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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the CREATIVITY IN SALES Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales and hosted by Fred Diamond on October 30, 2020. It featured Alice Heiman, a well-known sales strategist, who is focused on guiding CEOs to build world class sales organizations.]
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EPISODE 295: Well-Known Sales Strategist Alice Heiman Lists Impactful Ways You Can Show Thanks and Gratitude to Your Customers and Prospects Right Now
ALICE’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “A free way to show gratitude is by making an introduction. There is no rule that you can’t make an introduction just like there’s no rule that you can’t send a little thank-you note. That is a great gift, when you can make a very thoughtful introduction to someone that they might need to know either because they want to change their career or needed a resource. Or it’s just someone that they’ve admired for a long time or someone that you just think they should know.”
Fred Diamond: Today is our Creativity in Sales webinar, we have our good friend, Alice Heiman on today. Alice, it’s great to see you. Alice has so many wonderful ideas to share today, let us know what you got.
Alice Heiman: Great to see you too and I’m so excited to talk about all these creative ideas. I think very few people probably know this so I’m going to reveal this on your show: I was an art major in school. I had that personality from the time I was young and I love it and I feel like I get to use my creativity every day when I’m doing problem solving in sales, but I really like to help salespeople think differently and be more creative. The big problem today, Fred is that salespeople can’t get through to the buyers, they can’t get through to the people that they need to talk to, the top level people. They can’t get through because they’re sending emails that look like everybody else’s email or they’re sending a message on LinkedIn that’s a sales-y message that no one wants or they’re cold-calling and they don’t have a valid business reason so people are not necessarily talking to them. I do know some people who are getting pretty good results with cold outreach but most people aren’t, Fred so we have got to shake it up and be more creative.
Fred Diamond: We started doing this particular webcast right when the pandemic kicked in because of that whole idea that you’re going to have to be more creative right now and you’re absolutely right, you have to have a lot of things going for you to be successful. One of the things that every great sales professional I’ve ever met has been is creative and it’s not just the ‘try thinking out of the box’ but it’s about really figuring out. If I’m a sales professional and there are challenges that I’m constantly facing, how do I think things through, look for new ideas, execute them flawlessly? The ideas themselves are great but you also have to execute and then of course, follow up and everything that we talked about the last time we had you on our webinar. Let’s figure out some new ways to help our listeners and our viewers.
Alice Heiman: I wanted to start with some simple things and the first simple thing is your mindset. You have to believe that it’s possible to reach these people, that you have something to share that they are going to be interested in because it’s about them and how you can help them and that they’re going to talk to you. If you’re having a little trouble and you’re a little stuck with your mindset, read a book like The Art of Possibility, read something to shake it loose, break it loose, bust it up and get your mind going and thinking. This is why I read outside of my area, I do read a ton of business books and sales books, don’t get me wrong, but I make sure I’m reading fiction and science books, all kinds of things because it gives me ideas. I want to go from some really simple things that don’t cost much to some more expensive things that your company may not be willing to pay for but if you want to reach a CEO, I think you’ll be willing to pay for it.
The first thing that I do is really simple and you can see on the screen here, this is the website of a good friend of mine who is an artist and he takes pictures all over the state of Nevada. Here’s an example of one of his cards, this is a beautiful place in Nevada that he caught at an an amazing time of day with a gorgeous photograph. Here’s another one he took at night and I hope you can see this, the stars and then there’s these old wrecked cars out in the middle of nowhere, how unusual is that? I have been sending these cards to my clients and prospects for years and sometimes when I go visit them, three years later I still see the card pinned to their board because it’s a photograph on a beautiful piece of paper and I write a note. What do I write inside these notes? Sometimes I write congratulations because I watch the news and I see that they won best places to work or that they’ve just changed jobs or something else unusual that I find on LinkedIn or by doing a Google Alert. I’m constantly watching my clients and prospects so I send a card, you might say, “Alice, I don’t have their address and nobody’s in their office.” That’s fine, maybe that’s one you can’t do right at this minute if you don’t have their address. However – I’m going to say this now and I’m probably going to say it again – if you’re talking to someone, you say, “I’d like to put a little something in the mail to you, would you mind giving me your address?” Most of the time the say yes, especially if you already know them. A perfect stranger isn’t going to give you their address but most people will do it, very simple thing to just give a card.
