There are some basics about hitch-hiking that will improve your closing ratios. These same basics bear out in most other sales applications as well.
Appearance is a good place to start, and apparel is a good place to start regarding your appearance. Obviously a good appearance is going to help. I have actually been in situations where I’ve hitched a ride in a sport coat and tie and I know I get rides quicker than when I’m dressed in a hoodie and a watch cap!
Dressing for success doesn’t always mean wearing a suit and tie, though it does mean dressing appropriately for the occasion.
That said, fresh shirts are always a good bet. When I was hitch-hiking across the country I always had plenty of fresh polo shirts. Polo shirts hold up fairly well against wrinkles in a back-pack and the button collar has the edge over a regular crew-neck T-shirt. And when you’re walking out on the open road with the summer sun beating down while the traffic throws up debris, well, you’re going to get a little pungent so make sure you have a change or – well - four. In hitch-hiking the difference between a fresh shirt and one you’ve had on a few days can be measured in hundreds of miles! I've picked up hitchers as well as hitched, and if I catch a strong whiff as you get into my car you can bet I'm "only going to the next exit." Face it - no one’s ever going to tell you the reason you lost business was because you weren’t quite fresh, so be safe.
The next aspect of appearance, though not necessarily less important, is posture.
Your personal bearing plays a significant role in improving your closing ratio. Most salespeople have been exposed to statistics regarding the importance of first impressions and how quickly we form them. A quick look on Google generates an abundance of responses ranging from seven to twenty seconds to form an initial opinion. In that brief moment your posture can account for nearly 60% of the opinion formed. When your prospects are passing you between thirty-five and ninety-five miles an hour, believe me, first appearances count!
Early in my cross country travels I spent three hours in Santa Rosa, NM sitting by the side of the road not getting a ride. Out of boredom I got up and started walking. Oddly my closing ratio improved!
I decided I’d get a ride faster if folks could see my face, so I walked backwards.
No, follow along with me here.
Part of what provides the momentum that carries us forward when we walk is leaning toward our goal. We lean forward and as our bodies begin to fall we take a stride which stops us from falling and carries us forward. Then all you have to do is keep leaning forward and stopping your fall with alternating feet and, viola! You’re walking!
Walking backwards causes one to lean back. You start to fall back and you stick a leg behind you and…well, you get the idea.
Here’s the fun part. When you lean back you actually stand taller! So, here I am, walking backwards with my thumb out and standing taller.
And several things begin to kick into place. First, as many salespeople know, your attitude will be a result of your physicality. This was explored by a couple of scholars in the 19th century, William James and Carl Lange. In short form the James-Lange Theory states that our emotions stem from our physical actions. While it seems logical that when we sense a threat and feel fear we run, the James-Lange Theory suggests that if we act fearfully (running away) we will subsequently feel fear and, conversely, if we act courageously (standing tall) we will begin to feel courage. This is sometimes referred to as the “Fake it ‘til you make it” model.
So I’m standing taller and I actually begin to feel more confident.
My closing ratio improves. I was in my twenties at the time with no idea I’d be putting this into a book in the next century so I didn’t keep records and I have no statistical verification. Significant anecdotal evidence makes me confident with the results of my inquiry.
Then I took the next step in improving my appearance. I thought to myself “If I’m walking backwards so folks can see my face, maybe I should look friendly.” I started to smile. Remembering the James-Lange Theory we can presume this made me happier, more positive.
Slip into the driver’s seat for a moment, won’t you? After all, what salesperson hasn’t learned something by being the customer?
Now I was really having fun. And seeing the aproaching drivers let me "qualify" them as prospects. Car too full? "That's O.K!" I'd say and wave at you as you went by. Kids? "Hey, I wouldn't pick up a stranger if I had kids!" and I'd be waving.
And while I was waving at the car that just passed, someone else was coming down the road watching friendly ol' me waving at the people who were passing by.
Imagine yourself going down the highway. Imagine you’re a little tired, it’s been a long haul and you’re beginning to think of strategies to keep you awake and alive. Up ahead you see someone hitch-hiking.
He's sitting on his suit-case under an overpass. His thumb is barely suspended above the road-bed and he’s looking hot, tired and dejected. Probably a little ripe too. Someone you’d like for company? Not me.
