My Client Is Going To Fail

"My Client Is Going To Fail"

Monday and Tuesday evenings are networking nights for me. I meet some wonderful people doing this, and occasionally find myself in the right place at the right time to help someone. Last week I spent sometime getting acquainted with a man. It was early in the evening and sorta felt like hard work, cause he seemed reluctant to build a relationship with me.

I did learn that he is an independent consultant specializing in helping clients to envision a "brand" that will make their business easy to remember. He said he was excited to be working with a client that is just starting a business and he could help them do it right, from the beginning. I told him we were in the same business, helping others to succeed. We did not exchange business cards, but I gave him the bookmark describing The Perception Of A Difference, The Power In Buying, Marketing, Selling, Customer Care.

Last evening, he appeared beside me as I approached the same meeting place. We stopped to chat; he was carrying the book;

"I ordered it on the Web and brought it hoping you’d be here and sign it for me. "

I reached for my pen.

"Your 27 questions in Chapter Three are amazingly useful. I now know that my client will fail and why. I know enough about my clients planned products to answer those questions and when I did, I discovered his planned product and business will fail. The answers come out wrong too early in the list of questions. My task is to help the client come to the same conclusion before going forward to failure."

He commented that he thought he should just ask the client the questions and let them answer them. I hope he does this because it will be even more powerful if the client provides the answers to the questions, rather than he, the consultant.

Later that evening, another reader commented about the value of the five questions in the story, Opening The Door, on page 207. I wrote the book at the urging of consulting clients I had the joy of helping to greater success. I am slowly becoming aware that the book has more power to help others than I could have dreamed. It is a humbling and wonderful thing, to me.

I write these blogs to share with you, experiences that move and bring satisfaction to me, so please excuse me if I occasionally sound like I’m just trying to sell. My hope is that you are learning a different way to network, or sell your ideas/products, while reading my blogs. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Wes Zimmerman

Zingers

The latest copy of the Zingers Newsletter will be out next week.

Read about the latest Zinger here:

A Tree Grows From The Bottom Up

The Perception of a Difference

The Power in Buying, Marketing, Selling, Customer Care

Wes Zimmerman

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Sunday, February 24, 2008

What Has Made You Successful?

As you know from reading my blog articles, I do a lot of networking. I do it for several reasons.

To sell my book, The Perception Of A Difference, The Power In Buying, Marketing, Selling, Customer Care.

To interest people in purchasing a subscription to my monthly Zimmerman's Zingers Newsletter as a way to help them reach their goals,

To learn about life, get new ideas to pass on to you, and savor interesting people.

One of my favorite questions when I meet a person is, what has made you successful? It provides me with interesting insights into the person and tells me more than she/he realizes. On a recent evening, the answer was "Honesty." This was the first time I'd heard that, in at least a year. It was said in a confident, firm tone, manner that conveyed conviction. I was immediately drawn to this man, because typically those, who do include honesty in their answer to my question, put it at the end of their list, almost as an after thought. This thirty to thirty five year old, put it at the front: That alone created a powerful perception of a difference in my mind, a positive difference.

The very next evening another stranger's answer to, what has made you successful, was "Honesty and integrity, without these you can not be a success in any thing." My immediate thought was, wow, two nights in a row. Again, the perception in my mind was positive; both had created the basis for the development of a relationship, personal or business by giving me an avenue for trust.

In my book I list The Four Eternal Laws Of Sales Success. The first is:

People buy from people they like and trust.

What will your answer be when we meet for the first time and I ask you what has made you successful?


Wes Zimmerman

Famous Quotes - Perception Quotes

Famous Quotes - Perception Quotes

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.
- Umberto Eco

Perception and Sales

Integrity Quotes

Leadership Quotes

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th U.S. President

"He has unusual integrity for a politician."

I was in a small city for the first time recently, listening to but not watching the local TV news and commentary. I had tuned my mind to alert me if something important was said while I did something else. Then I heard, "he has unusual integrity for a politician" and instantly went to view the screen. This being an election year, I wanted to know which candidate, for President, they were talking about. Turned out they were talking about a local person, who's name I did not learn. They noted that this person was consistent in action and demonstrated belief, which had earned him strong support in the community; the inference being that integrity made him desirably different.

Traffic was very light on the long drive home, so I was able to think about that comment with safety. I wondered if politicians as a whole realize what that comment means? Do they realize that many of us assume they are either dishonest all the time, or will become dishonest and unethical after they are in office?

The comment again came strongly to mind a week later, when one of the presidential candidates said in a campaign speech "I will put a three month moratorium on mortgage payments". (I am not certain if the words were three month or ninety day, but my mind interpreted it as three months.) Amy instantly said what I was thinking, "It is twelve months before a new person can take office and by then it won't matter. Are people really going to base their vote on such an irrelevant statement?"

My answer was, "Yes, many people do not question what a popular person says, they do not ask themselves if it is possible, and relevancy is very often not considered. They believe what sounds good and desirable to them in their immediate situation. This is why scammers successfully rip off people: It is also the reason manipulative selling techniques produce sales and buyers remorse."

Amy thanked me for "Sermon No. Three."

It has been my experience that people possessing high integrity are honest in little things and big ones. They are honest with themselves. They tend to think about what they are going to say before they say it. Above all, they do these things consistently. Their consistency earns my trust.

My experience also shows that people, who shave the truth, parse words, quote research results and conversations out of context, louse themselves up because they cannot tell the same story twice with the same ending. Their answer to a question varies with the situation and what they think the questioner wants to hear. That is dishonesty in my view. When I form the perception that they are consistently inconsistent, I tune them out, stop doing business with them and tell my friends to do the same. I cannot trust them: They have no integrity.

Do you have integrity?

Does the way you run your business create sales and friends or sales and buyer's remorse?

I ask you again: Do you have integrity?


Wes Zimmerman


Adolph Hitler believed that if you told a big enough lie, often enough, it would be accepted as truth. That is how he gained power and how he eventually created, at least tacit, support for the Holocaust, among the German population.

Wes Zimmerman is the author of the book "The Perception of a Difference" and of a monthly paid subscription newsletter called "Zingers."

We Get The Respect We Earn

"He Dissed Me"

We Get The Respect We Earn


"He dissed me." This was the young man's answer to the question, "Why did you shoot a stranger?"

When the TV newscast was over I called a young relative and asked what "He dissed Me" meant. The answer; he disrespected me. In today's culture it seems, you must be careful to show respect or run the risk of gunshot wounds, even death, as in this case.

We earn respect, I've learned, by the way we dress, our posture when talking, with or listening to someone, and with the language we use. Our dress tells others how much we respect ourselves. Our posture is part of our body language, which includes facial expressions. A smile is recognized in every culture, human and animal, so is a grimace, hard clenched muscles and a "certain" look. Four letter words scattered through our speech tells others we are lazy or unintelligent or both.

Please and thank you can create wonderful results in life when spoken sincerely, but the opposite when not, the difference is instantly perceived by the other person. Our tone of voice transmits our true feelings, easily over riding our words.

We earn respect.

When we feel "dissed", we've earned it in thought, word and deed.

Wes Zimmerman