One of my favorite ideas is to send a book and, of course, there’s a million books and depending on what you sell and what the title of that person is, send them a book that applies. Kevin Davis happens to be a good friend of mine and oddly enough, Fred, he lives in Reno, Nevada also. He wrote this great book, The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness, I work with a lot of sales managers. I love to send them this book, they read it, they love it and they thank me for it. But there are so many great books and even like this you could send somebody The Art of Possibility or you could send them a book about marketing, if it’s operations maybe you could send them another business books, there’s new books all the time. Fred, I know this is something you enjoy is sending out books, too. Have you had any good luck doing this?
Fred Diamond: Absolutely, we’ve had great authors come speak at the Institute for Excellence in Sales for the last 7-8 years and there’s been some great ones. As a matter of fact, interesting little twist here, a couple weeks ago we had the comedian Tom Dreesen on our show and he was on our Optimal Sales Mindset webinar. He talked about the mindset of top entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., it was a fascinating conversation. I bought 20 of his books – I bought 21, there’s my copy – and I mailed them to some members. I was a little bit apprehensive at first because it wasn’t a sales book, but I got 10 emails back within 2-3 days, “Thank you so much.” If anything, it’s a trigger to keep yourself top-of-mind with the people that you’re struggling with and trying to communicate to.
Alice Heiman: Sometimes right now sending something fun or light is a good idea, not political, not religious, just something fun and light that you could do. That reminds me of another book that I have here by my friend Stu Heinecke and I know you know this book as well, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. If you sell to salespeople or sales managers or sales leaders, they will love to get this book. It has so many great ideas in it and I just marked one little thing here that I wanted to share. Stu Heinecke talks about contact marketing which is what I’m talking about here, you’re making contact in a different way since you can’t get them on the phone, they’re not responding to your email or your LinkedIn request, you’re trying to contact the top level people that you need to respond to you. You’re going to do this in a very strategic way, we’re not just willy-nilly sending out gifts, we’re being very thoughtful about who the person is and what would be the right thing to send them.
It’s really back to sales and marketing working together as always to do an account-based approach and a persona-based approach. What Stu says, “Contact marketing is the discipline for using micro-focused campaigns to break through to specific people of strategic importance often against impossible odds to produce a critical sale, partnership or connection. A contact campaign is an instance of usage of contact marketing.” It’s marketing and sales blended together to really focus on getting to these important people. Years ago I got to see Gary Vee on stage and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the story, he was really trying to get to some big corporation and back then, maybe he wasn’t as famous and he couldn’t really get in the door but he was watching that person’s social media and he saw that he was a fan of – I’m going to just say the Lakers because I can’t remember who it was. He kept watching this guy posting all of this stuff about the Lakers and somehow – this is probably expensive so I’m not recommending it to you, but again, this was an important deal, it was worth millions of dollars – he got a Jersey from that sports player signed and he sent that to the CEO he was trying to reach. Do you think he got an appointment?
Fred Diamond: He probably did. I want to talk about that for a second, I had an instance a number of years ago where I went to lunch with a prospect and an existing customer and the existing customer wanted this prospect to become a customer of ours and we went to this really nice restaurant and I was going to pay, obviously. We’re there for lunch and my customer ordered a $300 bottle of wine and they knew I was paying, a $300 bottle of wine I’ve never purchased in my life let alone for lunch and I had these moments of apprehension like, “Is my credit card going to cover it?” but we bought the bottle of wine. It turns out the customer was a wine connoisseur, long story short, the other gentleman who was with us had become a customer and he’s become a 6-figure customer over the years and he’s become a great friend, a partner and all those things. We’re talking here about a $20 book, I was like, “$300 bottle of wine, I’m doomed.” Long story short, both of those clients have become 6-figure customers and you have to view it in the long term, what’s going to help you get there and how valuable are they to what you’re trying to achieve.
Alice Heiman: And sometimes you’re going to buy the $300 bottle of wine and they’re not going to become your customer, but this is what I say about every interaction, leave it in such a way that even if they don’t buy from you, they would be delighted to introduce you to someone or they might buy from you in the future when the situation changes. It doesn’t matter, they don’t buy from you now, there’s a reason. Maybe they’ll buy from you later or they’ll make introductions for you. Speaking of lunch, since in many places we cannot go out to lunch with people anymore especially with the weather getting colder, at least we were able to meet outside a little bit but now we can’t. I still want to have lunch with you, Fred so I can go to DoorDash or Grubhub or any one of those and I can buy a gift card, I don’t need your address, I just need your email address, I can send it to you and I can say, “How about lunch?” or, “Let’s have lunch” or, “Lunch on me.”
