Jason Unger

3 Things You Can Learn From Salespeople

Posted by junger - 12/10/08 at 09:12:58 am

You're either in sales or you're not.

There's no getting around that — some people are born to sell; some aren't.

I fall in the second camp. Selling, to me, has always brought forth conflicted emotions — obviously, it's about making money, but it's also about filling a need.

As I've transitioned from doing more of the day-to-day content production to meeting, planning and executing on bigger Web projects, I've had to pick up a few sales best practices.

Here's what you can learn from the salespeople you work with.

Act Social, Even if You Aren't

You need to be social to survive in sales. If you're an introvert, look for another line of work.

The easiest way to get someone to buy something from you is to be social with them. When was the last time you opened up your wallet for a significant purchase from a complete stranger?

Even if you're not friends with potential customers, you have to know them. Never eat alone. Network all the time. Go to local events and meetups.

If you don't know your customer, you can't sell to them.

It's All About the Customer

If your customer needs a hammer, you can't sell them a screwdriver.

When you can identify their needs, you can develop an offer that solves their problems. Sometimes, you're not going to have exactly what they need. That's just life.

A good salesperson can determine what the customer wants and package a solution that works. When that works, it opens up a lot of doors for you. The customer know trusts you to offer products that solve his goals.

After the initial sale, you have the opportunity to come back and sell them more. This is where you develop repeat business and can make the sale on higher margin products.

You Need to Believe in the Product

You cannot sell a product you don't believe in. If it doesn't work the way it should or doesn't fit what the customer is looking for, it's not the right product.

The reason passionistas are so important to sales efforts is that the truly believe in the product and let everyone know about it.

If you aren't excited about your product, how is the customer going to be?

Why This Matters To You

If you're not in sales, you might not care what they're doing. But you should.

At a certain level, salespeople are your product evangelists. They're out there shouting the praises of you and what you do. Yeah, they're getting a commission on it, but they're working to expand your presence and notoriety.

When you're developing a product, you need to understand what your salespeople need in order to do their jobs. Think of them as your customers — you have to convince them that it's worth their time to promote your product.

While not every salesperson is going to be an evangelist for you, the good ones are. They're excited, they believe in what you're doing, and they want to help you do it.

Can You Be Creative Inside the Box?

Posted by junger - 12/09/08 at 10:12:43 am

How many times have you been told to 'think outside the box'?

Everyone seems to think that this is a creative way to approach solving problems, but they miss a big point: there's a box for a reason.

Imagine if the only rule in football was to get the ball to the other end of the field. How would you do it?

You certainly wouldn't limit yourself to 4 tries, trade off possessions, and suggest 300 pound guys try and tackle you in the process. You'd probably walk the ball down the field … and that would be that.

When You Have Guidelines, You Have the Tools to Decide

But that's not creative or fun. That's not even remotely interesting. So you establish rules. You establish guidelines for how the solution should be achieved.

Hence, your box. Your box is the path to your solution.

When you're working inside of the box, finding creative solutions can be way more fulfilling than choosing from the unlimited possibilities outside of the box.

You could easily tear the stickers off of a Rubik's Cube and re-arrange them to get all the colors on the right sides. But that's not the point.

Working within the guidelines challenges you to be more creative. Having a guide can help you find a solution that doesn't seem obvious at first.

The Ultimate Inside-the-Box Creativity

Debbie and I are currently working on the ultimate inside-the-box creativity. With a baby on the way, we're coming up with possibles names. (We don't know if it's a boy or a girl, so two names are necessary).

As Jews (and Ashkenazi ones at that), our naming box is only so large. Aish explains:

Ashkenazi Jews have the custom of naming a child after a relative who has passed away. This keeps the name and memory alive, and in a metaphysical way forms a bond between the soul of the baby and the deceased relative. This is a great honor to the deceased, because its soul can achieve an elevation based on the good deeds of the namesake. The child, meanwhile, can be inspired by the good qualities of the deceased — and make a deep connection to the past.

So when we're thinking of names — both a first and a middle — these are the guidelines we're working with. And it helps.

If there were no guidelines to picking a name, we'd be all over the place. She likes certain names, I like totally different ones.

When we're working within the same confinements, we can come to a common solution. We have to be more creative because of the limitations.

Yes, You Can Be Creative Inside the Box

I hate boxes. But they're there for a reason.

When you need to work in a box, don't consider your creativity lost. Use the guidelines you have to develop a creative solution.

If the Apollo 13 crew can figure out how to fit a square peg in a round hole while the astronauts lives are at stake, you can be creative inside the box.

