It’s a big week here at the Dee Homestead.
My daughter and middle stepson are graduating high school and the parental units are flying into ATL today for the festivities.
The wife has been frantically getting everything ready, including finishing of our basement which now includes a meeting room for when clients come for consultations, a gym, a movie room and my private office/recording studio. (Yes, Karen is a rockstar.)
We decided to take a break from the mayhem yesterday and went to a local, independent coffee joint around the corner. The place, despite it’s many flaws including little to no marketing, is hanging on because Starbucks has yet to find our little corner of the world.
I usually don’t like going to this place because the service is slow…really slow. The owners hired high-school students. I’m not sure if they move at a snail’s pace because of lack of motivation or lack of systems training. It can’t be because of lack of caffeine.
Karen and I walked in and there’s a line of folks waiting. I sighed because I had gone through this drill before and knew we were in for a wait…but we weren’t. The two folks working behind the counter were busting ass. They did not stop moving nor did the line. We wondered why and then it figured it:
One of the people behind the counter was not a teenager but one of the owners. The teenager, working with her, moved faster than I’ve ever seen him move before.
It reminded me when I had the brilliant idea of expanding my magic shop “empire” from Atlanta to Florida. We took our best employee and moved him there to run the place. I could not wait to hear how we did on day one until I heard what we did on day one: 0 sales.
How could that be? This guy was our best salesperson? I hopped on a plane to and pitched for a day — and did great. Soon thereafter we shut down the shop and I learned a valuable lesson:
No one is going to sell better than you because no one cares as much as you do.
In some cases it’s okay to sacrifice closing percentage so that you can hire an actual sales team but know this: They need to be trained, trained well and trained often.
And if you are hiring salespeople because you personally suck at selling or just don’t like it, you are doomed for failure.
You’ve got to get good at learning the art and science of closing the sale because as the old saying goes: Nothing happens until somebody sells something.
Kick butt, make mucho DEEnero!
Dave “I Love Selling” Dee