How to be the “Difference Maker”; 3 Simple Sales Strategies that Work

by Larry Cockerel
Professional member

ATTENTION MEETING PROFESSIONALS, ARE YOU LOOKING FOR GREATER RESULTS? As Meeting Professionals it’s all about making a difference and helping your clients have the very best meeting or conference. So how do you stay on your best game, and keep motivated to give your best and get the best? Staying focused to your mission and purpose, and always making your purpose and process greater than your pay.

Connecting with speakers, scheduling, arranging hotels, travel and many more steps in helping your clients have the very best event, is just a piece of the pie. Not only do you have the above mentioned tasks, but then you must keep building, selling, supplying, following up and doing your best to give your clients the greatest return on their investment.

Meeting Professionals are key “Connectors” in the business world, which connect the best for their client’s success. Connectors are the difference makers, and by always looking for new ways to stay focused to your mission and purpose is the key to great success with your clients. The following three simple strategies will help you be the “Difference Maker” for your clients and stand out in the crowd as being the best at what you do.

We all know that in sales we are either finding a need and filling that need or creating the need and then filling it. Finding the need is the most common path taken for the majority of professionals that offer a service. Once the need is discovered, then we go to action, but before we can take the first step, we must first have a plan, and by taking the time to incorporate these three simple strategies in your plan will help you have greater success.

3 Simple Sales Strategies for helping you be the “Difference Maker” for your business and clients:

Always Make Your Event More Important than Your Reward
The process that you go through to plan and help your clients prepare for their event is the place that you as the professional meeting planner grows and develops methods of improvement and judgment. The “event” must be the most important piece of your task, not the reward. Putting your client’s return on investment and your relationship first is the highest priority over your own financial reward, this is the key to better than good business.

Always Make Your First Impression Your Greatest Asset
The first connection, the call, the face to face and knee to knee time, that first impression is found in your motives. If your motive is client focused and not singular focused you are on the right track. Your first impression and each meeting or conversation there after must be laser focused to your client’s best interest. Then and only then is your first impression your greatest asset.

Always Make Your Follow-up and Follow-Through Your Greatest Investment of Time
The” weak zone” with most sales and business professionals is “Follow-up”, so that being, make a firm decision to be the “Difference Maker”. Make the follow-up process your greatest investment of time when nurturing your clients. If this is a “Strength Zone” for you, then build on it and get better at the things you do best. If this is a weak zone, then focus and make the decision to make follow-up and follow-through a high priority, and this will help make you the “Difference Maker” in your industry.

It has been found and proven that the more time and energy that we give to our “strength zones” the better we get at the things we do best. The faster we learn to develop strengths the better we get at other things. It hasn’t been found that we should focus our energy on our weaknesses to get better, but what has been found, is that we can manage our weaknesses and build and develop our strengths.

As “Sales Professionals” we can offer more to our clients, more value, more options and greater “ROR” (Return on Relationship) if we learn to get better at the things that we do best. This is why these three simple sales strategies can help you be the best that you can be.

Managing other people’s events and exceeding those expectations can be a great challenge, when you’re relying on other Professionals to deliver the goods. Choose only to work with the best, the most flexible and easy to work with, those that believe that their process is more important than their applause. Your “Return on Relationship” as the “Meeting Professional” is of the highest importance for your client. Have fun while working with your clients, and always make your clients expectations the most important goal.

To wrap it up, get up, get out, and get moving on making a difference today by being the “Difference Maker” with your next event.