I just gave you three things you could say, I hope you wrote those down and send out the certificate. Just a minute ago you mentioned wine, I found a vineyard that will do a virtual wine tasting so let’s say you’d like to get 3, 4, 5 buying influences together from one of your companies or your own team and some of their team and you want to have a little bit of fun. Maybe you would have been able to take them out to dinner normally at like a trade show or something and you can’t now. Of course, not everyone drinks but even when I did the virtual wine tasting, the people who didn’t drink were still very interested in learning about the wine. You just have to ask a little bit of questions and make sure but if people are big wine drinkers, Halleck Vineyards, I can’t say enough great things about them, they ship all the wine in advance, they even ship cheese and some other things together with it.
They send a set of instructions about how we’re going to taste the wine and then the vintner himself, the owner got on the Zoom with us. He gave us a virtual tour of the winery and he led us through tasting the wine and we could all see each other on the screen and we were all commenting on it, it was such a fabulous event. It cost about $300 a person, it was worth every penny.
Fred Diamond: Alice, we have two questions I want to get to here. The first comes from Melanie and Melanie is in New Jersey, Melanie is a frequent listener to the Sales Game Changers podcast.
Alice Heiman: Melanie, I grew up in New Jersey.
Fred Diamond: [Laughs] I think she grew up not too far from you, actually a little further south. I know she’s from the south Jersey area. She says, “Could Alice talk about the role of gratitude in sales?” For people who are watching today’s webinar for the first time, Alice Heiman, you’re an expert on the complex sale. We talked to you about that before in the Sales Game Changers podcast and like you said, typically these engagements aren’t going to lead to a multi-million dollar sale tomorrow, they’re sometimes maybe 10 years, if you’re a professional, to get the “sale” type of thing. Talk about the concept of gratitude and then we have another great question that’s coming in here from Gabrielle which talks about how to engage people in regulated markets. We’ll get to Gabrielle’s question, talk about conceptually gratitude and how critical you think it is in a complex sale.
Alice Heiman: We could do an entire show on gratitude, there’s so much about gratitude and again, it starts with your own mindset. If I believe that someone’s going to talk to me and be grateful to have that conversation because I’m going to bring so much value to it, then I’m going to be able to have a wonderful conversation and I’ll be grateful and they’ll be grateful that they spent the time talking to me. That’s the first part of gratitude I want to make sure everybody’s clear on, you want to make sure people are grateful and they’re like, “I’m so glad I had a conversation with you, that was really helpful for me.” They still may not buy from you [laughs] but you’ve left them with something, again, leaving them in a way such that if they don’t buy from you now, they’ll buy from you in the future or refer you to someone.
That’s the first piece of gratitude, secondly, with customers who do buy from you I always like to thank them in some way. As the other question, some people aren’t allowed to get gifts of any kind and I understand that but they can’t prevent you from sending a beautiful notecard that has a picture that they’ll keep forever, they can’t prevent you from sending a thank-you note. Thank-you notes go a long way because hardly anyone does handwritten thank-you notes and again, if you can’t get their address there are things online where you can design a beautiful email card so there are ways to do it. Back to gratitude, if you can send them a gift, I like to think about who they are and what they like. I have a CEO who loves cold brew coffee, my family happens to have a coffee farm in Hawaii, I know not all of you have a family with a coffee farm in Hawaii but I happen to. A lot of you know a lot of people and you don’t even realize they have cool stuff, I sent him some of this coffee to cold brew, friends for life. Is that going to make him continue buying from me? [Laughs] no, because I have to add value in what I sell him but he feels like, “Alice knows me and she knows what I like, she spent the time to get to know me.”
That’s another kind of gratitude. I also love to send something from my local area, so this is a good friend of mine, Dorinda, she’s a chocolatier, she makes these beautiful chocolates, they’re made in Nevada and I live in Nevada. I find things from Nevada and if I don’t know much about the person that I’m thanking and being grateful for them, I send something that I think they’ll appreciate that’s from my home state, so I send something like these beautiful chocolates. I’m grateful for having a phone conversation and being able to add value so I might just send a small card or I might send some chocolates but when they buy from me, I’m grateful also and so I might send them a gift. I’m not saying that you always have to send gifts, thoughtful gifts are what’s important like chocolate, who doesn’t love chocolate? Guess what? Some people don’t but someone in their family will so you can’t fail with chocolate because even if they can’t eat it, someone in their family will appreciate it.
