Airplanes are for Closers!
I know what you’re thinking, you see yourself cruising in the Gulfstream G7 at 30,000 feet with your shades on as you peer out the window. With the rays of the sun beaming on your face you have a big confident smile because you my friend, are a closer!
It’s right about here we need to insert a #RecordScratch lol
While the person I just described definitely fits the bill as a closer, that’s not quite what I am talking about here.
What I’m talking about are the lessons that airplanes have taught me over the years about success. With my business I find myself travelling all the time and it amazes me how many “gems” are given out on airplanes!
For example,
When you consider an airplane it is commonly known that the two most important aspects of a flight are the take off and landing. It is in these two phases that the mass majority of mistakes happen. When I first learned this I immediately thought of the sales process.
Think about it, your meet and greet is vital to your success! As I have taught in dealerships for over a decade, nobody will pay you for a first impression but you will never get paid unless you make one! For this reason, I created an 11 step process that is conducted in 60 seconds to effectively master the meet & greet.
Now let’s consider “landing the plane” or concluding your sales process, when you do that effectively, it results in a closed deal so it is vital as well! By proactively anticipating my customers actions based on my effective “take off” or meet and greet, I can position myself to instruct the customer in the close, not ask.
Now I want you to think about the point where the airline staff are going over the safety instructions. On my first flight, when they got to the part about the oxygen masks deploying, I remember being astonished by what I heard.
They said that if we had an emergency, we should put our masks on FIRST before we help others!
It was at that point I realized that there will be times in life where you will need to be selfish in order to be successful and truly help others! As salespeople and entrepreneurs we have put our work in front of our family and loved ones at times and by doing so we have alleviated a number of other pressures in life and on our families with the revenue produced by that same work.
While balancing all of that is a whole other blog, the principle shared here still holds water.
While there are many, I’ll give you one more before I go!
The flight attendants!
When they show up to work each day they have no idea what they are going to get. fastball, curveball, slider, even hit by pitch!? What I mean is they have to deal with a mixed bag of people every single flight. Well, in your business you will have to do the same.
This is where the flight attendants taught me a lot. I have seen it all from complaints, yelling matches, even seizures on a flight and all I can tell you is this, these attendants maintain composure along with great attitudes!
In your business you are going to have other humans who will not see things the way you do. In your business you will have moments with happy customers and not so happy customers yet you will still need to compose yourself and stay focused on the goal. Learning how to effectively communicate and influence people will be the difference from you flourishing in your career or becoming another statistic.
I’ll never forget these valuable lessons I learned when I first got on a plane and I’ll never forget how that sun felt on my face at 30,000 feet while peering out the window of the private jet thinking to myself…..
Airplanes are for closers.
