Stanley Feinstein

Sales leader who picks up the phone. I have the skills that matter: smart, fast, mature, kind, honest, team player, finishes projects, innovative, curious, ethical, focused on the detail, frugal, superior communications.

The godliness, not the devil, is in the detail.

My teams focus on quality in every aspect of what we are doing because quality leads to our prospects and customer having confidence in the company and my team. That’s the goal: that the prospect / customer has confidence.

There was a book published a long time ago called Consultative Selling. The authors said there are 2 types of sales, retail sales and consultative sales. And if it is not retail sales, it’s consultative sales. They said there is a 3-step consultative sales cycle.
1. Build confidence.
2. Get your product installed.
3. Make the relationship profitable.

People asked which was the most important step and they said the first one: building confidence. Because if you don’t build confidence, you won’t get your product installed and if you don’t maintain confidence, you won’t make the relationship profitable.

So the question becomes, how do you build confidence? I used to say, don’t say something stupid. But the answer is broader than that. It’s everything everyone in the company is doing. Everything has to be right. No spelling errors anywhere, and more. For example, when I started my company, we were a Remedy reseller. When we were presenting to Universal Studios, I said that we have already sold the system 15 times. The VP interrupted and said: So you must know how to do it and I said, we do. But to myself I said: but we haven’t written it down. We went back to the office and I brought everyone together to write down our standard project plan. It was an all-day meeting but worth it, because it got everyone on the same page. Having it also helped me and our team “build confidence.” If I was in a meeting and the decision maker asked, “how do you do it?” I should be able to reach into my briefcase, bring out our standard project plan, hand it to him/her and say, this is how we do it. That’s one way to build confidence.

I put together teams based on 8 qualities and for sales people, an 8th quality:
1. Are they smart? There is nothing quite like brains.
2. Are they mature? Do they know how to show up, dress properly, etc.
3. Are they nice? No one likes working with a jerk.
4. Are they team players?
5. Are they honest?
6. Do they finish projects?
7. Are they innovative?
8. Are the curious?

If you have a team of smart, mature, nice, team players, who are honest, finish projects and are innovative, you can get a lot done in a short period of time, and if you don’t, you can’t.