The next hitcher is walking with down the road with his left hand out at about seven o’clock. He’s headed the same way you are. He’s slumped forward as he walks and you can’t see his face. “Hmmmmm…” you think.
But by then you’ve passed him and there’s really no sense in stopping now.
Then, just as you stifle a yawn and open the window to let in a blast of air, you see another hitch-hiker just ahead. He’s facing you and walking backward, his right thumb is at eight, if not nine or ten o’clock, and (you probably didn't consciously register it but he's got a collared shirt) he’s got a smile on his face! He even waves at you as you approach!
Would you be more likely to pick this guy up? I sure hope so! I need a ride!
In fact, after three hours of sitting by the road that day in Santa Rosa, almost as soon as I started walking backwards I got the chance to drive that late model sedan I mentioned in an earlier post.
While it’s true some folks might not pick up the crazy looking, backwards walking galoot with the silly grin and the goofy wave, here’s the thing; I’m betting they wouldn’t have picked up the first two hitchers either!
You, on the other hand are not afraid of risk, and besides, somebody to talk to would help keep you awake. After all, you’re a salesperson; you love to talk to strangers!
The first time anyone ever told me about the instantaneous, sub-conscious judgements we make was at about ten p.m. on a Pennsylvania turn-pike in the mid-eighties. The rain had been coming down cats and dogs for hours and I was soaked through by the side of the road. But I was smiling at everybody who passed by. Smiling and waving my bright white cowboy hat, doing everything I could to be seen, and to be seen happy. The guy that stopped his van was a factory sales rep for GMC and he was coming back from a weekend vacation - pulling his motorboat. He pulled van and boat out of freeway traffic - in the rain! Later, when I asked him if he could tell I was smiling and waving he said he hadn't noticed - and then he told me about snap judgements. And then he offered to let me spend the night in his spare bedroom. I'm telling you, this stuff works!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
More Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Sales Success - You're Gonna Get A Ride - For Sure.
If you’re reading this you are either aware of "closing ratios" or you’ve been hitching long enough that now you want to start earning some coin!
When you decide to hitch-hike you make a real commitment. You are there to get a ride. And you keep your thumb out until you do. One thing about hitch-hiking that prepared me for sales was the “No” to “Yes” ratio, known to salespeople as the "closing ratio."
In many sales jobs an effective closing ratio might be ten to twenty-five percent. Ask 10 people for the business and one or two will say “okay.” Nowadays it seems sometimes like a realistic closing ratio might be closer to five percent. But even that's favorable compared with hitch-hiking. For you sales people, imagine a closing ratio of .0033. A closing ratio of .0033 assumes that one car in 300 will stop to offer you a ride. You hitch-hikers are thinking that seems a little optimistic, I know.
Nevertheless, imagine you’re about one hundred miles into your journey on US-40 heading out of Maryland into Pennsylvania and you’ve got about 1,800 miles to go. Vehicles are whizzing by at freeway speed. The noise is a steady drone and you can feel the breeze created by the traffic – especially when some anti-social type purposefully drives a little close!
So, you stick out your thumb and start counting the cars as they go by. Now, I never counted cars so I don’t have actual numbers here, but any of you who have stood by the roadside know that if you did count cars it would be very discouraging!
But, you have to know you are going to get a ride. And you can know it.
First of all, the mere fact of all those cars means eventually someone’s going to stop. Secondly, what else are you going to do anyway? So you keep your thumb out until you get a ride. And eventually you get a ride to the next intersection on your route where you start all over again.
Just as in sales, sometimes you don’t get ride for a very long time. Don’t worry; the law of averages will always work out.
I spent three hours once on the eastern edge of Santa Rosa, New Mexico in late June. Now the eastern edge of anywhere near Santa Rosa in late June is a hot place. Thankfully "it’s a dry heat."
The temperature was over one hundred degrees. I was becoming more dehydrated and tired with each passing motorist, getting so dispirited that I had to have appeared less and less worthy of giving a ride to. You salespeople who’ve had a long stretch of “No's” understand what a dangerous place I was entering!
But you know you’re going to get a ride, and sure enough, a guy stopped.
