Hot TIPS vs Cold TIPS

One of my favorite motivational speakers is Zig Ziglar.  One particular quote that he is known for is, “You get everything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want.”  I believe that actually putting this statement into practice is one of the greatest keys to success in sales.

Recently I had the opportunity to make a SuperQuick presentation during lunch to a group of professionals that represented several of the tip clubs in my city.

For those that aren’t familiar with what tips or referral clubs are, here’s the short of it.  Each group contains one professional from a variety of industries and meets once a week for lunch to exchange sales leads in the form of referrals or tips.  Since the first of the year, I have had the privilege of speaking at most of their lunches and the average group has between 10 and 20 different professionals.  The part of the meetings that I love the most is when they start exchanging their leads or when they express thanks for a previous week’s lead that turned into a sale.

In my presentation, the first thing we discussed was my acronym for the word “TIP”.  I said it stands for a “Team Introduction Professional”.  One of the things I encouraged the to understand was that each member of the group was the introduction professional for their team.

I did a little role playing, with a friend that happened to be attending, to illustrate what one of my sales calls would be like.  I acted like I just closed a sale with her.  After thanking her for her business, I began asking questions about how things were going at home.  In the conversation she mentioned that she and her husband had just had some trees removed from the back yard to make room for a pool.  Immediately I asked if she had found anyone to put the pool in.  She said, “Not yet”.  I then reached into my pocket and pulled out an accordion business card file.  ( it as about 4 feet long).  As I was looking at it, I was mumbling that I had a business card from a pool company in my tips group here somewhere.  Of course, the crowd had a good laugh at the exaggeration, but my point was clear.  If you are part of a team, you come in contact with someone that can not only make an impact on your sales career everyday, but with a little investigation can maybe impact one of your team members also.

As I was closing the luncheon, I explained that a “Cold Tip” is one that says, “I met someone that might need your product or service”.  These types of tips are the same as the ones you can find for yourself in the phone book.

However, a “Hot Tip” is one where someone says, “I met someone that mentioned needing your product or service and I gave them your name.  They are expecting to hear from you.”

Hopefully you can see which type of tip will more than likely result in closing a sale.

Randy’s SuperQuickReminder:  “Some sales leads will be like the Krispy Kreme Kraze.  It’s better to them while they’re hot!

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