Nothing beats one-on-one!
In striving for excellence every so often we tend to forget the basics. It has always been like that... We see this in all sales people, too. When there's a dip in performance, you can be sure, 80% of the time it's due to forgetting some of the basics. What lesson can we learn from this? If we're careful to be aware of and stick to the basics, we can save ourselves an awful lot of pain and failure.
So what are those basics? There are a few! In stead of naming a number of them, let's just consider one and one only; face-to-face one-on-one conversation. Ultimately, the most basic interaction and sales activity is one-on-one contact with another individual. You can make a lot of mistakes, but if you fail to go one-on-one mistakes will usually do unnecessary and greater damage.
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I once had a CEO that intuitively understood the principle of one-on-one. It was a beauty to witness! Almost on a regular basis he would come for a quick visit in my office and discuss some of the difficult issues coming up in our next management meeting. By the time he left my office he would know perfectly my feelings and viewpoints. Knowing him well, he did the same thing with all the other managers, too. Then, when the time came to meet and discuss, he would have no difficulty reaching an agreement. | |||||||||||
In short, he exercised a form of one-on-one sales, and it worked very well for him.
The speed of trust
Make sure to keep in mind how today's screaming need for efficiency may lure you into a dead end. E-mail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twittering and other similar online tools - even the phone - may increase the frequency with which we are in touch, but quality conversations can never be replaced. The time and place to share intimate or private matters is face-to-face. One-one-one may not be the only way to build trust, but it certainly is the most effective way, even-though it may feel oldfashioned and slow.
While recommending Stephen M. R. Covey's book The Speed of Trust, David Neeleman, Founder and CEO of JetBlue Airways says it so well: "With high trust, success comes faster, better and at lower cost."
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