Thirty years ago, a career shift emerged as an unintended positive consequence for Daniel Jacobs.
At that time, he was a Senior Executive Advisor with an International business-to-business marketing company, initially hired to debug a serious situation threat to the company, as sales had been zero for the past six months.
Recognizing the critical nature of the problem, Jacobs went into action. He rolled up his sleeves; cast aside all the explanations, excuses and reasons why the sales were so low and started pulling strings to find the root cause of the situation.
What he discovered along the way was alarming: The salespeople could sell, but they couldn't close! So he dug in further to find out why they couldn't close sales.
In hindsight, the real answer was obvious:
They had no training whatsoever in the art and science of closing sales.
This revelation exposed the fact that the salespeople were aiming at the wrong target. They were always searching for the latest fad methods of closing while ignoring the underlying principles, yet is a fact that excellence in any activity is based on mastery of the fundamentals, not the accumulation of techniques and methods.
The missing ingredient was a complete lack of training. Even worse, most had never read a book on the subject of closing. Sales staff were “winging it” every time they got to the close and inevitably ending up trying to force the customer to buy. Of course, the results were abysmal.
So, Jacobs set out to remedy the missing ingredient by training them in the art of closing which ultimately solved the problem and salvaged the company and the careers of the salespeople.
The unintended positive consequence of this process was a career shift for Jacobs. This occurred by default when he began writing weekly articles on closing which became a “Closing Journal” for daily use by the sales staff, producing results never before seen.
The net result is evident with the publication of a book on closing that has the capability of benefiting both salespeople and their customers worldwide.