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Saturday, December 6, 2014

Yes! We are hard selling. In fact we are harsh selling -- Master Yun Long Zi

Yes! We are hard selling. In fact we are harsh selling.

Somebody showed me a sales book. The book says we should not be hard selling. It proposes that we establish relationships and tie up connections with others, and sales will come automatic, and easy. Those who establish good feelings through good relationships will be loyal to us. That's what that book says.

So the natural self reflective question that came to my mind is: are we hard selling?

I must say: Yes! We are hard selling. But I am proud that we are.

Why?

Is it that we have no chance to have easy selling, through connection and relationship?

How can it be? A company with our reputation and fame would easily obtain connections that will help us sell soft and easy.

I had a few condominium developers who have approached me, to ask me to give talks and seminars to prospects about how good their units' feng shui are. They promised half a percent to one and a half percent of the sales of houses to me. Wow!! Just imagine half of the blocks sold. Each unit a few million dollars. That's very easy money. Soft selling. Selling without looking and sounding like selling.

But I rejected the offer.

If the developers are paying us, and the prospects come and ask me how good a particular unit is, to whom should we lean our loyalty towards? The one who pay us, or the one who consult us?

I am not good in dealing with such subtlety, such ambiguity.
And I won't.

There was a time when a client asked me to choose a good feng shui unit to place his ancestor's ashes urn. He had a certain columbarium he was interested in. After I have chosen a good place, the sales manager came to my gallery, presenting me a cheque as a token to thank me for bringing clients to them.

I said: No! I did not bring my client to you. In fact my client brought me to you.

The manager smile widely and said: Master Yun. Take this as an Ang Bao that's out of our respect for you. And we would also like to give you an offer. We can gather people of hundreds. We can have you as the guest speaker. The audience may engage your service and you can charge them at your market rate. But if they sign up for our units after the talk, you will have a certain percentage of the sales.

Oh so I understood what the token of Ang Bao was meant for. But I returned the token to him. And I told him we only receive money from one party and that's our clients. To whom we take our money from, to whom we pledge our loyalty of excellent service and valuable products to.

We don't hold a dual citizenship at Lotus on Water.

I don't practice ambiguity, especially ambiguity that will blur our sense of loyalty, blunt our integrity and then our dignity.

Now that I have retired from providing personal feng shui service to clients, I make sure that all staffs of Lotus on Water practice the same kind of straightforwardness. Those who receive any funny money from those other than our clients will be fired in the swiftest speed.

We don't practice selling to someone else's clients, we don't sell our clients to someone else, we only sell to our clients. And we receive money from them. In return, we pledge our loyalty in the value of our services and products.

Our focus got to be clear, we don't get a cut here and a cut there when our clients buy something else from someone else.

And because we don't receive this kind of "passive income" and "other incomes", we have to learn how to sell in the most classical, and traditional way.

We must be able to sell over a breakfast table, a lunch table and a dinner table. We must be able to explain the benefits of our products, the promises of our brand to people who never heard of us, and new products to our regular clients, over a telephone conversation or when we meet them face to face. We must be able to talk to them one to one, or stand up and talk to them in a group. We must invite them to step up in faith to try something so expensive (for many of them, our products are the most expensive things they have ever bought). Some times we have clients who challenge us on why are our products so expensive. We must be able to help them see the reasons. We must be able to narrate the effects that have happened to our clients after they started using our products. We call it testimonies. We must be able to bring clients and prospects attentions to the special features of our products and how they benefit them.

All roses are sweet smelling and have pretty colours. But some roses have sweeter fragrance and have prettier colours, and they are naturally more expensive. Durians are tasty to some people, and some durians are tastier to those with a taste for it. These durians are definitely more expensive. Even nature abandons communism.

So not all products are created equal, especially our products, since they are all natural and not synthetic. All are good, some are better, few are the best. Nature always meant to have differentiation.

When someone choose to buy a good one, we are very happy. But we would also turn their attention to the better ones in case they have missed them. And of course the better ones work better and cost more. Or else it just mean our pricing logic is ridiculous. This process is what some professionals call up selling.

And up selling is good. Good for both the seller and the buyer. The seller gets more commission of course. And the buyer acquires a better taste, or purchased a greater benefit. Nobody up buy just because it's more expensive. They need to know the reason why it is more expensive. Why is it better? In the process, knowledge is shared and taste is acquired.

