Written By: Bob Williamson
Bob Williamson is a trainer and personal coach whose clients include some of the mortgage industry’s top producers. He can be reached at 505-292-4318. If you are considering hiring a coach and would like a free, one-hour coaching session, you can email Bob at coach.bob.williamson-fundamarketing@worldnet.att.net.
Of all the qualities and skills necessary for a successful career in mortgage lending, the ability to sell – to communicate persuasively – is certainly one of the most essential.
But what does it take to be a great salesperson?
One of my first jobs was selling encyclopedias door-to-door in the summer of 1967, at the age of 18. That experience taught me one of the most important lessons I've ever learned.
I had just graduated from high school, and was ready to enter college in September. I needed a summer job, and saw an ad in the newspaper looking for students to conduct a “survey”.
The P.F. Collier Corp. was doing pretty well using young people to sell their encyclopedias door-to-door in those days. I was hired along with a group of others my age, and we were all trained to deliver a canned presentation, the essence of which was that Collier was looking for a limited number of homes where we could place our fine set of encyclopedias free of charge - in exchange for the family's agreement to do two things: 1) write us a testimonial which we could use in our advertising; and 2) protect our “investment” in them by purchasing a set of 10 yearbooks, which would keep the encyclopedias up-to-date for the next ten years. (The yearbooks, of course, cost about $600 – the actual market value of the encyclopedias.)
To paraphrase President Bush, when I was young and naïve, I was young and naïve. I believed every single word of that presentation. As far as I was concerned, the encyclopedias were being given to these families free of charge, and it was only fair that we ask people to care enough about them to keep them current!
I did very well. I "placed" far more encyclopedias than anyone else in our office, and for most of June and all of July, I was ranked #3 out of the thousands of PF Collier salespeople in the country.
One day in early August, I knocked on the door of a man who let me in and listened patiently to my entire presentation. I knew there was something different about him, because he seemed very amused by it all - not the typical reaction I would get to my presentation. He proceeded to tell me that he had sold encyclopedias a few years back, and that he had invited me in because he wanted to see if anything in the “pitch” had changed. (He said it hadn't.)
I was shocked. Looking back, it's a little hard to imagine how I could have been that naive, but I was. I didn’t even know what he meant by the word pitch – but he explained it to me.
The next day I confronted my sales manager with my new-found worldliness.
"Is it true that we're really selling these encyclopedias, and this whole thing about placing them free is just a way to get people to think they're getting something for nothing?"
My manager's answer was spoken like a true salesman (always answer a direct question with another question): "What do you think, kid?"
Read More