Here’s where the law of averages worked out well for me. The fellow who stopped expected something of me. This guy wanted me to drive!
“Look here son, I’ve just driven from Denver through Albuquerque today (Google Maps says that’s about eight and a half hours of driving) and I’ve got to make it to Tulsa tonight (seven hours forty-three minutes from Santa Rosa, according to Google Maps). Would you mind driving?” I drove for about six hours until we reached Oklahoma City where he turned north and I was still east-bound. He napped while I drove. Win-Win. After three hours of doing the “Wicked Witch” routine (I’m melting!) here I am, Joe Hitcher, driving a powerful, late model, air-conditioned, luxury sedan!
About two in the morning we parted ways and I thought I’d spend about ten or fifteen minutes trying to catch another ride before I unrolled my sleeping bag. Sure enough someone stopped almost right away! Here’s where the law of averages worked out unfavorably for me. But well return to that later.
Now Google maps tell me it’s about a day and a half of driving from New Mexico to Maryland, but that assumes non-stop driving. Personally 18 hours of driving is pretty much my limit. I remember driving with my dad from Albuquerque to Maryland when I was six. That trip, with Dad doing all the driving (I offered...), took three days.
I got enough rides hitching to get me from Albuquerque to Maryland in the same three days.
So, if you get discouraged by your closing ratio it’s because you haven’t done enough hitching. Or could it be that after all that hitching I’m just glad to have a job?
When you decide to hitch-hike you make a real commitment. You are there to get a ride. And you keep your thumb out until you do. One thing about hitch-hiking that prepared me for sales was the “No” to “Yes” ratio, known to salespeople as the "closing ratio."
In many sales jobs an effective closing ratio might be ten to twenty-five percent. Ask 10 people for the business and one or two will say “okay.” Nowadays it seems sometimes like a realistic closing ratio might be closer to five percent. But even that's favorable compared with hitch-hiking. For you sales people, imagine a closing ratio of .0033. A closing ratio of .0033 assumes that one car in 300 will stop to offer you a ride. You hitch-hikers are thinking that seems a little optimistic, I know.
Nevertheless, imagine you’re about one hundred miles into your journey on US-40 heading out of Maryland into Pennsylvania and you’ve got about 1,800 miles to go. Vehicles are whizzing by at freeway speed. The noise is a steady drone and you can feel the breeze created by the traffic – especially when some anti-social type purposefully drives a little close!
So, you stick out your thumb and start counting the cars as they go by. Now, I never counted cars so I don’t have actual numbers here, but any of you who have stood by the roadside know that if you did count cars it would be very discouraging!
But, you have to know you are going to get a ride. And you can know it.
First of all, the mere fact of all those cars means eventually someone’s going to stop. Secondly, what else are you going to do anyway? So you keep your thumb out until you get a ride. And eventually you get a ride to the next intersection on your route where you start all over again.
Just as in sales, sometimes you don’t get ride for a very long time. Don’t worry; the law of averages will always work out.
I spent three hours once on the eastern edge of Santa Rosa, New Mexico in late June. Now the eastern edge of anywhere near Santa Rosa in late June is a hot place. Thankfully "it’s a dry heat."
The temperature was over one hundred degrees. I was becoming more dehydrated and tired with each passing motorist, getting so dispirited that I had to have appeared less and less worthy of giving a ride to. You salespeople who’ve had a long stretch of “No's” understand what a dangerous place I was entering!
But you know you’re going to get a ride, and sure enough, a guy stopped.
Here’s where the law of averages worked out well for me. The fellow who stopped expected something of me. This guy wanted me to drive!
“Look here son, I’ve just driven from Denver through Albuquerque today (Google Maps says that’s about eight and a half hours of driving) and I’ve got to make it to Tulsa tonight (seven hours forty-three minutes from Santa Rosa, according to Google Maps). Would you mind driving?” I drove for about six hours until we reached Oklahoma City where he turned north and I was still east-bound. He napped while I drove. Win-Win. After three hours of doing the “Wicked Witch” routine (I’m melting!) here I am, Joe Hitcher, driving a powerful, late model, air-conditioned, luxury sedan!
About two in the morning we parted ways and I thought I’d spend about ten or fifteen minutes trying to catch another ride before I unrolled my sleeping bag. Sure enough someone stopped almost right away! Here’s where the law of averages worked out unfavorably for me. But well return to that later.
