Business builder Blair Singer is quite an iconoclast — while expounding his philosophy of sales, he smashes many others out of the way. He believes a slew of sales theories, including the highly optimistic one that looks upon anyone with a pulse as a potential customer, are founded on naivety and wishful thinking. For Singer, business is a relationship, defined by culture. As with any healthy relationship, mutual trust precedes meaningful transaction between the parties. A seller has to enter the other's world, understand his cultural frames of reference and his aspirations.
Rather than dissipating his energies in trying to turn every human being that crosses his path into a customer, a seller has to focus on finding people who have needs that he can meet and forge relationships with. Among the 1.2 billion Indians, there will be people who have a need for you, says the American, who is the co-founder and CEO of Sales Partner worldwide, a global franchise network of professional mentors and business builders. Singer will conduct a workshop on May 13 at Hotel Hyatt that is being organised by Successgyan (for details call, 98409 99427).
Like most corporate trainers, Singer has come up with his own methods on the foundations of time-tested business wisdom. He teaches ‘Little Voice Mastery' — he has in fact authored a book on the subject —where he shows how our actions are dictated by “the constant self-chatter that goes on between the two ears”. This chatter is a result of societal conditioning, media and the gamut of other influences from one's environment. The little voice offers negative and positive suggestions. Mastery of the voice and a control over the messages it relies has implications not only for one's business, but also for one's life.
ADVERTISEMENT
In the early 1980s — when he was nursing himself through the wounds of a failed marriage and an unhappy career — he woke up to the wrecker within. He realised that this chatter was scripting his sad story. In 1991, he left his air freight trucking business and began to devote himself totally to the vocation of warning people about the constant self-chatter in their heads.
“Teachers are leaders and leaders must be teachers,” says Singer. The abilities to sell, build a team and teach members how to sell and build a team are the essentials of effective business. He rates teaching as the highest form of sales. It is easier to sell than teach someone to change his behaviour. Singer believes purposeful education is known by its power to transform people and businesses. “Education is a transformational experience — it is going from making no cold calls to making a hundred cold calls,” he says. In his workshops, he gets his participants to connect with his customers.
Another element in his philosophy of sales is an inviolable code of honour that drives behaviour. Together with goals, these rules give direction to a business enterprise.
ADVERTISEMENT
Singer sums up his message in one simple idea — working on oneself. When someone realises the inward look is the beginning of all change, his life is bound to get better.