Think it is hard to remember your customer and prospects’ names? Well, you may never heard of Rachel Krishevsky, but she is an inspiration for anyone who has trouble with names.
Rachel and her husband married at 19 and then bore 11 children, who then multiplied, and they multiplied, and so on and so on and so on. When Rachel died last week at 99 years old she had 1400 descendants! Yes, 1400! While that is impressive, what struck me as unbelievable is that she knew each of them by name! And that all these descendants are going to miss her.
In our world of databases, Blackberry (or the like), contact lists, etc. its hard to fathom not having access to names and contact information at our finger tips. What did sales pros do before all this technology? The great ones committed names to memory.
I see professionals who are so dependent on technology – and we know there are many benefits – but what is being lost? When we focus enough on the person to remember their name or something personal about them, we forge a different connection and build trust more easily.
Now this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use the great tools available to us. But we should supplement the technology with the human touch.
It means that we should take time BEFORE each contact to really think about the person, what you know about them, what you like about them, your previous conversations and what needs to be accomplished at this contact point. Prepare to connect with the human being and then move into business.
These few minutes of focus on THAT specific person will allow your meeting to start at a different level and allow both of you to be open, honest and efficient. This leads to more sales – or finding out that there won’t be a sale and you can move on to bigger things.
Wouldn’t it be great if this focus on the person led you to mutliply and multiply and multiply for another 1400 raving-fan customers?
More on Rachel.