Now Google maps tell me it’s about a day and a half of driving from New Mexico to Maryland, but that assumes non-stop driving. Personally 18 hours of driving is pretty much my limit. I remember driving with my dad from Albuquerque to Maryland when I was six. That trip, with Dad doing all the driving (I offered...), took three days.
I got enough rides hitching to get me from Albuquerque to Maryland in the same three days.
So, if you get discouraged by your closing ratio it’s because you haven’t done enough hitching. Or could it be that after all that hitching I’m just glad to have a job?
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
More Hitch-hiker's Guide to Sales Success
Know where you are going.
I started hitch-hiking about the same age I made my first successful sale. One difference was the objectives. Regarding my first sale, the objective was money to buy food for a dog I wanted. In hitch-hiking the only objective I had in mind for my first ride was to return home on time. The objective was just to get a ride and go somewhere instead of just standing around.
Back in 1973 Los Altos, California was a lovely community on the southern end of the San Francisco Peninsula. It was a sleepy suburb seemingly far removed from the hustle-bustle of San Francisco and the other commercial areas. All around there were fruit orchards, some vineyards, and a fair number of horses. There weren't even sidewalks on my street. We used to cut through an apricot orchard to get to Main Street. Hewlett-Packard had some buildings around, including one that was a mile long and absolutely straight. Who knew what a “Particle Accelerator” was, let alone what it did, aside from "accelerating particles," whatever that meant. There were no silicon chips growing anywhere I knew of.
You may have a successful sales career, or you may be thinking of going into sales. In either case, in a professional setting there can be a lot of pressure to make your first deal. Not so on a lazy day with nothing better to do, which I believe is a rule for management - do what you can to lighten the pressure and make it fun.
The first ride I remember getting was with my friend Bill. We were standing at the end of my block on the nearest street with any traffic. We actually didn't have to wait very long before a sweet, obviously retired, woman stopped her late model Cadillac and asked us where we were going. It was apparent the lady was out on a drive to kill time. Hey! Us too! It’s been so long now I don’t remember where we went or how we got back home, but we did. We’d accomplished our objective and demonstrated a basic tenet of sales; we asked and we received. In a classic example of a “win-win” transaction the lady gave us a ride and we gave her some company and, possibly, the satisfaction of feeling she had saved Bill and I from ourselves.
Your second sale may have come easier than the first, and so it was for me as I leveraged the experience gained from that first ride to venture further afield. I’d made a friend in Palo Alto (about 10 to 20 miles away) before moving to Los Altos my new objective was to go visit Glenn.
With this more sophisticated objective in mind I had to have a better plan. I mentally mapped out my route. From the end of my block I’d hitch-hike a ride on South El Monte (two lanes, rural, lightly traveled) the mile and a half to El Camino Real Boulevard ( a major North-South thoroughfare from San Fransisco to San Jose and beyond). From there I’d ride north ten or so miles to Palo Alto. In Palo Alto I’d go east about three miles on the Oregon Expressway to Middlefield Avenue, north to Garland Street and from there I’d walk the four or five blocks to my friend Glenn’s house. I'm pretty sure I walked to Garland Street, too.
You can see the implications; the more traffic you have the faster you get a ride, or an advance on your objective. When hitch-hiking, my chosen route wasn’t always the most direct; I had to judge where there would be traffic, or prospects. It would have been more direct to cut through the orchard to a street with more traffic than South El Monte, but there were no cars in the orchard.
I also had to walk where it was safe (and legal) for me to walk and safe for cars to stop. So while the shortest route was to go north on the Foothill Expressway to Page Mill Road and then east, there was almost no likelihood of anyone stopping for me on an expressway. I soon resigned myself to taking longer routes and to walking the slow stretches until I found a place where there was going to be more traffic.
It took a while walking down South El Monte. In a residential area the traffic is light and mostly local. The marginal cost of stopping, starting and then stopping is relatively high for folks who are nearly home. In fact, by the time I got a ride I was about half-way to El Camino Real. I’d walked halfway! We’ll come back to walking versus not walking later.
