Quotable Quote

“Everybody can get angry—that’s easy. But getting angry at the right person, with the right intensity, at the right time, for the right reason and in the right way—that’s hard.”

-Aristotle

Manager’s Corner

Hemorrhaging Cash

By Ken Blanchard, author of Mission Possible

“No matter how well you treat your customers and employees, if your company is hemorrhaging cash, it won’t survive for long. The basic law of economics requires sales to exceed expenses. Today the prize goes to those who can do more with less. The margins in some businesses are so thin it’s hard to imagine how they can be profitable. There’s a growing realization that another important way to manage costs is to make all of your people your business partner. For instance, in some companies new people can’t get a raise until they can read their company’s balance sheet and understand where and how their individual efforts are impacting the company’s profit-and-loss statement.” e? Identify some critical “ITs” for your lab. Ask… Who will do it? What will they do? When will they do it? Where will they do it? In what order, what are the priorities? How much will it cost? Once you’ve figured IT out, success will be just around the corner.

Book Smarts

Selling 101

By Michael T. McGaulley

Reviewed by Christie Walker

What you’ll find when you read Selling 101 is a step-by-step guide for essential selling skills for business owners and non-sales people. From finding leads to cold calling to handling objections to closing the sale, Selling 101 provides key sales techniques and tricks of the trade to help anyone become an outstanding sales person. Here is an excerpt pertaining to a customer who is only interested in the cost of the product, something labs run into all the time—customers who want to focus purely on getting a lens as cheaply as they can.

“What if your price is significantly higher than the competition’s? In that case, you will probably lose unless you can educate the customer on the unique benefits of your offering. To do this, shift the discussion back to value and show how your product offers more value (more cost-effectiveness) than does the competing product. When a customer says, “We can’t afford it,” your reply is, “You can’t afford to be without it.” That is, put the price in context with the hidden costs that would result from not having it.”

Chapters include: Locating and getting through to the appropriate decision maker, Helping the decision maker recognize a need for your product and showing how you can fill that need. While reading this book from cover to cover would be sensory overload, there are great chunks of information ripe for the picking. This would be helpful for a new sales rep or a veteran who has hit the wall. The book includes plenty of helpful tips and an exact blueprint on how to make the sale.

Be the first person to send a Letter to the Editor about this month’s issue of LabTalk and receive a free copy of Selling 101. Go to www.LabTalkOnline.com to send your letter.