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It’s Only Common Sense: Open-minded Selling—Try New Sales Strategies

There is a theory that goes, “Look at the way a person dresses today, and you can tell when they went to high school.” Try it out, and you’ll see that it’s true most of the time. Khakis and button-down oxford cloth shirts? Pre-hippie days in the ‘60s. Gray-haired ponytails? Late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Untucked white shirts sticking out beyond the sweater? Definitely the ‘90s. T-shirt under a golf shirt? The turn of the century. Notice that I didn’t go near the woman’s side of this theory. I’m not an idiot, so I’m not touching that; although, I suspect it is an equally valid theory for both.

So, what’s my point? It’s simple. I’m talking about the fact that change is hard, and old habits must be broken. This applies to everything from the way we look at life to the way we do business and sell. I can tell how old someone is by the way they sell, and you can too. I’ve been doing this for a long time; so long, in fact, that I remember when the best way to sell to someone was to spend a lot of time drinking with them. I have seen many a deal consummated with a handshake over a beer-soaked bar four-top.

Then, there was the old playing golf together trick, which I never saw work, frankly. I was the guy who was naïve enough to think we were actually going to do some business on the golf course, as in, “Let’s go play 18 on Friday. We’ll talk about the deal then, and see if we can get this thing done.” I fell for this more than once only to realize that talking business between the third and fourth hole, or the seventh and eighth hole, or anywhere on the back nine was strictly verboten. If you even dared to bring up business on the golf course, you were looked at like you were making cold calls at your grandfather’s funeral; it was just not done.

Later, we all got involved with the cold call to sales ratio. This plan was dreamed up by accountants who tried to develop a formula based on the number of cold calls will get X amount of business. Yeah, that really worked well.

And remember the old Harvey McKay lessons on learning everything you could about your customer, including their entire family tree and the date of their second cousin’s wedding anniversary? You were supposed to keep meticulous records on everything you could learn about your target customer so that by the time you were done, you had a dossier on your customer that would have made J. Edgar Hoover proud.

Now, we’re in the age of social media, and that seems to be working for a lot of people, while for others, not so much. The one thing I can guarantee is that tomorrow there will be something new and the day after that too. That is the true cycle of life in sales just like everything else.

And just as there is always something new, there is always some old person—rather, some experienced person—who will spend (nay, waste) time trying to convince you why the old ways worked best, and why the new ways will not work at all. While this person talks to you, you will notice their khakis and button-down oxford shirt, or maybe that white shirttail sticking out from the bottom of their sweater.

It all boils down to keeping an open mind. Just about everything will work when done correctly, diligently, and passionately. Have a productive business lunch (sans the booze, I would suggest), learn everything you can about your target customer, and investigate how to use social media and whatever else is coming around the bend regarding sales strategies.

All of these things will work to some extent, but there is one thing that I can guarantee will always work—keep an open mind to all theories and methods about doing sales. The minute you close your mind to any proven sales strategy is the minute you limit yourself, get stuck in the rut of conformity with the past, and stop effectively selling. An open mind is a terrible thing to waste.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.