On El Camino Real I got a ride (advance) pretty quickly. And I got a good long ride too! Not only was there more traffic, but the traffic on a principal boulevard can be counted on to take longer trips. I think it’s reasonable to estimate the rides I got on El Camino were generally at least five times longer than what I would have gotten on South El Monte. This premise is obvious and is magnified when applied to highways – people on the highway are there to avoid stoplights and to travel at higher speeds because they are generally going for longer distances.
In fact, when you are only going from one end of town to the other the highway is a bad place to hitch-hike. A motorist who is ending a journey may assume you are starting yours and won’t feel they can offer you a long trip. If a motorist does stop because they want company for a long trip the company the hitch-hiker will provide has a high price relative to the marginal cost of stopping (from at least 75 miles per hour in most cases) twice in such a short distance. Your objective is out of balance with that of your prospects'.
Whatever your objectives you have to make similar calculations about who and where your best prospects are to be found. What is the price of your product? What is the price of your time? Where is the intersection that will allow you to make the best profit? If you are selling brushes or magazines you may be able to go door to door. If you are selling Credit Card Processing you may be successful going directly from one business to another. If you are selling bigger ticket items then you will have to spend more time with your map before setting out. More sophisticated objectives require more prior mapping.
You need to have objectives in mind in any endeavor in order to measure your progress on the way.
I started hitch-hiking about the same age I made my first successful sale. One difference was the objectives. Regarding my first sale, the objective was money to buy food for a dog I wanted. In hitch-hiking the only objective I had in mind for my first ride was to return home on time. The objective was just to get a ride and go somewhere instead of just standing around.
Back in 1973 Los Altos, California was a lovely community on the southern end of the San Francisco Peninsula. It was a sleepy suburb seemingly far removed from the hustle-bustle of San Francisco and the other commercial areas. All around there were fruit orchards, some vineyards, and a fair number of horses. There weren't even sidewalks on my street. We used to cut through an apricot orchard to get to Main Street. Hewlett-Packard had some buildings around, including one that was a mile long and absolutely straight. Who knew what a “Particle Accelerator” was, let alone what it did, aside from "accelerating particles," whatever that meant. There were no silicon chips growing anywhere I knew of.
You may have a successful sales career, or you may be thinking of going into sales. In either case, in a professional setting there can be a lot of pressure to make your first deal. Not so on a lazy day with nothing better to do, which I believe is a rule for management - do what you can to lighten the pressure and make it fun.
The first ride I remember getting was with my friend Bill. We were standing at the end of my block on the nearest street with any traffic. We actually didn't have to wait very long before a sweet, obviously retired, woman stopped her late model Cadillac and asked us where we were going. It was apparent the lady was out on a drive to kill time. Hey! Us too! It’s been so long now I don’t remember where we went or how we got back home, but we did. We’d accomplished our objective and demonstrated a basic tenet of sales; we asked and we received. In a classic example of a “win-win” transaction the lady gave us a ride and we gave her some company and, possibly, the satisfaction of feeling she had saved Bill and I from ourselves.
Your second sale may have come easier than the first, and so it was for me as I leveraged the experience gained from that first ride to venture further afield. I’d made a friend in Palo Alto (about 10 to 20 miles away) before moving to Los Altos my new objective was to go visit Glenn.
With this more sophisticated objective in mind I had to have a better plan. I mentally mapped out my route. From the end of my block I’d hitch-hike a ride on South El Monte (two lanes, rural, lightly traveled) the mile and a half to El Camino Real Boulevard ( a major North-South thoroughfare from San Fransisco to San Jose and beyond). From there I’d ride north ten or so miles to Palo Alto. In Palo Alto I’d go east about three miles on the Oregon Expressway to Middlefield Avenue, north to Garland Street and from there I’d walk the four or five blocks to my friend Glenn’s house. I'm pretty sure I walked to Garland Street, too.
You can see the implications; the more traffic you have the faster you get a ride, or an advance on your objective. When hitch-hiking, my chosen route wasn’t always the most direct; I had to judge where there would be traffic, or prospects. It would have been more direct to cut through the orchard to a street with more traffic than South El Monte, but there were no cars in the orchard.
