Jose had three questions rolled into one sorta like those newspaper reporters who get to ask the President a question, and in one breath not only do they ask a question but they have 12 follow ups. Luckily I’m not the President. Jose wanted to know is there ever too much product knowledge? I don’t know your product, but you did mention the word software, so I have to guess you might have something to do with computers. Regardless of the product….think for a minute….no one can ever know everything about something! Even experts in their field do not know everything. Jose, you are missing an important part of becoming a professional salesperson. Forget the product. It is you that they are buying!!! And that my friend is a subject you and you alone know everything about! You will learn more about your current product as you progress. Sell the product you know…yourself!!!

In Jose’s 1st follow up Jose wants to know is the customer always right? No! A thousand times NO! However, when it is all said and done, you want the customer to always feel right. That takes a little bit of practice and some very good communication skills, so you can actually show the customer the error in their ways and still make them believe that they were the ones that realized it. Again the customer appears right.

Jose, your 2nd follow up is a little more complicated. I actually had to stop typing and think exactly how I would answer this question because I do not want to offend any of my female readers. Ladies, don’t be hating on me, it is just my observation of almost 40 years. Here we go….If we have two sales persons of equal talent, starting the same job on the same day and one was a woman and the other was a man….Jose, the woman would most assuredly take a commanding lead. One reason is woman are natural when it comes to reverse psychology. That is the art of getting people to do things by pretending you don’t want them to do it. They do it every day with guys. Men on the other hand are horrible at that because they are used to being the aggressor. That works against you at the beginning. Now, it really starts to get interesting. Men that decide that a profession in sales is what they want to do, begin to take it a lot more seriously because they have been conditioned to being the bread winner and realize that is their career! That raises the stakes dramatically. On the other hand, a lot of women are temporary visitors in our industry and get sidetracked with things like husbands and children, consequently stunting their long term growth.

I must say that the women that have been bitten by our industry and stayed long term are a formidable force to deal with. They are some of the best of the very best! My advice to you Jose in this section is stop your crying and be a man and kick some butt. Quit comparing your results with a bunch of women. Don’t follow a path, make one of your own! I competed with women my whole life in sales and the way I beat them was to make myself more personable and friendlier and by out working them. By the way Jose, that formula works for beating mostly everybody. Remember you are most of all selling yourself! That’s all for tonight, Oh, by the way Jose, send me your e-mail and you will have a nice gift coming. Yours was the question of the week!

“The Specialist”