Besides, up selling is also good for the society. It is both an effect and cause of a progressing society. If the society is prosperous, people will up buy, meaning up selling has been successful. And when enough people up sell, the wheel of the economy will turn faster, causing a more vibrant economy.

Going back to the allegory of eating durian. When you introduce durian eating to a non durian eater, it's selling. When you introduce good durian to a durian eater, it is up selling.

However, all these selling process I mentioned above does not seem to be the "in" thing now. They seem caveman and old fashion. The "in" people even invented a distasteful name for them. It's call "hard selling". Maybe it's a short form of " hard-core selling".

I am for all these "hard selling" or "hard core selling". If you can master all these arts of " hard selling", you don't need to beg clients to buy, and you don't have to compromise your dignity like sleeping with them in order to close a deal.

So all my sales staffs will be trained for the "hard selling". It is one of few ways to ensure that the dignity of our brand will never be compromised even when I leave this world. If my successors can earn their living through these "hard selling", they would never need to resort to any "soft selling" which might compromise our integrity.

Everything comes with a price. If you don't want to pay the price of hard core work, you may have to pay the price of compromised quality and integrity.

So far, from the beginning of my business till now, though I have been consistently rejecting the soft and easy selling, and have been criticized for being proud and arrogant in so doing; I have not seen any one in the same industry who have accepted the soft and easy selling to be doing as well as we are.

I suppose it's Heaven's way of showing that I have chosen a hard but right and righteous path. It is a path of the minority. I may have erred in my arrogance, but I did it to save our faithfulness.

In fact, Lotus on Water not only provide hard selling training to all the staffs but also harsh selling training.


What is harsh selling?

If you have been to different parts of the world, you will notice that Chinese, especially Singapore Chinese, is by nature, one of the most difficult race of people to be trained for sales.

Most of us don't laugh heartily when we are very happy, don't cry bitterly when we are sad, don't curse and swear when we are angry.

Most of us are apologetic when we share a different conviction from yours. We seldom even voice it unless you ask us. When you ask us what we like, most of us say "anything will do". We will seldom be the first to make a suggestion, and we seldom voice an opinion.

For many of us, we don't even smile to our neighbors. We pretend we don't see them when we see them in the public transport. Some of us pretend we are thinking deep when we walk pass neighbors on pedestrian and we move our eyes away.

When others warm up to most of us first, we get a stunt. And we ask ourselves: "What's wrong with him?

We rarely speak. If we do, we speak in monotone. Almost all of us do that.

In short, we are a race of not very emotionally rich and expressive people. Even if we have a dream, we seldom share it. Most of us are not very confident of ourselves. And these are attributes that will hinder our sales job.

To do sales well, you ought to be emotionally connected to people. To be great in sales, you must have high ideals, deep conviction, real and authentic beliefs that you are willing and ready to share.

If you don't possess that conviction, why did you join the company in the first place? Why did you choose this career?

If hard selling means doing all the things that will help to sell a product, harsh selling means putting in all the efforts that remove the hindrances that slow us from doing our sales job well.

For instance, adding music to our monotonous voice, adding physical motion to our inflexible body when we speak, smiling to people and looking into their eyes, asking for a closure believing they are willing to buy and have enough to pay.

It seems easy to many other people. But it is not so for most of us.

Some call it culture. But what good it is to retain a culture if it does not edify us, and others?

And thus some people call it "harsh" because it is going against our nature.

But while I think that being who we are is nature, striving to be who we can be is also nature. And very human to do as well. No beasts can do the latter.

Actually, it's a state of the mind. Changed and transformed, for the better, to ourselves, to our clients, to the world.

And if we Singapore Chinese is not going to subject ourselves in doing it, despite of the harshness. Then we will lose out to other people, other races, other nations; in one of the most lucrative and important career in the world.

God does not speak direct from Heaven. He needs the prophets and the missionaries to evangelize His gospel. Buddha does not bring us the sutras from Nirvana. The monk Tang San Zang need to travel the perilous journey to bring them over and translate them.

The treasures of Lotus on Water also cannot speak. Someone ought to try it first to know the benefit. And those someone must be willing to share the experience, hard and harsh, successfully to another person in order that they can also enjoy their miraculous experience.

And this the job and responsibility of us, the Lotuson.

-- Master Yun Long Zi, 3 December 2014

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