The Customer

Starting the day in Huron, SD. Beautiful weather, but pretty cool. Helping a good client with some staff and technology items for a couple days. It is great to get out of the office for a couple of days and get in touch with customers and engineers from HTS. How often do we get stuck in the office with paperwork and forget about our bosses - the customer. We should never forget them. Forget them and you can just close the door now.

Sales 101

Selling is just as much a skill as an art. A person must be able to read people, understand their needs, be able to communicate with the customer (and the technical resources you have), negotiate, and be detail orientated enough to get the paperwork done to get the order placed. Sure it may look like it is easy - why don't you try it and tell me who it goes?
As a side note, we do all this and continue to build the relationship with the customer to make sure there is repeat business also.
I do love my job, but it is not as easy as it looks.

Enough is Enough

I hate conflict. To me no one usually wins and sometimes a bridge is burnt, so it takes a lot for me to vent. Well there are a few things going on that are causing the steam to start. I try to think things through and keep my emotions in check - but let's face it I am an emotional creature. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. Let me be clear, I know I am wired that way so I don't try to change it or apologize for it. (Tried to change it once and was miserable so realized I have to be me.) I will try to slowly deal with the issues and make sure I do it as nicely as possible - but I can't promise anything.
I will keep you posted.

Ending a great day. Zoo, shopping, church then dinner out. Daddy is pretty tired

The News

OK I know the last few weeks have been very sad with the passing of many well known people. My heart goes out to their family and friends for the difficult times they have experienced and will have to endure in the future. That being said - enough already. Can we focus on the economy, foreign affairs and general overall business already?

This rant was brought to you by your friendly neighborhood salesperson.

Customer Loyalty

So another interesting day in store - any more aren't they all? Client issues seem to come in phases. There aren't any for weeks and then you are attacked by a herd of them. At least that is how it seems. My attitude has changed (at least a little) after reading Jeffrey Gittomer's book "Customer Satisfaction is Useless, Customer Loyalty is Everything" that really opened my eyes. The customer came to you with a problem and needed your help and now they need it again.. How are you going to help? How would you want to be helped? It makes one think. How are you helping your customers?