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Sales Lesson 1 – Don’t Forget to Ask
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
What were some of the early experiences you had as a sales rep or as a new manager that you feel like created some important lessons for you?
First, the biggest thing in life today being in business is to ask. If I don’t ask for business if I don’t ask for things, and asking isn’t just directly a person, but asking of yourself also. So, you know, the Bible says ask and thou shall receive. So the biggest thing I have learned is how to ask.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
That’s a great insight. And clearly you’re somebody who wasn’t from the area, you didn’t have the base of people, dozens and dozens of people that you knew that you could start with. And so building referrals was critical for you. And I think people take the path of least resistance.
If you don’t ask for something, then typically people don’t necessarily offer or don’t go the extra mile to help. But when you do ask, that opens up the doors for possibilities to enter your life. And it’s clear that you learn that early on with deal with getting referrals as you start it.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
Right. And it’s also translated to many other aspects. So first, it was as a sales rep asking for referrals, asking for the order. One of the things also that, you know, have you ever said something to someone that you didn’t mean? Of course. And have you ever met something that you did and say, well, yes.
And that happened to me so many times as a brand new sales rep because English was not my first language and I didn’t know how to ask for things, how to ask for referrals, how to follow the simple script that was given to me. But magic started happening when I actually started following how to ask for referrals, how to ask for the order, the way we asked sometimes if you don’t know the words, it becomes a little bit challenging.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
And one of the things that everybody needs to have in their life is a simple playbook, is a playbook that allows them to get to critical moments in their life or their work or their business and be able to actually do the right thing. And see, it’s not the words that matter as much as if you know the words, then you can really focus on the tonality, that you can focus on the body language, you can focus on connecting with an individual.
So it doesn’t sound like you are actually regurgitating something, but knowing the words gives you confidence, gives you the ability to not think about it. But just go ahead and be the present from the moment without having to worry about the details.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
Yeah, for sure. So much of communication is in our tonality and our physiology. And what I notice with people, if they are stumbling over what to actually say, they have a hard time being able to have a tonality or a body language that’s confident, that makes people feel comfortable saying yes to that creates questions in people’s heads.
But when something is learned really well and there are certain parts of any sales program that you can memorize a certain segment. And when we do that, as you said, we’re able to focus more on the tonality and the physiology. And it comes off a whole lot more effectively than somebody who’s stumbling over their words.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
Yeah, and I resisted that. I remember my manager saying when we were doing different parts, you got to know the close. I think it was page 13 and 14 in the sales manual back in that time, you got to page twenty-one, which is how to ask for referrals. It was like, you have to know if I remember if I were to shift onto the sales conversation, I remember the first time I actually sat in my car and I reviewed my close and I made sure that I remembered the words they were in my short term memory.
And I went into the reply and I followed it and I sold my first homemaker’s back in nineteen eighty-nine. They used to be 60. I was like, this is actually words that I call my manager frantically yelling at me, go slow down, slow down is what happens as you know. Like what words. Like the close, you know. So, so yeah. That was, that was that. That’s really cool.
Sales Lesson 2 – Selling is to Serve
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
In order for us to get what we want, we have to have others got what they want first. I think that was maybe Zig Ziggler, but we had a similar thing and better. And I can tell you how true this is, not just in selling knives and there’s a story about that, but also in helping people sell knives. So it kind of came I was a branch manager in nineteen eighty one in Scranton, Pennsylvania. My office, like it was, it was July and I had like twenty thousand dollars in savings that it wasn’t enough. I was deeply in debt and going to shut down the office so that I can sell and recover and I was like no. Well, I asked myself a question. Why did you [Sales Professor Ramez Helou] want to become a branch manager in the first place? Because I love to help people.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
My boss at the time goes, well, are you really helping people? And I had a small flashback and I couldn’t remember sitting in the meeting and telling people to go out and sell, but not because I wanted to help them, because I just wanted to generate revenue.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
I had to rent to pay. I had to pay my receptionist. I have to pay to eat. I’m thinking, gosh, you better go on. And that so that I can make it over here. But at that moment I remember that is not what it was about. It was about sitting down with people and saying, hey, what is your goal? What, what do you want to achieve?
