Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58508
The President's Message Everything's Funny When You're Makin' Money! T Jim Hanson, President Best Restaurant Equipment & Design, Inc. jhanson@bestrestaurant.com hat's an old saying I heard almost daily in my early years in the indus- try fromawise philosopher and co- worker, Danny Bushong. We worked together in Dayton,Ohio, at a company called General Fixture, which is no longer in business. Danny, on the other hand, is the president of Bushong Fixtures in Dayton. He always believed in get- ting paid for 'what you do,'andwas very good at making money. He had the right idea. Danny also was very good at closing a sale, so one day I asked himhow he'd honed his skills. He told me about Zig Ziglar and said if I listened to his cassette tapes, I would learn the art and become a good sales- man, too. I was interest- ed,so Danny"rented"me his tape set. Hey, like I said, Danny knew how to make money and I did get my money's worth. One of the concepts Ziglar stressed Industry surveys are starting to point toward a slight increase in sales... .This is good news; but to really capitalize on this, it might be a good idea for all of us to invest a little bit into some sales training to get our staffs back in that mode. ty is that we continue to have an over- abundance of capacity and an under whelming amount of available business. Fortunately, industry surveys are start- ing to point toward a slight increase in sales, even though margins are still squeezed.This is good news;but to real- ly capitalize on this, it might be a good idea for all of us to invest a little bit into some sales training to get our staffs back in that mode. It would be a change for the better, I think.That said, there are many low-cost options through FEDA to spice up your sales training program: There are teleconfer- ences every couple of months, primarily sales- related training (like the one we just had in February on "Creating Value in the New Economy"). On the FEDA website, there are amul- was the importance of selling value, something it seems is an underutilized art in the dealer arena today.With all of the tough competition out there chasing after a neutered market, the customer is in control. It seems that the dialog with the client often goes more like "…give me the other guy's price and I will beat it by (pick a number)…"That really isn't thewaywewant to train our customers, is it? As FEDA Dealers, part of our role should be bringing the art of selling back. When I ask other dealers how things are going, many of them say it is a lot better than it was just a couple of years ago,and then qualify itwith a"that isn't necessarily saying much."Today's reali- 4 FEDA News & Views titude of other choices aswell, including dozens of MP3's that are sales-training focused (Mastering Sales; Mistakes Salespeople Make; Skillfully Selling Distributor Value; Value-added Selling; Selling Benefits to the Customer).There are also other topics that focus on nego- tiation and customer service. There are more than 30 product-spe- cific (not by brand) online training ses- sions that take usually less than 10 min- utes to complete. Best of all,you don't even have to pay continued on page 44