Little Words
“Excuses”
I hate the little word hate, but there are six other little ones I dislike even more. They are, “I’m sorry” and “I forgot” and “My fault.”
A good code to live by is, “It’s not who that matters; it’s what!” Apolgies don’t make a wrong right.
When you accept responsibity in the front, there is rarely an excuse needed to cover the rear.
This is not to say that mistakes won’t happen; they always will. It’s about not taking the results lightly and expecting an excuse to fix a wrong. Four better words are, “It won’t happen again.” Those words leave you responsible going forward as compared to “excused” for the past.
July 6th, 2009 at 4:07 am
We learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. This we should all humbly know. If we don’t acknowledge the mistake to ourselves, let alone others, how will we ever learn to get it out of our muscle memory. Correct a mistake by making a mental and verbal acknowledgment, (speaking the words, “that won’t happen again, this is what I will do next time”), and then substitute a correction, visualizing it for that next time. Make a strong mental or written note, practice out loud, do whatever we have to to make it sink in. Learning to sell or learning to be a good employer or employee takes time, patience and honesty with ourselves.
We have to be able to pick our technique apart, eliminating the negative, accentuating the positive. It is like learning a language or learning to play an instrument. If you pronounce a word wrong or hit a wrong note, you don’t want to keep doing it over and over. You have to work it until you get it right, and examine the mistake and understand why it is wrong, and why the correction is right, practicing the correct way over until that is in your muscle memory. Otherwise, we all know what the definition of insanity is. Repeating the same mistake and expecting different results. People who listen to us don’t like to hear our mistakes whether it is in language, music or sales.
I went to two stores over the weekend, Hoi Poloi and Arribas Brothers Eurospain, Downtown Disney and Disney’s Marketplace. Their sales staff were so inept, that I wish I had one of Ron’s cards, brochures or something to hand to these clueless clerks. They didn’t know how to engage and sell. It was painful to experience their lack of professionalism and salesmanship, which seemed non-existent.
Ron, you should contact them and show them this blog post, as they desperately need The Sales Resultant to show them how it is done. These are wonderful stores with great locations with the most boring sales people who just need to learn how to be great. They need to be educated about technique, openings etc. and so on. They just have people who browse mostly because there is no fun experience there for them to remember and consumers aren’t given a reason to take something home. There is no build up, no fun, no intrigue, now questions or jokes. Help them, don’t let them drown. Send them a life preserver…