What I do for a living, and the service that LKTech provides is called by many names within the industry. I could call myself a Consultant, Network Engineer, Value Added Reseller, or an Original Equipment Manufacturer. That's just a short list. All of the titles are accurate, but they all seem a little narrow for my liking.

We consider LKTech to be a service business. Although we do sell products, we don't "feel" like a retailer, or even a VAR. We always approach every equipment sale as a service we are providing to our customer.

I consider myself a "Technologist". I'm comfortable with that term because it is a general enough description so as to avoid locking me into a small niche, and just specific enough to give folks an idea of what I do. Because we are a small organization, we have to wear many hats; At any given moment I can be performing sales, technical services, business management, or consulting services.

Having said that, I would like to give you a little insight into the approach I take when I am wearing my Salesman hat. I came across an article in one of the trade magazines that I receive (The Partner Channel) that is a reprint of an article from RainToday.com. I have copied the article below from the RainToday.com website. They do allow users to email full text of their articles in an unrestricted fashion, so I hope they won't mind my reprint here

This article sums up what has been my sales philosophy for a very long time. I do strive to have this approach and attitude in all of my sales functions, and hopefully you have seen this in my dealings with you.

For those of you who run or work in service based businesses, this article provides some very good food for thought.

Please feel free to leave comments, or send me an email message. I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of my blog posts.

-Samuel

Friends, Motives & Profits: Avoiding Fear-Based Selling

By Charles H. Green, Contributing Editor, RainToday.com

Imagine that your best friend in the world needs your help. Your friend needs to buy some of the services that you sell. And they have sought you out, knowing that you are an expert in this area, and that they can trust you.

"I want you to advise me in this area," they say. "I'll do whatever you tell me to do." And you know that they will.

What do you do with that power and trust? How much, and in what ways, would you treat your best friend differently from a new client off the street? What does that say about your level of trustworthiness? About your sales effectiveness? Under which conditions would you buy from you?

Selling To Your Best Friend

I don't know you, of course. But I'm willing to bet that, when it comes to selling to a friend, you'll do most of the following six things:

1. If you feel conflicted, or uncomfortable, you'll advise your friend to seek out another salesperson, and probably suggest someone.
2. You'll ask your friend to explain exactly what they're looking for and you'll listen carefully to decide the best answer for them.
3. You'll explain to your friend a little bit about "how it really happens," or "what's really important here," or "what they should focus on" in their business.
4. You'll have a strong point of view about what particular service is right for your friend, and you'll tell them what it is.
5. You'll think carefully about the right price, ending up somewhere between a pretty good deal for your friend and a reasonably fair deal for the both of you.
6. If, after all the discussion, you decide that your friend either should not buy the service at all, or that a competitor actually has a variation of the service that is better suited to your friend, you'll advise the friend either to not buy the service or to get it from your competitor.

How many out of that list of six would you do? (And remember your score for the next section.)

Now for my last prediction: if you do those things, your friend will be very happy with you, regardless of your recommendation. Even if--no, especially if--you recommend the friend not buy or buy elsewhere. The friend will be grateful to you and will most likely buy from you again when they need whatever service you provide.

This sounds like a happy outcome. A friendship is deepened. A future client is very satisfied. You get positive references. And, you feel good about having helped someone.

The question is: why would you ever sell any other way?

Selling To Your Newest Client

Let's face it--how often do we sell to someone as if they were our best friend? When faced with a new prospect, how often do you:

• Advise they seek another firm or salesperson?
• Listen for what the client needs and not for what you can sell?
• Share inside info about how the industry works?
• Think about the best service for the client and not about the best service for you to sell?
• Aim for a price range whose upper limit is "a reasonably fair deal"?
• Recommend a competitor?

For that new prospect, how many of those descriptions fit what you would do?

Compare the two scores. What's the gap between what you'd do for a friend, and what you'd do for a stranger? Let's call that "The Trust Gap."

Who would you rather buy from: a friend, with scores like your first list? Or a stranger, with scores like your second?

The Trust Gap is the measure of the distance between buying from a friend and buying from someone who probably says he wants to be your friend, and whom you distrust.

Fear-Based Selling

If we're honest about it, the reason we don't treat strangers like friends is simple: we're afraid. Either we're afraid they might take advantage of us, or put one over on us, or we're afraid they'll think we're trying to take advantage of them, or put one over on them.

We're afraid we won't get the sale. And if we don't get the sale, our boss won't like us, our promotion will be put off, and our bonus will go down. If we don't get the sale, we'll slip in the eyes of our would-be peers (and that means we slip in our own eyes, which are really the reflected views of what we imagine others will think of us). Our perceived self-worth is at the heart of this fear.

Fear-based selling always drives us in one direction: to control the outcome. We seize on any opportunity to shift the odds, alter the perceptions, control the process. We read books on closing, try new screening processes, experiment with process flows. And all of these attempts at control drives us further and further away from treating clients like friends.

Specifically, the fear-based desire to control leads us to:

• Influence the client to buy from us, not from others
• Listen for what is advantageous to us and, secondarily, to what helps the client
• Refrain from sharing information about our business, lest it "give away" perspectives
• Think about the most profitable service to us, not the best for the client
• Aim for maximum price
• Steer clients away from our competitors

This, of course, is the exact opposite of how we would treat our friends. And the result is eminently predictable: we become suspicious of people who behave from fear. We doubt their motives, and rightly so. We do not trust them. And, so, we do not buy from them (unless left no other choice).

Friends, Motives And Profits

In the first scenario, selling to your friend, your motive is almost entirely to do right by your friend. The consequences are positive and many: you make a profitable sale to a satisfied customer; you improve a friendship; you increase the chances of future sales, both directly from your friend, and indirectly from any referrals he or she would generate; and you paid nothing for the lead and the testimonial. This is very good business.

