Posts by Ken DiPrima
Selling Via Personality
By Ken DiPrima
How many times have you made the same sales presentation, eliciting what you considered to be the same client responses, only to achieve mixed sales results? More than likely, it was not what you said, but how you presented the information, which made the difference.
If you have arrived at the point in a sales call where you are actually making a full sales presentation, you have captured the client’s attention and, by definition, they are interested. How you present your case, what you emphasize, where you guide the facts, and what kind of closing question that you ask will …
Make No Little Plans!
By Ken DiPrima
Is a Goal Enough to Enable Change?
How are your New Year resolutions going? Have they been helpful? Have you ever achieved any of them, anytime in the past?
Why do they always seem to fade into never-never land, while life marches on?
Most of us never stay on target, long enough, to actually achieve our stated objectives. January, which is usually the coldest, darkest and dreariest month of the year in the Midwest, can also be the most depressing. Not only for the weather, but for the likely-hood of well intentioned resolutions going astray, leading people to burden themselves …
I Won’t Change, Don’t Make Me…
By Ken DiPrima
Every time, that I hear someone say, “I don’t need to change what I’m doing, even though, I’m not succeeding,” I think about the southern Illinois town of Shawneetown. You’ve heard the clichéd definition that insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting different results.
Here’s an example of how intransigence can destroy lives, communities and, literally, break the bank.
Past Success Does Not Predict Future Performance
Shawneetown, Illinois, one of the oldest towns in the state, is located on the shore of the Ohio River. Early residents established a ferry service across the river and Shawneetown …
The Dumbest Farmer Grows The Biggest Potatoes
By Ken DiPrima
Years ago, a young man was hired by a Wall Street brokerage house to become a stock broker. The process required a six month training period, followed by the successful passing of a difficult New York Stock Exchange examination. One day, early on in this training period, the young man was busy at his desk studying the rules and regulations of the industry, when a well established broker within the firm walked by.
This very successful broker was a legend among the many brokerage houses clustered on LaSalle Street in Chicago, because he wasn’t a classically trained and educated financial …
Keeping Score—The Best Sales Motivator
By Ken DiPrima
Management consultants having been preaching, for years, how important it is for a business to measure all of its activities, from a complete breakdown of all receipts, expenditures, time to complete specific tasks; to everything vital needed to produce and deliver a product or service. The purpose of this is to give a business the necessary information to manage every aspect of the business towards attaining profitability.
Sales people who do not follow this same sort of discipline, while managing their activities, lose valuable opportunities to maximize their income, make their job more satisfying, and provide their company with the …
Thanksgiving & Giving Thanks In Sales
By Ken DiPrima
As the holiday season unfolds around us, and thoughts of family gatherings, social parties, and gift giving begin to fill our minds, it may be a perfect time to examine and evaluate the bounties of the year just past.
How appropriate it is that we celebrate Thanksgiving, first. The past year has been filled with joy and sorrow. It brought great wealth as well as financial woes. It supplied affirmation of good health for some, while disclosing terrible illness to others. It welcomed new acquaintances in our lives and lost a few, perhaps, even to death.
Most of us experienced …
Overcoming Sales Slumps Using Your F.E.A.R.
By Ken DiPrima
Someone once asked Pete Rose, who recorded more base hits than anyone in the history of baseball, how he handled batting slumps. Rose looked quizzically at the person, paused for a moment and proclaimed that anyone performing at his level would consider one bad swing to be a batting slump. The answer was just to step out of the batters box, regroup, and become fully prepared for the next pitch.
Anyone who ever made a living as a salesperson knows what is a sales slump. Not everyone knows how to break out of one.
I attended a sales management conference, …
Sales Incentives: Just What The Doctor Ordered?
By Ken DiPrima
Almost every sales organization in the country has, at one time, or another, used some form of sales incentives or awards program to stimulate a flat sales trend. Their use has become a staple in the arsenal of sales tools and is almost universally believed to be a sure fire solution to revitalizing a stagnant sales team.
After all, the increase in sales results is usually quick to occur and often dramatic in its success. Practitioners have long argued that awards extrinsically motivate employees without the financial or psychological costs of formal compensation. It is also a fact that monetary …
How To Increase Sales
By Ken DiPrima
“Nothing happens in business until somebody sells something.” How many times have you heard that? It makes no difference whether that something is a product, a service, a commodity, a tangible, or an intangible. Nor does it matter how good is your manufacturing operation, how cutting-edge your technology, how tight your financial goals, or how progressive and forward-thinking your management techniques. You must still have a sales mechanism, in place, or everything else is useless.
Sales is the one department in which a business organization generates revenues. Sales supply that vital elixir that all businesses need—the steady flow of cash.…
The Impact Of The ACA On Small Business Owners
By Ken DiPrima
Eric Lee’s excellent article on the consequences of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on married taxpayers is an outstanding examination of how this law affects a very select, but rather small portion of American taxpayers (approximately 2.9% of all married couples have taxable income of $250,000 or more). Businesses, additionally, making over $250,000 in profit must pay a .9% increase on the current Medicare part ‘A’tax on that portion of their income over that amount. The tax is split (.45% each) between the employer and employees making over $200,000 individual or $250,000 family.
