While you know me as author of this sales prospecting tips blog, you probably aren’t aware I’m also an eBay enthusiast and eBay Consignment Seller who achieved eBay Power Seller status in 2003-2007 by successfully mining a neglected niche market.
Like many eBay consignment sellers, after selling their miscellaneous household items, I was stumped with where to get inventory to fuel my weekly online auctions. Exhausting and frustrating visits to weekly garage sales and consignment shops annoyed me. My peers told me of their nightmare experiences with Drop Shippers. Nope, not for me!
FACT: Where can I get stuff to sell online? Is one of the most popular questions queried online Search Engines. Many of the unemployed, who once poked fun at eBay, are now giving it a serious second look as their day job, especially with Corporate America’s daily announcements of huge layoffs and hiring freezes.
Never one to let a challenge stump me, answering this question became my battle cry. One 2003 February Sunday, while sitting in church, the answer (answers) came to me.
The answers were sitting all around me. The answers were the retired seniors in my church family. Just suppose, I could figure out how to mine the real antiques and collectibles seniors stored in their attics, cellars and garages? I bet some of them could even use the cash!
I did it and I was very successful at it! So, I wrote an ebook about my detailed marketing plan with all the fixings. Everything that worked for me, why it worked and, how to duplicate my success including free prospect list URLs and working forms are included in this 4 chapter ebook. I held nothing back!
The title of this week’s blog: Making “Real Money” on eBay is the title of the first reader review given my new ebook. I’m thrilled the reviewer saw fit to grade it 5 of 5 possible stars. Also, he placed it in the must-read category for anyone seeking to earn big bucks on eBay as a Consignment Seller.
This is the subject of this blog for these 3 reasons:
At hundreds of workshops I conducted around this country for 17 years, I always said: finding a need and filling it was the Number 1 Rule of Successful Marketing. Add the right timing of marketplace introduction, a product which solves a contentious problem; and, make it affordable. This is the secret sauce for a marketing success recipe.
Wouldn’t it be great if eBay once again became an American Success Story by putting Unemployed Americans back to work? Like the mythical, Phoenix bird rising from the ashes! What a hoot, if my little ebook had something to do with this happy ending.
To get your FREE Preview peek, downloadable to your PC, cell phone, smart phone, electronic ebook reader or PDA, go to: www.mobipocket.com and type: Gordie into the Search box at the top of the page.
It’s appropriately titled: How to Get Stuff* to Sell on eBay (*an Endless Supply of Real Antiques and Collectibles, NOT Drop Ship) and I think it does the Number 1 Rule of Marketing proud. Do you agree?
As long as I’m attacking useless technologies as discussed in my last post, it’s appropriate for me to attack the ‘horrid’ and rude practice of multi-tasking.
Multi-tasking is roughly defined: as doing several activities at one time. It is another profane transition of our Techno Insane Age because it couldn’t and wouldn’t have existed in past historic periods.
Can you imagine, text-messaging, while being chased (on horseback) by a posse of yelping, scalp-hunting Indians incensed by your poaching for souvenirs on their sacred burial grounds!
Little-known trivia, but scalp-hunting was introduced to the American West by French trappers who fought in the French-Indian War, a Pre-American Revolution conflict conducted along the NE Canadian-American Frontier.
Removing a victim’s scalp, with a dull knife, while he or she was semi-conscious, must have been a painful and humiliating experience usually followed with a slow, horrific death.
Dangerous Times required vigilance of period participants and incidental distractions such as multi-tasking would certainly have brought many more lives to a premature end. Personally, I don’t know which is worse:
· The woman in the car to the right of me on the Interstate adjusting her makeup in the visor mirror, while passing me at 65 mph; or,
· A fellow eating, shouting into his cell phone; and weaving in and out of lanes.
Both are endangering themselves and anyone in their vicinity as long as they retain control of their speeding vehicle.
Some who are reading my rant are probably deriding me as a relic from the distant past. I’ll never know unless you Comment, will I? So, Comment!
Nor, are we limited to examples of multi-tasking in the privacy of one’s car.
A sales client who owns a growing distribution business in Tampa, told me how he quickly shuffled a sales candidate out of his office, when the ‘offender’ answered his cell phone during their job interview.
There was no: “Excuse me, this is my mother who is experiencing a seizure!” …….or, “My wife is in labor and I must answer this call.”
They just do it regardless of time, place and those present with a total lack of etiquette or disregard of respect for others’ conversations or privacy.
Back to the ‘horrid practice’ of multi-tasking. Is it possible to hold 2 separate thoughts in one’s conscious mind at the same time? No, according to scientists who study the mechanics of the human brain.
