"Help Make Me Successful!"

"Help Make Me Successful!" What I Was Told When I Asked For The Sale

I am currently reading Jeffrey Gitomer's, "The Little Black Book of Connections". In it there is a line:

"Make sure you're prepared to help someone else get better." That sentence threw me back to a few years ago when I was the sales manager for an industry non-profit association.

We were trying to sell a research project to several association members (many of them large corporations). Participation in such projects cost the members thousands of dollars. Here I was in 2008, during the massive economic landslide, asking members for about $15,000 to invest in our research project. Upon calling one member she made a simple request, "Help make me successful!" She then explained that she would need to discuss the proposal with the CEO. Her time in front of the executive would be 10 minutes, or less. My job was to take our voluminous proposal and reduce it to one paragraph. If I could do that, she promised to pitch our request for funding.

I spent the next two hours Twitter-sizing our proposal. Finally reduced to one paragraph, I emailed it to her.

Two days later I received a phone call from her asking for an invoice for the project. A check arrived several days later.

I helped her by making a brief, yet concise, proposal that in turn benefited her and her department.

Mr. Gitomer makes a valid point!

Donald O’Connor

donaldoconnorspeaks@gmail.com