I think that gratitude, just sending a gift to send a gift, don’t do it, just don’t bother. It has to come from your heart and you have to be thinking, “I know this person will really love these chocolates from Nevada.” If you don’t feel that way, don’t do it but gratitude can be expressed in other ways too, it can be expressed with words, it can be expressed with a social media post, something lovely about that person and what they did for you. If you’re just posting to show a new customer and you’re bragging, forget about it, it’s got to be something that’s grateful and helpful to both people. I hope I answered your question and if I didn’t, type another one in.
Fred Diamond: Alice, are you familiar with Cameo? Do you know what Cameo is?
Alice Heiman: Yes, I didn’t put that one up here but I love Cameos. You can get a famous person to say great things about a company or a person, you pay something for it and it’s different depending on how big of a star you want, but they will literally make a video and go, “Fred Diamond, Alice Heiman wants you to know you are the best podcaster in the universe and she asked me to tell you that the next time you need another guest, she’s going to give you a whole list of great guests so your podcast is even better. So thank you, Fred.” They just do this little video for you and they’ll say whatever you want, you can tell them what to say.
Fred Diamond: One of our members from a company called FireEye uses that technique to send a message to his partners and he says it’s been a huge thing and you can get everybody from decent big name A-list type celebrities to maybe someone who’s a little more obscure who’s looking for work. Even still, I love the way you just described it with the personal message which also goes back to when you’re sending things like this, I always encourage people, always if you can, include a personal card or at least personalize the message. Put some type of message, people send me books all the time because of the webinars and the podcast and sometimes the book just shows up in an Amazon box and I have to…
Alice Heiman: “Who is this from? I have to decode it.”
Fred Diamond: [Laughs] I have to go back to LinkedIn, emails… Su put something in there that shows that there’s a reason why. “Thank you for the referral” or whatever it is you might do, but also add that next step with the personalized message.
Alice Heiman: I love to write inside a book even though you didn’t write the book, write inside the book why you’re giving it to them and sign your name. I have some bookmarks that have selling tips on them and I put the bookmarks into the book as well, that’s super simple. I want to go back to video, you mentioned Cameo but I want to talk about video because I think not enough people are using video and they’re not comfortable on video. They don’t know how to look into the camera, they’re going like this and they don’t know what to do. If you can set yourself up to have a nice background and look right into the camera – and there’s many ways to do that, that’s a whole other time, but you can make a video for someone right on LinkedIn and send it to them.
Here’s an example of my friend Ryan Scalera who works with Keenan at A Sales Guy and their book is Gap Selling. He wanted to get Gong’s attention because Gong had just gotten some funding and he wanted to do business with them. He made a video – which I won’t play for you now but you can go find it later and of course tell him I sent you, he’ll be delighted – he made this great video and if you know Gong and you know Udi and you know that he loves unicorns, you can see there’s a unicorn in the background and he rapped a song to him. Do you think he got an appointment with Udi? Yes he did, and then he did another one with this company called GetAccept, I don’t have these video editing skills that Ryan has but it’s not that hard evidently if you have a Mac or even a regular computer and a little program. Sometimes he just does regular simple videos too, but he’s very clever and he’s building his brand. When you build your brand to get to know people and you make special videos for them, they’re going to take an appointment with you.
There’s lots of tools you can use to send a video in email and I highly recommend it, Fred and I know that you’ve seen a lot of this. I use video emails all the time with my own clients and with my prospects, there’s Vidyard, BombBomb, Wistia, Hippo Video, there’s a bazillion, look it up. All of them are fantastic, find a video program you can use to send video email because people appreciate it, they see your smiling face and they hear your message.
Now, you still have to have something of value. If you don’t have a valid business reason and anything of value, don’t contact me because I don’t need another email even if it’s a cool video.
Fred Diamond: Go back and check our previous webinars, particularly the last one we did with Alice back in October where we talked about the fact that virtual selling is still selling and you still need to have the value proposition, you still need to have a great way to communicate and understand the process and everything else that’s related to it. You’ve also got to be creative in getting through, I was having a conversation with one of our corporate members today and they’re very busy, I know that they’re very busy, it’s a Fortune 100 company and they want to schedule a 5-minute call with me. I said, “You can reach me whenever you want, you’re a platinum sponsor” and they said, “No, you need to understand, we get 80 requests for every hour internally and externally.” At the same time you need to get your customer’s attention, there’s so many distractions right now especially it’s the end of October, we’re coming down to the end of the year. A lot of customers are pressured with getting their year in because now we’re getting back to some degree of normalcy and it seems to me – I don’t know what you’re seeing, Alice – that tons of companies are hustling to get numbers in for 2020 to get some degree of success.