I also had to walk where it was safe (and legal) for me to walk and safe for cars to stop. So while the shortest route was to go north on the Foothill Expressway to Page Mill Road and then east, there was almost no likelihood of anyone stopping for me on an expressway. I soon resigned myself to taking longer routes and to walking the slow stretches until I found a place where there was going to be more traffic.
It took a while walking down South El Monte. In a residential area the traffic is light and mostly local. The marginal cost of stopping, starting and then stopping is relatively high for folks who are nearly home. In fact, by the time I got a ride I was about half-way to El Camino Real. I’d walked halfway! We’ll come back to walking versus not walking later.
On El Camino Real I got a ride (advance) pretty quickly. And I got a good long ride too! Not only was there more traffic, but the traffic on a principal boulevard can be counted on to take longer trips. I think it’s reasonable to estimate the rides I got on El Camino were generally at least five times longer than what I would have gotten on South El Monte. This premise is obvious and is magnified when applied to highways – people on the highway are there to avoid stoplights and to travel at higher speeds because they are generally going for longer distances.
In fact, when you are only going from one end of town to the other the highway is a bad place to hitch-hike. A motorist who is ending a journey may assume you are starting yours and won’t feel they can offer you a long trip. If a motorist does stop because they want company for a long trip the company the hitch-hiker will provide has a high price relative to the marginal cost of stopping (from at least 75 miles per hour in most cases) twice in such a short distance. Your objective is out of balance with that of your prospects'.
Whatever your objectives you have to make similar calculations about who and where your best prospects are to be found. What is the price of your product? What is the price of your time? Where is the intersection that will allow you to make the best profit? If you are selling brushes or magazines you may be able to go door to door. If you are selling Credit Card Processing you may be successful going directly from one business to another. If you are selling bigger ticket items then you will have to spend more time with your map before setting out. More sophisticated objectives require more prior mapping.
A Hitch-hiker's Guide to Sales Success cont'd
Win-win
A “win-win” transaction model exists in Hitch-hiking as in any sustainable sales model. You’ve got to offer genuine value or, sooner or later, you’re going to be in the same column as Bernie Madoff and Raj Rajeratnam.
In every case where someone stopped to offer me a ride they had some expectation of me in return. These expectations ranged from very uncomfortable to very comfortable. One fellow seemed to have some sexual expectations I was unwilling to fulfill so I declined to ride with him. Another couple wanted to minister to my physical needs, and then to my spiritual needs. They were very sweet. One fellow, a salesperson as it happens, wanted me to drive while he slept! Imagine, picking up a stranger and asking them to drive your late model luxury sedan while you take a nap. Now that tells you a little about a salesperson’s bold nature of right there! A boldness similar to that required for putting your thumb out and getting in a car with someone you’ve never met.
In the subsequent posts you’ll look at how the lessons of hitch-hiking prepared me for sales success. Please regard these posts as a means to have greater personal success, to help you bring greater success to your customers and to help you determine whether sales really is the right road for you.
Please don’t share these insights with hitch-hikers – should I ever find myself on the road with my thumb I prefer to be the one to get the ride!
A “win-win” transaction model exists in Hitch-hiking as in any sustainable sales model. You’ve got to offer genuine value or, sooner or later, you’re going to be in the same column as Bernie Madoff and Raj Rajeratnam.
In every case where someone stopped to offer me a ride they had some expectation of me in return. These expectations ranged from very uncomfortable to very comfortable. One fellow seemed to have some sexual expectations I was unwilling to fulfill so I declined to ride with him. Another couple wanted to minister to my physical needs, and then to my spiritual needs. They were very sweet. One fellow, a salesperson as it happens, wanted me to drive while he slept! Imagine, picking up a stranger and asking them to drive your late model luxury sedan while you take a nap. Now that tells you a little about a salesperson’s bold nature of right there! A boldness similar to that required for putting your thumb out and getting in a car with someone you’ve never met.
In the subsequent posts you’ll look at how the lessons of hitch-hiking prepared me for sales success. Please regard these posts as a means to have greater personal success, to help you bring greater success to your customers and to help you determine whether sales really is the right road for you.
Please don’t share these insights with hitch-hikers – should I ever find myself on the road with my thumb I prefer to be the one to get the ride!
