By Kevin Hogencamp, Contributing Writer
Through the years, sales trainer and author John Palumbo has leaned on the likes of Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller and Donald Trump for advice and inspiration.
Palumbo says he has read the best books on salesmanship and positive thinking, and he advices his audiences to do the same.
“I had the honor of meeting these people,” Palumbo told about 250 Northeast Florida Builders Association Sales & Marketing Council members in August at the University of North Florida. “If you aren’t reading some of these works by some of the world’s greatest salespeople, you’re shortchanging yourself.”
Still, Palumbo says some of the best sales — and life — advice he ever received was not from a famous motivator, but from a fellow nursing home patient in 2013.
“Your words are your currency,” the man told Palumbo, who was amid a grueling recovery from a fall in which he shattered both shoulders.
Now, Palumbo’s audiences get a heavy dose of advice from a then-95-year-old resident of Cypress Village in Jacksonville.
“I ask you this morning, do your words have equity? Do they have meaning behind them? Do you customers feel the essence of your integrity? When you speak, do your words have meaning behind them?” Palumbo asked the audience.
He said ensuring your word is your bond is among the keys to what he describes as the Plan B of sales: mastering the art of creative thinking.
Waking up each morning knowing you are true to your word helps ensure you have the positive attitude necessary for quick-thinking and otherwise being resilient in the sales business, he said.
“Plan B is a state of mind,” Palumbo said. “Plan B unleashes the creativity that top producers understand and bring to the table every time they deal with a customer.”
A Jacksonville resident who has authored seven sales books, Palumbo is a national speaker who frequently speaks to real estate and construction professionals, entrepreneurs and others in sales.
In lively multimedia presentations peppered with personal stories and humor, he provides strategies for understanding the market, addressing customers’ desires and concerns, and closing more sales at any market stage.
Early in his SMC presentation, Palumbo asked audience members to raise their hands if they were in the sales business during the recession.
He says those who raised their hands had managed to endure a “black swan event,” an unexpected occurrence in history that — in hindsight — actually was bound to eventually happen.
“Black swans appear in business. Black swans appear in personal lives. Black swan events occur just about anywhere,” he said. “For each of you who raised your hands, you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t extraordinarily resilient in your business.”
Palumbo said while many people left the real estate and construction professions when times were tough, the recession’s survivors went into Plan B mode and many are thriving today.
“How many are now better salespeople for it — better than you were before, stronger, more agile, able to deal with customers more effectively and can close more effectively?” he asked. “You see, that’s Plan B thinking. That’s what it does.”
Palumbo said one of the best implementations of Plan B in history was Martin Luther King Jr.’s impromptu response, during a speech, to a friend’s request to tell an audience about a recent dream.
“It was never written down. It was not part of the original speech,” Palumbo says of what would become King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. “History tells us that it was ultimate Plan B.”
Palumbo strongly encouraged his audience to develop mentors to guide them through defeats and heartbreaks. Reading best-sellers like Peale’s “Power of Positive Thinking” and Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” also helps, he says.
“Every loss contains its own seed, its own lessons on how to improve your performance next time,” he said. “We hear this from every speaker, every author: It’s about attitude.”
Also in his presentation, Palumbo rejected the notion that in sales and in life, the journey is more important than the destination.
“The heck with the journey,” he said. “Masters understand this, pros understand this. In every phase of your life, it’s staying focused on the destination that’s important.”