In business, creativity is often thought of as an exciting, dangerous thing. The word itself conjures up images of wild-eyed people dressed in black doing strange things that have little to do with making a profit. But aren’t salespeople creative? I think so, since the really good ones create things all the time. Like opportunity. And demand for products and services. And customer satisfaction. What about wealth? The best salespeople certainly create wealth not only for themselves and their companies, but often for their customers as well.
The nature of the sales process itself is creative. A good salesperson creates demand where it doesn’t exist. He or she creates a message (the sales pitch) using various media (face-to-face calls, telephone pitches, PowerPoint presentations) that alters the thinking of the audience (the prospect). A salesperson explores new territories in their craft through cold calls, brings new ways of thinking to their audience by persuading prospects, and makes the world a better place by providing customer satisfaction.
These may not sound like the things you or your salespeople do. Lots of perfectly productive salespeople are nothing more than harvesters of existing business. They take orders, fill out the necessary forms, collect their commissions and go home. They never break rules and they hate new products and changes because they disrupt the orderly nature of their existence. To them, new customers are generally a pain in the behind because it takes so much work to make them into old customers. Besides, it’s much more profitable to service existing accounts anyway.
Salespeople like that used to play an important role in our economy. Today, of course, they are well along the road to extinction. Just ask your local bookseller what Amazon has done to their business. Or your stockbroker how he or she has been affected by online trading. If a salesperson isn’t looking for new customers or better ways to serve existing ones, he’s doomed. On the other hand, there will always be a need for people who have the energy, fearlessness, and drive to create new sales opportunities.
The Creative Selling System
I’ve had the immense pleasure of studying, practicing, and teaching creative selling for many years. I’ve worked closely with, managed, and observed thousands of salespeople, both creative and not. I found that selling creatively unleashes your idea power—your ability to make more sales and create more personal wealth by selling ideas for solutions instead of products. That’s what the system is about.
And it is a system: the repeated application of proven techniques to accomplish a desired end. My system repeatedly applies creative selling to the goal of producing more sales. It is also a framework that enables you to be a more effective, efficient salesperson. When you work within that framework, you apply creative techniques to every step of the selling process from prospecting new accounts to servicing old ones. You use your personal creative talents (and we all have them) to solve problems and create opportunities for your customers to use your products or services—and for you to make more sales.
Just as in my training programs, we begin with the basic assumption that you are a pretty effective communicator, know your product or service, and are interested in professional growth, job satisfaction, better customer service, and making more money. These are pretty safe assumptions because almost everybody in sales has these qualities.
We also assume you are willing to invest your time, money, and effort to achieve these goals. Nothing good happens without effort, especially in sales. Learning to use the Creative Selling System is the same. As I have advised thousands of salespeople, if you’re not willing to invest the time and effort to practice, you’ll never reap the rewards. If you’re one of those people looking for an effortless way to get rich through sales, stop reading and go do something you really want to do. Life’s too short.
Still reading? Great! That means you have an open mind. And an open mind is the single most important component of creativity.
My very first sales call was a debacle. The general manager of the radio station where I worked picked a listing out of the yellow pages—he chose a neighborhood restaurant named “Ma’s Diner.” Then he handed me a map showing that our signal covered most of two states and told me to go sell the diner’s owner a $300 package of radio spots. Other than that, my sales training consisted of his advice, “Don’t leave until Ma says ‘no’ three times.”
Being young and foolish, not to mention eager to earn the $36 commission from that $300 order, I sallied forth into a career in sales. If you guessed that I didn’t make that sale, you’d be right. In fact, Ma literally chased me out of the diner waving a very dangerous-looking spatula. I took that for the third “no.”
After more than a few calls like the one on Ma’s Diner, I started learning how to sell—a process that continues to this day. Along the way, I developed the Creative Selling System, a simple method that turned selling into an enjoyable and satisfying experience for both me and my customers. I also made a pretty good living at it, if I do say so myself, although I never did sell anything to Ma.
The Creative Selling System came about through trial and error. I kept using different sales techniques on my own prospects and accounts until I found the ones that worked best for me. Later in my career, I observed the salespeople I hired, trained, and managed as they sold in different ways, a study that confirmed my beliefs about selling creatively. Finally, I dissected the best sales methods and turned them into a step-by-step sales training program—the Creative Selling System—that I marketed quite successfully throughout the United States.
This book isn’t about theory—it’s about doing. It’s a how-to book outlining the steps to a successful sales career and some of the alternative strategies you can use along the way. There are a couple of ways you can use this book. First, I suggest you learn by doing. Read a chapter, then apply the techniques in it as you sell to your customers. If you take about a week to absorb and practice each chapter, you’ll better understand the process and use it more effectively. Participants in my training programs were required to use each step with a real prospect before they could go on to the next one. It takes a little more time, but the results were spectacular. If you are a sales manager, you can guide your staff through the process in this way.
The really great thing about Creative Selling is that it gives you control over your own success. Creative Selling works in good economies and bad, whether you’re selling widgets or financial services, roaming a nationwide territory or confined to a retail store. That because Creative Selling isn’t about hoping a willing customer will come along and listen to your pitch, it’s about making your own luck in a simple, straightforward way. Good salespeople seize every opportunity that comes along. Great salespeople don’t wait—they create opportunities for themselves.
No matter what you do, don’t just read about Creative Selling. Do it! Unleash your creative sales power. You’ll make more sales and have a lot more fun.