Sunday, December 13, 2009
A Hitch-hiker's Guide to Sales Success Continued...
One
Hitch-hiking is a 100% commission based travel system. When you make a sale you get a ride. When you don’t, you don’t.
That’s the second way I liken hitch-hikers to salespeople. The first similarity is, in both Hitch-hiking and Sales it can help if you are a little crazy, fairly bold, and have less fear than may be considered healthy.
Most folks would rather stay in one place for a very long time, no matter how dull, painful, or otherwise unpleasant, rather than take even the metaphorical the risk of putting their thumb out and seeing what happens. Most of the working force prefer the security of a regular paycheck, no matter how dull, painful, or otherwise unpleasant the job, rather than risk the high rewards of a sales commission.
In 1983 I traveled from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, a distance of approximately 1,800 miles, depending on your route. I made it in three days. The trip back took a little longer as I went out of my way to visit family in Iowa. From there I traveled to California, and in California I went, via thumb, from Santa Monica Pier to Newport Beach and then to San Bernardino, Sacramento, the Bay Area, Chico, and back to the Bay Area in about two weeks time, staying with friends and family. That was one of my longer trips and to this day that is one of my favorite vacation memories.
Hitch-hiking is a 100% commission based travel system. When you make a sale you get a ride. When you don’t, you don’t.
That’s the second way I liken hitch-hikers to salespeople. The first similarity is, in both Hitch-hiking and Sales it can help if you are a little crazy, fairly bold, and have less fear than may be considered healthy.
Most folks would rather stay in one place for a very long time, no matter how dull, painful, or otherwise unpleasant, rather than take even the metaphorical the risk of putting their thumb out and seeing what happens. Most of the working force prefer the security of a regular paycheck, no matter how dull, painful, or otherwise unpleasant the job, rather than risk the high rewards of a sales commission.
In 1983 I traveled from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, a distance of approximately 1,800 miles, depending on your route. I made it in three days. The trip back took a little longer as I went out of my way to visit family in Iowa. From there I traveled to California, and in California I went, via thumb, from Santa Monica Pier to Newport Beach and then to San Bernardino, Sacramento, the Bay Area, Chico, and back to the Bay Area in about two weeks time, staying with friends and family. That was one of my longer trips and to this day that is one of my favorite vacation memories.
The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Sales Success
Preface
I made my first sale when I was 12 years old. At the time I thought I was just trying to get some cash together by mowing lawns in my neighborhood. It turns out my first sale earned me a steady, if small, weekly salary.
I look back now on that summer in 1973, and on how many doors I knocked on, modifying my approach with each new rejection, until one homeowner said “yes” to my offer, and then surprised me by expecting me back every week.
Wow! After all those discouraging “No’s” I had one very profitable “Yes!” Years later in one of the copious sales training courses I learned the expression “Sales is a series of ‘No’s’ punctuated by profitable ‘Yeses’”
About the same time I started hitch-hiking. Just for fun. I’d get passed by lots of cars over fairly long periods of time. Then someone would stop and I’d get a free ride, often for quite a distance. Lots of “no’s” punctuated by the occasional, rewarding “yes.”
I didn’t realize it then, but my hitch-hiking provided many of the lessons in successful selling that would subsequently be provided me in the course of nearly 30 years as a professional sales-person.
I made my first sale when I was 12 years old. At the time I thought I was just trying to get some cash together by mowing lawns in my neighborhood. It turns out my first sale earned me a steady, if small, weekly salary.
I look back now on that summer in 1973, and on how many doors I knocked on, modifying my approach with each new rejection, until one homeowner said “yes” to my offer, and then surprised me by expecting me back every week.
Wow! After all those discouraging “No’s” I had one very profitable “Yes!” Years later in one of the copious sales training courses I learned the expression “Sales is a series of ‘No’s’ punctuated by profitable ‘Yeses’”
About the same time I started hitch-hiking. Just for fun. I’d get passed by lots of cars over fairly long periods of time. Then someone would stop and I’d get a free ride, often for quite a distance. Lots of “no’s” punctuated by the occasional, rewarding “yes.”
I didn’t realize it then, but my hitch-hiking provided many of the lessons in successful selling that would subsequently be provided me in the course of nearly 30 years as a professional sales-person.
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