Alice Heiman: I want to go back to the other question that we had which was about people who can’t take gifts. That’s a little bit harder, again you can still send a message of gratitude by email and if you know the person they report to, you can send a compliment. “Fred, I wanted to let you know that Beth has done such a great job working on this project with me. She’s such an asset to your department, I can’t even imagine how lucky you are to have her. I just wanted to take a moment and let you know.” A compliment is a great way.
Fred Diamond: I want to make a quick comment on that. Every Wednesday we bring on sales VPs and a lot of them are in the public sector and they do talk about this, that you’re selling to people even though there are rules. I read an article of this last week which was just brilliant, on the best way to give a compliment and the author said that the best way to start a compliment is, “You may not know this, but…” “You may not know this but you were very helpful in me understanding how to become a better sales professional” or, “You may not know this but you were really helpful in helping me understand the challenges that your company is facing.” It’s a little bit of a twist there to start off with, “You may not know this…” Just something to try as you’re shooting out nice compliments and messages of gratitude to your customers.
Alice Heiman: You can compliment the person or you can reach out to the person above them and compliment them. Either way is nice but a handwritten note or an email compliment or if they’re very active on LinkedIn, clicking on their post, making an intelligent comment, sharing a valuable resource, those are ways to show gratitude also. I want to show you a couple other fun things, I like to have coffee with people, I love my coffee, I’m a coffee girl so Starbucks or any coffee company that you know – I’m just using Starbucks because it was easy – “Have coffee on me”, “Would you like to grab a virtual coffee?” and you send them the card either physically or you send it electronically. There’s also tons of companies to help you send a gift even when you don’t have the address. You can go to something like G2 Crowd and all these different companies who will send stuff out for you. I like Sendoso and Alyce, Alyce is a sponsor of the WOMEN Sales Pro so I’ll just throw that out there and give them a little plug. They do a fantastic job but these two companies are for big companies. If your whole company is going to do a gifting program as part of your account-based marketing campaign and you’re integrating it with marketing and sales and the different touches that you’re doing, these companies are great. Fred actually told me today of a company you didn’t know of where you don’t have to be a big company, you can just send out a few gifts and I love it. This one is called The Gift Goose, so if you just wanted to send out a few things, tell us about what you sent, Fred.
Fred Diamond: We just had our Annual Award Event, it was a huge virtual event that we had and I see some of the people who I recognize watching today’s webinar. We sent gifts to our sponsors, we had 35 great sponsors so we sent a nice gift that cost about $70 per each gift and it was a nice tumbler with a thank-you note. I didn’t put our logo on the tumbler because I don’t think people want to be drinking out of IES tumblers or if they do, that’s great but I wanted it to be something nice just to show, “Thank you so much.” We were able to customize the thank-you note that went in there as well and we didn’t have to ask for their address, we gave them the list of emails, Gift Goose sent it to everybody. “You have been selected to get a gift from the Institute for Excellence in Sales. If you accept, please send back your physical mailing address.” We heard back from 15 who have accepted and I know they started going out because I got a nice email last night from one of them who said, “Thank you very much, this was very nice.” Not everybody reads their emails right away so I’m going to guess we’re going to get close to all 30 who will have responded. Nice little service.
Alice Heiman: They can send food and they can send gifts and people can choose what gift they want and if you use Alyce and you send a gift and people don’t want the gift, they can donate to charity instead or they can get a gift card for their favorite store or they can pick one of the many gifts. When we used Alyce for the WOMEN Sales Pro meeting, I got something for my almost-daughter-in-law, my son’s fiancé and I know she loves to make these little terrariums and I thought it would be something we could do together so I was able to pick a gift that I liked and that I knew I could do something with my almost-daughter-in-law.
You have to look for these kinds of things, I found one I had never seen before called &Open and they have a little bit of a different way and some cool things, Irish socks, mugs and interesting things.
Be looking for something creative. Again, your company may not pay for this so you have to decide if you need to get to the CEO of a company and the deal is going to be $100 thousand, $500 thousand or possibly a million dollars or the lifetime value of the customer, you’re in charge of your own show here, spend your own money. Here’s one I love, I did a webinar for a company and I can’t remember who it was unfortunately or I would give him a plug, but I got an email from this company. You click the link and then they have a bazillion kinds of candy and you get to choose what you want, you can have one of each different thing and they put it in the box and ship it to you. The person who gave you the gift never gets your address on any of these tools, these companies have a secure way of getting your address, sending it out and it’s still confidential. These are very clever types of things that you can do so you can say you get a 4-pack, a 6-pack or an 8-pack, you pay for it, you send them the link and they get to fill it up and get their favorite treat. I thought that was kind of fun.
