Skip to main content

The Coronavirus Obligatory Shameless Plug

Are you in sales and having a hard time working due to the lockdown? Have you stumbled through your first Zoom meeting? Are you bored yet? Well, I don't have a panacea but I can make a small suggestion.

As a sales professional who is also trying to wrap my head around this whole new way of marketing, I've discovered that it's quite the learning process and the learning curve is a long one. Hell, there are sales people throwing their hands into the air and either giving up or waiting on the sidelines for the virus to pass. But I'm not going out that easy and I'll take advantage of the down time to learn, market and get my pipeline full.

One of ways you can make your time useful is to get a copy of my book, "You're Going To Be Great At This!" It's a sarcastic and humorous look at sales with a few valuable sales lessons sprinkled in.


Isn't it a coincidence that the book and this blog have the same name? Actually, the book was the inspiration for the blog. I actually had several people ask me when the next book was coming out and I that this blog would help me develop new material if there was going to be a "next book".

Something else happened as a result of the book. A friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, suggested I give a talk based off of the book to a local group of new realtors. I invested a few hours into a training session that could be "generic" for a general sales organization, or be tailored for a specific company or industry. Those years of Toastmasters finally paid off!


If you are reading this blog but haven't read my book, please check it out. And you may even learn something new about sales between all of the fits of laughter.

Chris Castanes is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. For booking information, click here. He's also the president of Surf Financial Brokers selling life and disability insurance in several states

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Telemarketer's Leads - A Dumb Story

For a brief few months I worked as a telemarketer for a small firm owned by a young married couple. The husband was a bit of a hot head and kind of a jerk on occasion, but his wife was nice and had to put up with the guy.  One of their clients was a mobile home company that wanted people to come to the lot and see how awesome their singlewides and doublewides were. As telemarketers we offered incentives like a cooler and camera (back when they weren’t part of your phone) and other assorted giveaways. We got a small commission if we could book the client. My coworkers and I would call from a list of leads that our employers had purchased from someone. These leads were supposedly “qualified” ahead of time, meaning that they had been vetted to meet the needs of the client, the mobile home company. Unfortunately, most of the leads were useless. The people we spoke to didn’t live in the right geographical areas or their incomes were too low.  “Why aren’t you guys closing anyone?” t...

How To Prevent (Or Lessen) Momentum Killers

Have you had a great sales run, with the wind at your back as you continue to sell and make money, only to have some event or holiday slow down your momentum? It's happened to all of us. I compare it to running at full speed down a field, and out of nowhere comes a patch of mud and tar, designed specifically to slow you down and make you work harder.  An example of this is the holiday season. For some industries, the end of the year is a great time to make those last minute sales and thin out inventories. But for others, it can be horrible. Let's face it, the holidays are about spending money on fun stuff, like electronics and clothes. No one is even thinking about buying insurance, unless they have to.  "I can't spend any money on life insurance because I have to buy Christmas gifts," is what I hear each year. (Nice priorities, by the way!) Having been through this for a few years I now plan ahead. Instead of beating my head against a wall trying to get people to...

My Short Post On Social Media

Are you leveraging social media to help your business? Are you posting daily and creating content like the "experts" say to do? Most importantly, are you getting results? I've tried using most of the more popular platforms for my insurance business, as well as my writing and speaking business. To say the results are "mixed" would be generous. This may be because I really haven't invested much into advertising on these platforms.  The way I see it, when Facebook, for example, allows me to set up a free page for my business, that is like a "free trial" to see if I can get any interest in my product or service. After nearly 15 years of this trial period, I have garnered little to no business.  One can come up with two arguments here. The first is why would you throw money at advertising when you haven't seen any returns. The other side is that "you could have done better if you had quit being a tight ass penny pincher." Fair enough. But ...