The Filipino Entrepreneur

A common scene at the store: Customer enters. Salesperson approaches with her usual “bili na” (”Buy Now”) or “how may I help you Sir/Ma’m?” welcome. Customer brushes off salesperson and continues browsing alone. The customer’s reaction may seem a bit rude, but reasonable. Unless they have a question or need help, most customers would rather do without the sales routine. They don’t want to listen to another hard-selling pitch or have someone trail them around the store.

Whether you’re selling clothes, food or insurance,you and your sales staff must know the low down on clinching a sale. This experience happens to me not usually but on one particular department store it does. On the Philippine souvenir section in Robinson dept store in Cainta. Not only the sales staff follows your trail and watch your every move, some employees are annoying and guarding you like a thief. So what’s a salesperson supposed to do? Well, they can continue their age-old, ineffective, and irritating way of approaching customers, or they can try the following pieces of advice to see to it that the customer is comfortable, interested, and ultimately taking out his wallet to make a purchase:

• Dress the part. Good grooming is important in practically every job-but even more so in sales. Salespeople are at the front line, and give customers their first impressions of the business. So, look your best and put on what’s most appropriate for the job. If you are selling apparel, take special care with your own clothes and appearance.

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Are you a knower when selling?

When selling to a prospect do you assume that your products and services will solve their problem? Then, as soon as you can, you jump in and tell your prospect all about your products and services and what they will do for them. You feel that if you tell them enough, they will see how great your products and services are and that they will solve their problem.

Also when your prospect asks you any question, do you always give some sort of answer, even if you have to guess? You don’t want them to think you don’t know everything about your products and services because you feel you should know everything. You are afraid your image, in the eyes of your prospect, will be negatively impacted if you don’t know the answers to their questions.

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This is a newsletter from Tessa Stowe which might be interesting to you. Just read on below and might add to our knowledge.

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Is Selling Simple or Complicated?

I’d like you to take a moment right now and, before you continue reading this article, decide whether you think selling is simple or complicated? Please now read on.

Before I start to specifically talk about selling, I’d like to first discuss ‘complicated’ versus ’simple’.

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Have you heard the phrase “The Customer Is Always Right”? I guess this is not new to you or maybe you have heard this a long time ago if you are in my age bracket or if you are in the age bracket of my nephews twenties below, somehow you have read it or heard it somewhere. I remember when I was a ten year old kid when I was playing inside my uncle’s hardware store. I saw a plastic bag hanging in the ceiling with a print that says “The Customer is Always Right”. Back then there were only few plastic bags and more expensive than paper bags. Then I ask my uncle what is the meaning of that? why is the customer have to be always right? what if the customer steal your items? is it right? I don’t know why ask those stupid questions but maybe because of innocence I wonder what those words means.

Then he told me that it’s because through customers we made our living. It is obvious that without customers, we don’t have a business. Period. But it still made me wonder how will the customer be right because sometimes we encounter unreasonable customers and those who waste our time just wandering around and pretend that they are customers. Sometimes they are just asking for a price or asking information about the product but in the end, will not but your product. Maybe the right phase would be “The Right Customer is Always Right”. I thinks thats a better saying by just adding the word “right” . Why I say that? It’s because if you got the right customer, then any demand he or she makes, complains, feedbacks are all reasonable and will be helpful to your business. Having the wrong kinds of customers will just waste your time and energy to figure out how you will improve your business.

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While I was reading the Entrepreneur magazine, two Filipino Chinese entrepreneurs caught my attention. One is Mr. Cecilio Kwok Pedro the toothpaste magnate and the other Mr. Alfredo M. Yao the self made fruit drink magnate. The reason is because of their decisions that turned disappointments into an opportunity. The first one I want to discuss is Mr. Cecilio Kwok Pedro. He is the President and CEO of Lamoiyan Corp. which is the first Filipino company who penetrated the Philippine Toothpaste market.

That market was dominated by big foreign companies ( those that produce Colgate and Close-up). Now Happee toothpaste ranks no 3 in the toothpaste brand. Because of that success he was able to diversify his products into dish washing soaps, liquid detergents, fabric enhancers and other gum formula tooth paste.

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I have a newsletter from Tessa Stowe which is I think similar to other newsletter I got about how as a salesman you should treat your prospect. In summary, it’s about you letting your prospect do the talking and you the listening in order to make the conversation more appealing and not repelling. I think even the most aloof prospect can be tamed if you will follow her advice. So read on….

What To Say If Your Prospect Only Has 10 Minutes

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Selling the wrong thing is what most businesses and salespeople are doing. That is what I observe on many companies specially the one I worked with some time ago. The focus is always how great their product is - always the I, ME, I Am, We and not really what the customer needs. Tessa Stowe’s newsletter is an eye opener and a good guide for sales people or those one-man-band entrepreneurs.

So read on:

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A lot of people think selling requires a lot of effort. The reality is that it is easy to waste time when selling and it is easy to make it a lot harder than it needs to be. There are, in fact, simple tips you can apply which will not only save you a huge amount of effort but will also speed up your sales cycle. Here are just seven of these tips.

Tip #1: Don’t act like a salesperson
The moment you start talking or acting like a salesperson your prospect will put up barriers. They will think you are trying to sell them something and their automatic and natural reaction will be to defend themselves against being sold. Once a prospect’s barriers are up, selling to them requires a lot more effort on your part and it is also much harder than it needs to be.

Tip #2: Sell only to those who will buy
Sell only to those who will buy from you sounds so obvious, I know, but if you look at your list of prospects, how many can you say are going to buy? Have you put them, and the opportunity, through your filter or qualification process? Do you have a formal, written, filter or qualification process which you could email me straight away? If you have answered “no” to any of these questions, chances are that you are wasting a lot of effort selling to people who aren’t going to buy.

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One of my sales coaching clients, let’s call him John, emailed me the other week and said his revenue for the month had increased by 29% over the same time the previous year. He said one of the reasons for this was because he rejected a lot of his prospects and fired 10% of his clients. Sounds both illogical and radical, don’t you think?

Prior to John deciding to become a radical, he would try and sell to anyone who was interested. Consequently he wasted a lot of time, money and resources (TMR) trying to attract and sell to people who were never going to buy, or if they did buy, the headaches they caused did not make them worthwhile. He wasted a lot of time on people who were never going to become ideal clients.

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I wanted to share with you this newsletter from Mike Litman. The title was “The Magic of The 2nd Mile”. Sounds unique. Anyway just read on below to learn something about being different from anybody else or just simply say be “unique”.

Dear Lito,

Separate yourself.

Differentiate yourself.

Be unique in the marketplace.

“Mike, how?”

Before I share with you the answer realize that
the FIRST MILE is expected.

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