Coincidentally, Mark McGuinness at Lateral Action posted a story yesterday called "Why Thinking "Outside the Box" Doesn't Work" — give it a read for a different perspective.

How I Went to the Wrong Airport

Posted by junger - 09/07/08 at 12:09:05 pm

This past week has been light on posting, thanks to my trip to Denver for CEDIA Expo.

The trip started off pretty heavy … when I accidentally went to the wrong airport to leave DC.

For my flight to CEDIA Expo, I thought I was flying out of Washington/Dulles airport (located in Virginia). Had I taken the time to look at my boarding pass … or my confirmation email … or my online agent … I would have noticed that I was actually flying out of Washington/Reagan National.

It came as a pretty big shock when, with just over an hour to go before my flight was to leave, the agent in the security line at Dulles told me my ticket wasn't for their airport.

It's actually a pretty great story: read all about it over at the Online Savings Blog.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Selective Ignorance

Posted by junger - 07/21/08 at 08:07:10 am

How does a member of the media, self-proclaimed online junkie and non-stop Web surfer learn to tune out most of the Internet?

It's not easy, but I did it, and you can do it, too.

In his best-seller The Four-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss advocates 'selective ignorance' and fighting information overload.

When I read the book, I pulled a this-doesn't-apply-to-me, since, well, I work in the media. I have to be overloaded with information — that's my job … right?

Wrong. Here's how I conquered my information overload and learned to love selective ignorance.

Remove Your Distractions

RSS feeds are a great way to get information, but you've likely subscribed to way more than you can handle. Stop checking Google Reader every morning — you're already starting your day off on the wrong foot.

While I love podcasts as much as the next guy, they're just something else to pay attention to and are likely to distract you from the task at hand. Try music instead. Since I started using Pandora instead of iTunes, I'm doing a lot more in a lot less time.

If you need to communicate by IM or email, don't make your self available 24/7. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Check your email at specific times during the day (once on the hour is a good place to start) and only hop on IM after you've gotten through your most immediate tasks.

Surf Smarter

Online, every story is seemingly about the details. The smallest things — or pretty much anything about the iPhone — are unlikely to affect you.

I know, it's difficult to admit that. But it's true. Don't fret if you don't know the details — the big picture is what matters.

When you are getting your information, only go to a few sources. Three of my favorites are Techmeme, Drudge Report, and Google News. Each is a great aggregator of what I'm interested in: technology, politics and mainstream news.

When you do surf smarter, do it at specific times of the day or after you complete a specific task. The worst possible thing you could do is open up a new tab while you're in the middle of something else. You're asking for trouble.

Let Information Come to You

Don't be the town crier — there are plenty of other people doing the work. Let them worry about keeping themselves in the know.

Unless you're actually breaking a news story (which you've presumably acquired in a different way), there's no immediacy to 99.9% of the information online. You don't need to know everything that's happening the moment it happens.

You'll find out what's going on through your network of contacts. If you want to find out more, then you can go look for it.

Ever since I stopped worrying and learned to love selective ignorance, I've mapped out a new project, took on a freelance gig, and found time to play my Wii. It's all about time — what are you spending yours doing?

For a look at what I'm doing with my newfound time, follow me on Twitter.

Do You Create, Compete, Control or Collaborate?

Posted by junger - 04/15/08 at 09:04:34 am

We ran a fascinating piece in CE Pro a couple of weeks ago, "The 4 Personalities That Lead to Innovation," that I've been meaning to highlight here.

It covers Jeff DeGraff's Competing Values, which looks at the different types of people and personalities required to make change and innovate in a work environment.

Considering that we're all entrepreneurs, understanding the different types of people one will deal with during a lifetime is crucial.

In short, here are the four personality types and what defines them:

Compete Types are intensely competitive. They are totally focused on performance and goals.

Collaborate Types are the "people" leaders who believe in something greater than the business itself and run their companies to reflect shared values.

Control Types represent incremental innovation by taking something that already exists and modifying it to make it better.

Create Types are all about creativity, innovation and growth. This is the profile associated with radical breaks from the past and breakthrough ideas.

Normally, I hate when people are put into a box. I never like to consider myself as an in-the-box person, but then again, that's exactly what my Predictive Index test said about me.

Jason will most strongly express the following behaviors:

- Flexible approach to 'the book;' often bends the rules and does things his own way. An innovative, out-of-the-box thinker who is undaunted by failure.

(I'm going to post my predictive index results in a future blog — look for it later this week.)

In any case, the article highly suggests that, when forming a team or a workgroup, you need one of each personality. And that's not easy to do, especially because we kind of like being around people similar to us.

So what are you? Do you create, compete, control or collaborate?