Yesterday, I led off with the extremely positive impression Ann Romney made on me when addressing the RNC in Tampa. And then during the day, several pundits, including high profile pollsters, all stated that they thought she’d help her husband seem more “human,” and soften his image as a cold, stand-offish businessman only concerned with the bottom line.
Most of the talking heads then indicated that they believed he had to follow up on her groundwork and prove to voters he had a warm side, otherwise he’d be quite vulnerable to the much more affable and folksy incumbent.
As I listened to these “experts,” a light soon went on in my mind. Because I didn’t realize until then that I have a considerable amount of commonality with Mr. Romney.
My primary occupation for most of my professional life has been financial sales which requires personally calling on prospective customers nationwide. Over time, as my responsibilities increased, I began addressing larger audiences, whether in sales meetings, conferences, guest speaking engagements, trade shows, seminars and similar situations that arose.
And although the need was there for me to perform in all these different types of environments, I had no background, particular talent or ability to fulfill those roles. In fact, my strongest forte was one on one sessions with prospective customers wherein I could describe my products and services, help select the best alternative for each particular case, ask for an order, close a sale and depart.
However, since in order to meet the demands of my jobs, I had to step up to the task of “public speaking,” I swallowed my fears, doubts and trepidations and began stepping into the arena, which in time led to performing in some very large venues.
And here’s what I found out.
The key to selling yourself has nothing to do with glibness, snappy patter, fast pace or silky smoothness in speech. What it’s actually all about is the particular products or services you provide. Therefore, your objective is to thoroughly understand their value yourself, and knowing specifically, in detail, how they help customers achieve what they want and why. And the more you understand about the intricacies of what you can deliver, and match them to the needs of buyers, not only will you close more orders, satisfy more clients, and be asked to come back…you’ll very likely be recommended to others.
On the other hand, if when asked what you can do for prospects all you can tell them is that your competition is worthless, distrustful, harmful, misleading them and can’t perform as promised, you actually look like an unqualified amateur who’s in over his head. And the funny thing is that the smartest of buyers see through that sham immediately, making them quite wary. While beyond that, hearing someone so forcefully disparaging a rival likely incents prospects do some more homework to find out why they’ve got you so scared.
So, in Mitt Romney's case, I don’t think he needs to worry about softening his image or trying to make folks fell comfy cozy, because that’s not his job. His responsibility will be to fix the fiscal ills of the nation, something he certainly knows from experience how to do quite well. And if he simply tells folks, plainly and clearly how he’s going to do that step by step, illustrating the rationale and benefits as he proceeds, I think they’ll gladly give him the order for the next four years and be very pleased that they did.
That’s it for today folks.
Adios
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