While driving an automated 4,000 pound vehicle only requires one hand, answering one’s cell phone with the other is a distraction which can result in life-threatening issues.
Taking one’s eyes and mental concentration off the road ahead for a few seconds has fatal consequences as substantiated by mounting Department of Motor Vehicle statistics.
A ‘few seconds’ distraction has killed or maimed drivers, their passengers and victims of this callous loss of focus. Public Etiquette and Multi-Tasking are two opposing forces and when mixed make it impossible to practice both, simultaneously.
Time Management and Human Performance Experts, in growing numbers, agree: it is more efficient and effective to begin one activity and to concentrate on it until completion. Then, move on to the next task. It’s much less stressful and even enjoyable, to focus on one task or challenge. This enjoyment is described by psychologists as getting into the flow.
Try this experiment. Time an activity you normally multi-task and log your start to finish times. Repeat this singular activity and log your start to finish time. Compare both times. Now, answer the question: which of the two was completed with more dedication, fewer errors and thoroughness?
Multi-tasking is a convenient habit of our Times. Not necessarily a better use of time and, life-threatening in some dire instances.
Do you agree?
Just 3 months ago, an acquaintance, at a business networking function, asked me, “Do you Twitter?” In true Toastmaster fashion, I replied, “Only when I drink too much caffeine!”
FACT: I didn’t know what she was talking about when she asked me about Twitter. In a true defense mechanism fashion: I delivered my humorous reply. Since this verbal exchange, I learned enough about Twitter to now, reply: “I don’t Twitter and with good reason!”
Unless, one of you will comment about the merits of Twitter and justify why I should become a card-carrying ‘Twitter-er’ I see no reason to invest precious time to become adept at using another useless, interruptive technology. I choose to avoid useless, time-intensive technologies which contribute little or nothing to my work day waking hours.
Abbreviated English ‘Text Messaging’ and ‘Twittering’ share the same appeal to me: None. Too often, I receive barely legible text messages laced with callous misspellings. Callous, because Spell-Checker is a built-in free program which only requires a sender to execute a few extra mouse-clicks.
There is no excuse for not taking a few extra minutes to Spell-Check my message before I transmit the contents. Why bother? Because each time I send an e-mail I am broadcasting how well or poorly I communicate. Like it or not, recipients will form an opinion about my educational credentials.
A speedy reply is no excuse for misspellings or abbreviated wording. Useless, interruptive technologies share the blame for these two alarming electronic communications trends. The second culprit is the decline in reading printed books. A habitual readership discipline enriches one’s vocabulary.
You only have to look at the lack of sentence structure to see we are becoming a society content to communicate in sound bytes rather than whole sentences which convey thoughts and meaning.
Laziness and acceptance are to blame! As long as the majority of readers condone sloppy word use, we are all doomed to mediocre prose. I say, enough, already. It’s time to re-focus and apply our God-given communications skills on what matters most: meaningful communications.
OK, it’s your turn Twitter Fans. Let’s see if you can communicate effectively!
No, this isn’t the ranting of a nearly over-the-hill sales professional who has finally flipped out! Good Failures are errors I have made which have taught me important life and business lessons.
Not surprisingly, the most expensive financial errors were the most memorable and sometimes painful to my wounded wallet and damaged ego.
While none of us intentionally seek failure, especially in our success-centric, society; I have become a believer in one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s most famous quotation:
“Whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”
Am I rationalizing? You bet! I accept my failures as ‘grist for the mill’ in the words of my high school Latin Teacher, John Bell, as long as the price wasn’t too stressful. To me, failure is an acceptable option!
I’m in good company as I look at some of history’s most famous failures. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Dale Carnegie, John H. Patterson Walt Disney, and Thomas Watson, Jr. Watson was fired by NCR (National Cash Register Company), my first employer. He moved on to found IBM so, he learned well from his failures. Now, that’s a happy ending!
Good Failures can be wonderful learning landmarks, provided we don’t give up; repeat our failures, or become cynical during our failing process.
While I have lost count of my failures, I have recited several during paid speaking engagements. Audiences love to hear a speaker brandish self-deprecating humor provided it is relevant to the presentation. Humor is an excellent tool for anchoring a message and for bonding the speaker with the audience. WOW, this guy isn’t too big to admit his goofs!
Good Failures’ greatest lessons are dissected and thoroughly analyzed because they reveal what behaviors to avoid and when to avoid them.
Failing forward is the mindset of an optimist, who upon gleaning the lessons of one’s own failure and taking personal responsibility builds upon the lesson and attempts to succeed until success and the ‘aha moment’ are achieved, and with it, the ultimate satisfaction of accomplishment.