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
That was what the pin dropped. We were having dinner. I said, that’s it.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
Give me two weeks, give me two weeks.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
And then these two weeks if I don’t turn things around, OK then, I’ll go out there and I’ll sell. And it was a challenge before the first week of some sort I sat down with I think it had eleven or twelve people. I sat with every single one. I said, what do you want to achieve? I broke down the goals. I said, OK, you’re only that many phone calls away from getting that money is to make that much say to earn that much income.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
I’m here to help you do whatever it takes and I’m going to to write something like this. Shortly after, we were the number one branch with more than twenty or thirty thousand dollars in sales. But that’s not it.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
From that point onward, we ended up having the best August ever, what all the branches are selling back, I’m cruising with my team and that experience, you know, just made me realize this is how you lead. You lead from the heart you lead thinking of others. You lead that same thing as when I’m selling.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
It’s not about me. It’s about how can I listen to my customer, give them what they want and I’ll get what I want. Same thing in leading and developing others. It was all about my people. And that is the lesson that when I graduated in ninety two from Villanova University gave me confidence that I can succeed if I succeed and if I would like to spend thousands of dollars and still going positive.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
Ten thousand dollars in savings just within seven or eight weeks. Jeez, I can do anything, I can do anything. And that was, I’d say, one of the biggest lessons as well that I can share with others.
Sales Lesson 3 – Do Your Research
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
The biggest thing for salespeople is that you’ve got to do your homework. You’ve got to you cannot go in and expect and be a thousand and nineteen. And in the future years, with the age of A.I., artificial intelligence and robotics and automation in this age and in the age of Alibaba and other online platforms where you can Google and find any product or service almost online at cheaper price than whatever you’re trying to offer. So if you think that you want to walk into a customer meeting and expect to make a sale just because you walk, then you’re wrong. So the biggest thing that you’ve got to do is as you become the value of your product or service. OK, great. You better have a good one. And when you look at all the products and services, the variation, I’m looking here, I have an HP printer and then I have a competing printer. The difference between the functionalities of these two printers.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
So difference made the difference. By the way. This printer was sold to me.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
The person that sold the printer to me, the way that he did it, he understood my needs to understand. My goal is to understand my operation, did he show me how that he understood enough to give me value in the way that he was, that he was presenting and selling whatever product or service.
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
I have this one liner; if people, sales professionals; you’ve got to know your customers business better than your customer knows their business.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
And if you do that through proper research analysis, if you do that, then you become an asset, you become an external asset for that organization, then they can’t wait around. It shows that clearly this is what have we got for us today?
Sales Lesson 4 – Shut-up and Listen
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
You’ve got to do your planning and your preparation. You’ve got to know the customer business better than they know that business. And then last but not least, this man, you have to listen. You have to ask him. Don’t go in and try to sell them what you want to sell them to hit your target. Just listen, understand? Because the customer will tell you exactly how to add value to them.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
Wow. That’s a great insight. And it’s one of those things I think is a skill that most salespeople do not have whatsoever when they’re brand new at sales. They just want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to the customer, and then ask for the order. But being able to learn the art of asking questions and then asking the right questions and listening to the answers and having those answers build one on top of another, on top of another to lead you towards what you feel like is going to be the best offering for that customer. That’s a critical skill for sure.
Sales Lesson 5 – Invest in Developing Yourself
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
How can people reach you or follow you if if they would like to?
Sales Professor Ramez Helou:
Right. So if you type my name R, A, M, E, Z, last name is Helou H E, L , O, U, if you type my name Google it or go on YouTube, there’s a YouTube channel. I have one hundred and sixty seventy plus small blogs or blogs, video that be something almost on a regular basis. Been three to four years in the making. Then you can also search the Academy for Sales dot com from the Academy for sales dot com is my corporate website. And you can subscribe to our newsletter there as well by direct email is Ramez@ramezhelou.com again. Ramez@ramezhelou.com and that this comes to me personally. I would be happy to look and interact with whoever needs support.
PodCast Host – Dan Casetta:
Wow, that’s fantastic. Well, thank you. I know that you have this quote that nothing happens until something is sold. That every day we are influencing people in one way or another. And the world revolves around people that have the ability to influence others, to move other people to action, to create results in an organization, and to sell both products and ideas. And it’s clear that you’ve become an expert on that. You bring great energy to your work and to all your interactions. It’s something I’ve always admired about you, and I always found you to be someone who was really caring and really sincere in that way. And I think that’s something that people can sense about you, which is perhaps a big reason why so many people have followed you and why you’ve become so successful. So, Ramez, I want to thank you so much for taking some time here all the way from Dubai. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to us being able to interact again sometime soon.
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