Exceeding Expectations: In Sales & Life

By Terry Dean

Drawing on a 45 year career in broadcast sales and management combined with the study of sales techniques, Terry Dean, the "Dean of Sales" provides the reader with strategies for building business in addition to sharing anecdotes from a career in radio.
Goal setting , time management , identifying needs and the P.L.E.A.S.E. system for acquiring and keeping accounts are among the topics covered. Regardless of your industry, if you are responsible for acquiring and managing customers and accounts, Exceeding Expectations is sure to provide you with tools that you can use.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098388423

Book preview

Motivation

If you only tried a little harder. As a young boy, I didn’t really understand what my dad was getting at. I heard only that I was never good enough. Looking back through the lens of time and experience, I can appreciate that he was trying to tell me I had the potential, but if I was going to realize it, I would need to put in a lot more effort—unless, that is, all I wanted out of life was to just get by. Today I can fully grasp the encouragement in his words and his desire to see me succeed.

Until I was nine years old I was an only child living in a neighborhood with very few other kids to interact with. I was smaller than most everyone my age and the lack of peers probably set me back athletically and socially; however, my isolation fostered a great deal of creativity and desire to find out things for myself.

As I got older my curiosity carried over into my professional life, where I discovered a genuine interest in how people run their businesses and enjoyed coming up with ideas and marketing solutions for how to make businesses more successful. Along the way I developed an inclination for creative thinking that has proven very beneficial when it comes to selling ideas. However, before I could channel these capabilities I was going to have to try a little harder.

By the time I started school I was at best scholastically adequate and spent more time daydreaming than listening. At that time in my life, my creative thinking was not proving to be an asset. I was also fairly disruptive and in today’s world I probably would have been identified as attention deficit. Actually, I think I was just excited to be around other kids my age. Regardless of my motivation, most teachers complained I couldn’t sit still, be quiet or pay attention. Does not work to maximum ability probably should have been permanently printed on my report card. For most of my years in grade school I feared the dreaded parent-teacher conference. The feedback on my behavior was so predictable I knew to turn off the TV before my parents got home; it would be weeks before I would watch it again. As one of my teachers reported, He has a good personality, but all he wants to do is run around the class and talk to the other students. Looking back, it is clear that sales was a natural career path.

By the time I reached ninth grade my lack of discipline caught up with me and I actually failed enough subjects that I was required to go to summer school. Because the Catholic high school I attended did not offer a summer program, I took classes at Anderson the public high school. During the next couple months I got a very positive vibe at AHS and was pleasantly surprised by how well I did in my courses. I was ready for a change and with the encouragement of Kay, a female friend and confidant, I made my decision and let my parents know that I would be starting at Anderson High School in the fall. Being good Catholics they were not pleased about me leaving the parochial school. Little did we know that it would be one of my first steps in the right direction? Kay also suggested that I join Boys Chorus.

If we are fortunate, people will come into our lives who make a difference. As children we look to our parents and often athletes. Later in life those we admire could be educators, mentors or supervisors. In the first year at my new school, it was Mr. Wesp. There was a lot to like about AHS. It was relatively new facility and there were many options that were available. One of those opportunities was in the music theatre department which was considered one of the best in the state. That could be attributed to Mr. Richard Wesp. In the fifty years he taught at AHS, Mr. Wesp impacted thousands of students, many of whom would tell you he changed their lives. There is no question Mr. Wesp dramatically altered the path of mine when I signed up for Boys Chorus.

I have never been someone who could be still and pay attention for extended periods of time. Sitting at a desk for hours was a torturous experience for me and probably my teachers as well. Adding Boys Chorus to my curriculum, on the other hand, gave me a chance to actively participate in something and perhaps find a niche—I just needed to learn how to sing. Like many of my later mentors and influencers, Mr. Wesp identified something in me that until that time I had not known about myself, a desire to achieve. I had just never found anything that I was particularly good at doing. Chorus turned out to be the means to enjoy my first real taste of success. Knowing that succeeding in the chorus would take more than just thinking about it, I accepted the support of a teacher’s assistant from a local university music program who gave me private lessons after school and over time it was apparent that I was highly motivated to improve. Mr. Wesp took note of my efforts and my work paid off when I was given an unexpected opportunity.

Each year the chorus put on a school assembly, a Thanksgiving concert. For most students it was a chance to get out of class and sit through a selection of unfamiliar choral pieces. However, this year was going to be different. At the time there was a phenomenon on college campuses called Up with People, a group of singers made up of attractive young people who sang patriotic folk songs. While the music wasn’t exactly the Rolling Stones, it was a lot more appealing than a piece by Handel and so it was enthusiastically embraced as that year’s concert theme. The song chosen to open the show was called Which Way America. It started off with a solo and, to my amazement, Mr. Wesp selected me to sing it!

Until this time, outside of a few acquaintances, I was pretty much invisible at AHS. Not exactly a persona non grata—it’s just that nobody really noticed I was there. So when I was given the chance to be the sole focus of an entire school assembly, it was a make-or-break moment. As the curtain opened and hundreds of my peers were looking at me, all I could think was, Please don’t let me screw this up. Yet when the spotlight came on and I heard my voice filling the auditorium I had a rush of adrenaline and confidence I had never experienced. I had for the first time worked hard to achieve something and it was spot-on! The rest of that day at AHS, I was congratulated by the few people who knew me and a whole lot of people I had never met. That event was perhaps one of the most impressionable of my life. For the first time I experienced recognition for being prepared and succeeding at something. Today, I get the same feeling when I make an effective speech or a great presentation and I know when I’m finished, I’ve nailed it!

Takeaway: Find people that believe in you, then do your best to show them that they were right.

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