In November 1967, after 9 months of cold calling every hotel and motel from South Beach to Golden Beach, and only closing 3 sales while employed as an NCR accounting machine salesman in the Miami Beach sales territory; I learned a formula for systematically gaining access to Hospitality Industry decision makers which I named the: the Power Prospecting™ Formula. Little did I realize the significance of my ‘aha moment’.
Teaching others to apply this formula would one day become the focal point of my life. It would give my life purpose. Between 1967 and 1983, I repeatedly applied improved versions of this Power Prospecting™ formula and I moved from being an employee to an entrepreneur, several times with good failures, successes and compensation to match.
Yes, good failures have become a way of life for me as acceptable options.
The positive learning experiences and the confidence gained from prior failures which lead to successful outcomes have resulted in achieved goals with financial and personal gains beyond my wildest imagination.
Next week, I’ll share my views of the ‘Twitter Fad’.
They share a common trait of not being pro-active b2b sales prospectors. It’s as though their DNA has been altered to avoid any effort to find either in-person or on-line – sales prospects: people with a qualified need plus the ability to pay for what they sell.
Where do they congregate? At ‘free networking’ luncheons, seminars or social networking mixers where they rub elbows with others, who also share their bone-shaking fear or inability to begin some form of systematic or organized sales prospecting.
Great talkers! Big fans of indiscriminately handing out business cards or leaving them on tables strategically placed in high traffic zones with the distant hope a serious prospect will conveniently pick up their card and call them to place an order. Voila, rejectionless sales!
In these hard times of high foreclosure rates, failing businesses, Obama’s stimulus programs and tight money, this group is growing very rapidly. Because they refuse to go out and look for new business, they have an abundance of free time in their 8-5 days so they continually rehearse the process of ‘getting ready to sell’, but never really do it.
I liken this delusional group to ‘lifeboat occupants’ who because there are so many of them in such a confined space, their lifeboat has sprung a leak and it is gradually sinking into a Sea of Despair and Quiet Desperation.
Is there any hope for them? Only, if they are forced to confront reality. Not a willing choice, since it may be forced upon them by employees, loved ones or the power company who just turned off their electricity on a 30 degree night. This new reality leads to 3 choices:
1. Another career because getting new prospects is a fact of life in sales.
2. Discovery of a less threatening new process of getting new prospects.
3. Repeated application and fine-tuning this new process until it works.
Inspirational and surprising are two words that best describe the object of this blog and a new blog category I’m launching today, titled: My Inspirational Friends. From time to time, I will feature extra-ordinary people who have blessed my life by their friendship but, also who have accomplished something quite unusual.
My good friend, Ray Donnetz, a retired computer software sales professional, who lives in Miami has watched his nest egg shrink to the size of a pea as a result of our roller coaster economy. But, unlike many retirees in the same boat, who appear to have that deer in the headlights look perpetually carved into their faces, Roy has reversed his negative cash flow and discovered a new and enjoyable career. I might add, not at the end of the line (checkout line) as an uninspired grocery bagger.
First, a few relevant facts about Ray. He is an admitted Luddite! Certainly not, a technology tool wizard. Not too long ago, when I asked him what backup software he was using, his reply was “whatever Lexus included with his new SUV”. While not the answer I expected, I wasn’t shocked with his reply.
So, when he sported his new laptop and video camera last year, I was amazed and a little confused until he told me the rest of his story………..
Ray and I met 43 years ago at a FSU. Since then we became avid Seminole Alums and occasional cigar smoking buddies. Also, we have been Toastmasters for nearly 30 of those years where we both became polished platform speakers and above average written communicators.
His new business, Remember Me!, captures life stories of seniors and boomers who wish to leave a visual and audio legacy of the magic memories of their lives. When his work for a client is completed, they receive a DVD which includes: still photographs, video images; a question and answer interview by Ray with the client; all chronologically sequenced. These personal DVD documentaries make memorable gifts for their children, grandchildren and friends.
Some of these personal histories resemble chapter segments from the pages of Tom Brokaw’s best selling book, The Greatest Generation. One, in particular, traced this man’s adventures on the Normandy Beaches and another client, a Navy Captain’s WW2 Atlantic Convoy exploits.
Ray frequently speaks to seniors groups at retirement communities and churches in South Florida where he finds new clients. His surprisingly affordable new career brings him and his clients great joy and serves a very worthwhile purpose.
Will you read about him in People Magazine or the AARP monthly magazine? Naw, I doubt it but this is one worthwhile account of how a resourceful senior has discovered a new, meaningful life purpose in this Recessionary Period by being resourceful, not resentful.
