Published It's bad news when the Statue of Liberty won't sell.
I just came across an article in USA Today about the effect of the economic downturn that included a profile of Jay Goozh, the owner of an 81-year-old souvenir business. Like a lot of enterprises, his has felt the effects of current events, including a 35% fall in sales.
That includes the lady with the lamp.
Souvenirs are keepsakes, relics, reminders of past events. They can be an anchor to an experience that you want to hold onto or can bring you back to a place you need to leave behind. It just depends on how you use them.
It's probably impossible to remain unaware of all of the things that are going on in our world in general and in business in particular these days. Just last week I spoke with one of the most energetic marketeers I've met lately, and she told me in her customary bouncing-at-a-run way that she was "almost not able to stand watching any more of it." When I told her I'd been reduced to just turning off the television and radio a lot of the time, she actually stopped halfway through a door and sighed, "Yeah."
I'm no stranger to looking at the dark side of things. In fact, I grew up with a phrase that has always haunted me: "Let's celebrate before things get any worse."
This pearl of wisdom came from my father, a dour Scotch-Irish salesman who came out of the Great Depression but brought home lots of souvenirs from the trip.
Like a lot of his generation, my father's souvenirs were wounds that never healed and a lifetime of cautious backward glances. "Before things get any worse" was part of my inheritance, but I recently heard a slightly different version of this phrase that's going to change the sound of the original in my head forever:
"Let's celebrate before we get any better." This spin came from a conversation about a business plan moving forward and the need to celebrate where we are right now so we never lose track of the scope of our accomplishment. Moving upward from level to level, we tend to keep resetting the bar for ourselves in striving for continuous improvement. It's easy to lose the picture of how far we've come without some souvenir, so the starting point - or any step along the way - is as right for celebration and remembrance as the end of the journey. "Before" is always the right time to celebrate.
A lot of us have taken in messages throughout our lives that while meant to protect, comfort, or inform us are not helpful to us. They may be obsolete definitions of who we are that circumscribe our activities and progress. They may be bad news or experiences that we keep as relics. They may be ideas of boundaries that have actually dissolved. These interior souvenirs need not define our world unless we let them.
Instead, let's observe our current experiences with respect and recognition so we can look back with rejoicing on the long way we're soon to have come. Jay Goozh is focusing his business on specialty advertising and corporate logo sales. As his business has historically, it is acknowledging, adjusting, and moving onward. Let's celebrate. Before.
Written by V. Tatum Stammer Earlier this week on the 30-30-30™ conversation the question of how to deal with procrastination around making sales calls came up. This is a very common problem among sales professionals of all types and is particularly insidious because even while they are doing it they KNOW they are sabatoging their professional and financial future. There are many ways to deal with this problem but today I will address just two of them.
One approach is to make future pain more intense than present avoidance of pain. A reason many people avoid doing calls is that the future outcome of their inactivity seems remote. When you transform a remote, painful future into an intense NOW experience that may be all you need to get you in motion.
Another tactic is to change the nature of NOW so that you will win (i.e., enjoy yourself) regardless of what happens on the calls. It can be as simple as changing your intention from convincing people to buy to finding out as quickly as possible that someone is NOT a prospect who can do business with you and getting them off the phone ASAP. Change the rules of the game so you always win. It really can be that simple.
April 8, 2003
Souvenirs and Celebrations
Selling Tip from the Coach
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