscape painting, a visit to the bookshop (essential), and doing the odd jobs for She Who Likes To Be Appreciated.

Two things come into my mind as I review the last five working days:

It astonishes me that people going for job interviews sometimes do so little preparation- for what they (mostly) claim is the big career move for them. Interviewing a candidate on behalf of a client last Tuesday, she claimed she had "always wanted toget into selling". Technically qualified but without experience- my client is happy to develop the successful candidate - she displayed no idea of what the selling role entails. When asked, she admitted she had never read a book on selling, hadn't even typed the word into Google to see what might emerge.

Qualifed, bright , but clueless.

A job interview is the most predictable and probably most stressful examination we ever face. Yet, the majority of questions you may be asked are highly predictable. There is no excuse for the lack of - or sheer neglect of - preparation.....Next!

But then, maybe I should not be surprised, since it is common for many sellers to arrive for their "normal" appointments with their "hands in their pockets", totally devoid of preparation and hoping that someone will make the right noises. It seems sellers are more oriented to action than to thinking. Very 20th century in the current climate of competition....sigh...

The other thing that springs to mind is how terrific Service Engineers can be as sellers for their company. The client has no reservations about them....they are seen as "fixers"...they get the customer back on the road. The value of a well-placed recommendation to action by a service engineeer should not be underestimated in terms of adding toa company's bottom line revenue and volume.

All the SEs need is some coaching on how to professionally present recommendations and suggestions, without sounding like car salesmen (this is their big fear). My group of SEs this week couldn't wait to get out the door to speak to their customers, when we finished our session.

Health & Blessings until next itime.

Maitiu
www.greatexpectationscoaching.com