Picture this scene: it’s 5:50 pm, Friday, February 27th, and you only need one more sale to earn the big monthly sales bonus. What should you do? Should you offer the new prospect a discount to incent them to sign their name on the dotted line? Should you manufacture an urgent reason why they must place a new sales order today? Should you bring your strongest sales closer along to make them an offer they just can’t refuse?
Your options are as varied as your motives and imagination. I have faced this challenge many times before, and again last month, with the same happy outcome.
While there was no bonus attached to my urgency, my professional pride drove me to exceed my monthly sales quota, as it often does. I was honest with the client when I told her getting started now putting my services to work would benefit her and her sales team, sooner rather than later.
I justified her now-decision by creating a genuine sense of urgency. By reminding her that each day her sales teams hadn’t ‘qualified’ new sales leads was another opportunity for her competition to gain a stronger beachhead in her backyard marketplace. She wouldn’t want this to happen now, would she?………………………………………….and, I repeated this question until I heard her affirmative reply. Remember, the importance of asking the right questions?
This and the importance of listening when decision makers speak was the point of my March 4th blog .
The Urgency Challenge is easier for me to build on as a valid reason to get started, soon. Here’s why. In our economic system, we all compete unless we work for Uncle Sam. We compete for market share and against others who are constantly trying to make our sales stars theirs. My best clients (sales prospects, too) share this characteristic, above all others: they value their sales people.
REALITY: They know that long after the 2009 Recession is nothing more than yesterday’s headlines, their valued training investment in their sales people will continue to pay huge dividends. So, during lean times they have historically re-tooled their sales people, their most important asset. Sharpened their saws, in Dr. Covey’s lingo, so these thoroughbreds are always ready to breakaway from the pack when prosperity returns, as it always has, and is likely to again. These savvy marketing organizations invest for the long haul.
Your Homework Assignment: Here’s your challenge. Identify customers who have not just survived, but thrived in hard times whether they are new customers or been with you for some time. Study their values and yours to establish compatibility. For example, my clients value their sales people. I train sales people to become more valuable sales assets; thus, our shared mission. Now, relate your Urgency Challenge to their mission. It sounds easy doesn’t it? It is. It’s just a function of staying in touch! I’d like to share your successes, so, please drop me a line at: eurekaman43@hotmail.com.
I still keep bumping into them: account reps, sales consultants and management consultants. These are the poor, despondent souls who have joined the growing ranks of the unemployed 7 million. Their faces mirror the sad look of Chicken-Little. Their skies, self-esteem and attitudes have fallen to new depths.
Yet, each time we cross paths, they ask me the same, tired question: what’s your secret for getting new customers during this Recession? I tell them: Become a problem-solver and prove your value to your customers and prospects!
Effective Problem-Solvers Share these 4 Success Habits:
First, they have a bullet-proof attitude. My glass is always half full. Like everyone else, I’m feeling the pinch of higher prices but I refuse to dwell on the bad news. Even when doors are slammed in my face, I stay motivated because I know positive change is coming. In my 41 years in business I have experienced and even thrived through 7 lean times, not too different from now. Staying focused and productive will lead me out of this wilderness back to the Promised Land of Prosperity!
Recently, President Clinton while being interviewed by CNN’s Larry King, said, “No one has ever made money betting against America.” We still live in the most productive and resourceful nation on the planet. We will survive and live to thrive, again. Count on it!
Second, they know their best prospects. Wake me up at 2 am and with incredible accuracy, I’ll rattle off my best customers’ demo and psycho graphic characteristics. I stay laser-focused on my narrow niche and I let nothing distract me. Clients and prospects, like these, have paid my bills since 1967 and they will continue to do so.
Third, they stay connected. Read my Feb 22nd blog to see how I do it. Even when decision-makers tell me, Gordie Allen:
Guess what? Whenever I have put the right, new projects at their feet they have always moved mountains to find the funds. How do I discover what’s hot and what’s not? It’s simple, I just pay attention.
Fourth, they begin by asking fresh, open-ended, questions to discover what has changed with their clients’ processes. For me, questions about their: new competition, distribution channels, product life cycles, product upgrades; special promotions, and the longer or shorter decision cycles which challenge their sales teams.
My secret: I listen intently for key trigger phrases or cues. Problem-solvers, like me, hear opportunity knocking whenever a decision-maker says, Gordie, our problem is. The word, problem, is music to our ears. Here’s why: if this problem is causing enough severe pain, it is my opportunity to make it go away. I become their Doctor Feel-Good! Problems are nothing more than disguised opportunities.