And it all comes from good motives crowding out fear. This is the paradox of selling from trust:

• The best short-term results come from focusing on long-term relationships.
• Serving the client's best interests is the best way to improve your own.
•  Relationship is not a means to a sale--a sale is the outcome of a relationship.
• If you treat profit as an outcome, not a goal, you will outperform someone who sets profit achievement goals.

Sell to your clients the way you would want your friends to sell to you. It's the trustworthy way. It's the good business way.

[reprinted in its entirety from RainToday.com. The original article can be found at https://www.raintoday.com/pages/2309_friends_motives_profits_avoiding_fear_based_selling.cfm]

I am constantly on the go, and normally forward all of the calls to my desk at the LKTech offices to my cell phone. Since I handle so much of my business telephone on my cell phone, a good headset is a must.

I've used so many different Bluetooth headsets now that I've lost count. Some have been good, and some completely useless, but the Plantronics units that I have used have all been excellent.

Currently I am using the Plantronics Discovery 655. With a MSRP of $149 and an actual street price just under $100 (we sell them for quite a bit less) it carries a lot of bang for the buck.

The 655 is by far the lightest and most comfortable headset I have used, weighing in at 9 grams. That is really important considering that I wear it around 6 hours a day on average. Audio quality is excellent, and is enhanced using AudioiQ digital signal processing (DSP). AudioiQ intelligently adjusts microphone and speaker volume levels, cuts background noise, and improves voice clarity in noisy environments. What is exciting about this particular flavor of DSP is that it's the first to perform signal processing on both the microphone and speaker simultaneously, improving both the audio on both sides of the conversation.

The internal lithium ion battery has a 3.5 hour talk time, and the unit comes with a AAA battery charger so you can charge it on the go. Plantronics also provides a 110 volt AC adapter, and a USB cable that can be used to charge the headset by plugging it in to a USB port on a computer.

In the box you will find soft gel earpieces in three different sizes, along with an "ear stabilizer" that attaches to the headset and rests over the top of and behind your ear when wearing the headset. I have found that it is not necessary at all. If you choose the appropriate size of gel earpieces, the headset is very secure without it, and quite comfortable for long periods of time.

If you're looking for a light weight, high quality Bluetooth headset, this is definitely a great unit, and at a great price.

I've found yet another great service for those of us that could be considered "Road Warriors". GrandCentral is a service that I picked up from a sidebar in a Time Magazine article on the iPhone. It is a very interesting service that is currently in beta, and it wasz just recently announced that GrandCentral has been acquired by Google. Yes, more proof that Google is going to dominate the world soon…..

GrandCentral is pretty slick. When you create a GrandCentral account you will be issued a local telephone number, which doesn't have to be in your area, you can choose one from any region they serve. You will also input your current telephone numbers. I used my home number, my direct line to my office, and my cell phone number.

This service will allow you to handle calls in several different ways. For example, if you call my GrandCentral number right now, all three of my telephones will ring! If I don't pick up the call, you can leave a voicemail which will be emailed to me, and I'll be notified by text message on my cell phone.

Let's say I answer the call on my home phone, and I'm running late for an appointment. If I would like to continue the call on my cell phone, all it takes is one key press. All of the other phones registered on my account ring, I pick up on my cell and continue the conversation without the person on the other end of the line being aware of the switch.

Calls can be routed based on contact cards, so when my buddy Brad calls, I can make sure he gets routed directly to my cell phone and hears a Tool song while he waits. If my wife calls, she hears me say "Yes dear, I love you dear" over and over again while all three of my registered phones ring. Unless we've had a little spat, in which case she goes directly to voice mail. Callers that are not in my GrandCentral address book have their own special call routing as well.

The best part is that right now all features are free. The word is that after the service is transferred to Google some features will remain free, and some of the "Premium" features will carry a charge.

One of my favorite features is the WebCall button (there is one at the bottom of this post, feel free to try it out). You can post your WebCall button on a web page, blog, or anywhere else HTML is appropriate. When someone clicks on it they are presented with a dialog box asking for their telephone number. They type it in and click "OK", and a few seconds later their phone rings. When they pick it up they hear my phone ringing and the call is connected. At no point is my telephone number displayed, so it remains private. Currently all calls from my WebCall button go directly to voicemail since I'm posting it in a public place.

If you have a look at what they offer and think about it a bit, I'm sure you could find a way to make use of this service. Here are a couple of things I came up with:

No more long distance for Mom: If family from out of state calls using the WebCall button, they will be connected to me without having to dial, and therefore incur no long distance charges.

No more "bucket minute" usage: Since several of the major cellular providers now have a "my circle" feature that allows unlimited calls to certain telephone numbers, you could drastically reduce the number of paid minute usage on your cell phone. Here's how:

1. Set your GrandCentral service to show the caller ID of all calls coming to your phone as your GrandCentral number, not the callers number.
2. Register your GrandCentral telephone number in your "Circle", "favs", or whatever.
3. Give everyone your GrandCentral telephone number as your new cell number.

Now all of your incoming minutes are free. GrandCentral has an outdialing feature to return calls from voicemails left on their system, so if you call someone back that way your outgoing minutes are free as well. You can also out-call from the web page from saving outgoing minutes.

Here's a quick breakdown of some of the features:

• Call Screening
• Call Recording
• Call Blocking
• Ring specific phones for specific callers
• Choose ringback tones (music, etc.) for your callers
• Call Switch (switch phones mid-call)
• Access voicemail and other features from your web enabled phone
• Personalized Greetings

I just wish I had thought of it first….

Take a look at their webpage, http://www.grandcentral.com. It's free, so register an account and play around with it.

Note:  The Live blogger kicked out the WebCall button HTML code for some reason.  See and try it HERE