I could ramble on about other, effective question-asking techniques. Here’s a better idea: buy and study The S.P.I.N. Selling Fieldbook, by Neil Rackham, ISBN #0-07-052235-9, published by McGraw-Hill. Complete the homework assignments and you can become a master asker, just like me.
I forget where I heard or read this saying but I changed it because it beautifully sums up my attitude: “If opportunity doesn’t knock, then I build a door.”
One of my best ever sales prospecting tips for b2b selling professionals, shared 21 years ago with a sales audience of software marketers, paid off again, for me last week.
This 4-line, self-inking, rubber stamp, ordered online, has repeatedly gotten me an invitation into a new account to bid on training projects plus sold more of my new eBooks than I can recall! Here is my version of this remember-me-when-you-are-ready-to-buy, marketing tool:
· Compliments of Gordie Allen
· Your Sales Prospecting Trainer
· 1.800.548.4571
Every time an article catches my eye that I know would make it easier for my training clients and/or prospective clients to:
· Gain the competitive edge against their competition
· Sell more, more cost-efficiently
· Warm up their sales teams’ cold calls
· Enhance their status with their new prospects
· Remember-them-when-their-prospects-are-ready-to-buy
I photocopy it or download and print an electronic version. At the top of page one, I firmly apply my rubber stamp with a bright, fire-engine red ink since it really jumps off the page.
I fold and insert the article into a #10 business envelope; address it to my decision-making contact and add a 42 cents stamp. It takes one of us about an hour per month to execute this process for 70 mailings. Sometimes, our ROI takes years to work its magic but, it does and it keeps on working.
One prospective client, a sales agent, referred me to 8 of his line-card manufacturers who were looking to hire a sales trainer for an upcoming regional meeting. Two of them hired me and they are still great clients. Another referred me to several of his OEMs. This was 23 years ago and this simple, thoughtful marketing tool still draws thanks and kudos.
I know, who has the time? Hire one of your kids or your neighbor’s kids to do it, monthly. They will appreciate the extra money and you will feel good paying them. Just get it done.
This demonstrates you care. It is living proof you are not just another vendor but a sales professional who cares enough to be remembered-when-they-are-ready-to-buy. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!
You say, you couldn’t make payroll yesterday because your clients have stretched out their payments. Or, you can’t sell products because your bank has frozen your credit line. Maybe, your Horoscope Sign was a 5? Because, because; we can always find excuses upon which to blame our troubles.
FACT: even though the stock market declined 83 points yesterday and the new Stimulus Plan will place future generations at risk, guess what didn’t happen, yesterday?
Brian Williams on the NBC Evening News didn’t broadcast any report by IMS (Immigration Services) about an alarming number of visa application cancellations. Foreigners are still lining up at the gates of our great, but temporarily troubled country, waiting patiently for their legal entry papers. Illegal aliens are still tragically dying in rickety old leaky boats on the high seas off the Florida coast. I’m sure, a few even came across our Southwestern border in the past few nights.
No matter how good or bad Friday the 13th was for us, it was still a better day than for most foreigners.
Whatever daily calamities challenge small business owners like us, we have much more to be thankful for than when my father first set foot on US soil in 1919. Nicholas Demetrious Alagazakis (Nicholas D. Allen, the Americanized version) was a Greek Immigrant who found himself in a strange, foreign country in a time of war.
Not quite penniless, but with just the clothes on his back, and a working fluency of English; he was destined to make his family of four boys proud of his American Legacy.
Thanks to an established Greek Community in New York City, where he quickly made friends, he found employment and later became an insurance salesman for the Prudential Life Insurance Company.
At the end of WW1, he brought my English mother, Dolly Fortune, to this country where they became citizens. Hard work and good fortune empowered him to become a ship owner of the Prudential Steamship Company headquartered at Battery Place in New York City.
In WW2, he and his company prospered and he moved his growing family to Florida in the late 1940’s where he settled into a new business as owner of the Florida Yacht Basin on the Miami River.
When my brothers and I were growing up, a day never went by when Nicholas didn’t thank this great country for the opportunities it afforded he and his children. While TV and radio were daily distractions, we were constantly infused with his spirit of gratitude and reminded to fulfill our individual American goals and destinies. And, we have. My brother Homer became a ship owner; Winston, an architect; Milton, a software company executive; and me, a sales training consultant.
Our legacy was repeated millions of times in every corner of our great country. Through the Great Depression and the many peaks and valleys of historic economic trends; we have weathered harsh circumstances and still prospered individually and grown our nation.
That’s my story. That’s why I am eternally thankful to be an American. That’s why I still count Friday, the 13th, as my Lucky Day. Every day I breathe our air is my blessing.
I’d like to hear your story.
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