Any other questions coming in?
Fred Diamond: We’re getting a lot of compliments, a lot of people saying, “I never thought about this.” We’re coming down to the end here and the critical thing here, Alice is it’s so hard to get in touch, I’ll give you a little example. We just got a brand new sponsor and I communicate to the executive assistant of the boss and I said, “Now that you’re at this level, we have more of an open door for me to communicate with the Senior VP of Sales” and he replied, “They’re very busy.” I said, “Just 5 minutes a month is really all that we need just to make sure that they’re in sync” and they were like, “Okay, no problem.” These people are really busy, they’re not thinking of us per se, especially if we’re not at the trusted adviser or customer level but we have to be figuring out ways to get some type of impression and we have to figure out ways to get the message across. I love what you just said, if your company is not going to budget it, everybody watching today or listening, you’re the VP of your career. I tell people this all the time, you’re the VP of Sales for Joe Smith Enterprises and you’re working for ABC Corporation right now. It’s great if your company is going to say, “Just send us the receipt and we’ll expense it” but at the end of the day, this is your career, these are your relationships. The other thing too, talk about complex sales, you may not be selling to this person or be successful selling to them today but I’m looking at a lot of the people who are on today’s webinar, I know this person used to work there, this person used to work there.
Alice Heiman: Used to work, very good.
Fred Diamond: It’s a journey, my friends.
Alice Heiman: You can track that on LinkedIn, where people used to work. I want to tell a story about a friend of mine who really wanted to get to this CEO. We had tried everything and of course always try to get an introduction, please don’t forget that, find someone who can introduce you. Anyway, it was a company in our town so we were able to drop something off. We found out a little bit about the CEO and then we got this giant mug and saucer and we filled it with all kinds of coffee, accoutrements and things and then we took her resume and rolled it up in a scroll and tied it and stuck it in there. Then we put paper on it, a big bow and dropped it off. In this case she was trying to get a job, not make a sale but getting a job is making a sale. We dropped that off and she had put her resume in three times prior to that, never heard a thing from anybody. We dropped that off and she got the appointment. You have to be clever, you have to think of new things, I was talking about the virtual wine tasting, that’s great, you could also send somebody cocktails, did you know that? Fun stuff or mocktails if they don’t drink and you’re worried, they can choose what they want.
I’m going to tell you one last one that I love and my clients love this too: essential oils. People love essential oils and this particular company that I subscribe to, you can send people things like Cheer and Elevate and Motivate, I pick the ones that have those happy names that I know are going to help them get through the day, or Calmer, they have one called Peace. If I know they’re crazy busy, I send them Peace. There’s just so many different things that you can do to share something nice with people but you do have to be a little bit creative. Get with your teammates, brain storm, make a big list, go from the lowest inexpensive thing, a card with a stamp on it or a 5 dollar Starbucks card or a local coffee shop card to more expensive things and ways you can gather with a group and eat your lunch or have a cocktail or something. There are so many things and there’s probably a bazillion you call can think of that I haven’t even mentioned.
Fred Diamond: At the Institute for Excellence in Sales we’re always accepting cocktails through the mail [laughs]. Alice, somebody actually has a great question here, “What does Alice like to get?” Curiously, do you get things sent and what particular things are you interested in? We’re coming down to the end so after you answer this question I want to thank you so much, you’ve become my Martin Short, you’re one of our go-to guests and we always love Martin Short making a David Letterman reference. We love to always have you on the show, we’re going to have you again, of course but what do you like to receive? Then I’m going to ask you for your final thought for people who are watching today’s webinar or listening to the podcast in the future.
Alice Heiman: I love flowers as you can see and anybody who’s ever had a virtual meeting with me knows that I always have flowers during flower season. A friend of mine has a flower farm so I go and get flowers from her, I always love flowers. I love a good book, that’s a great gift for me and I will tell you a little secret, I do like chocolate. [Laughs] I love a good Pinot and that is why I love Halleck Vineyards because their Pinots are fantastic. I actually joined their wine club after I did the wine tasting with them because the wine was so good. I just love getting a little handwritten note in the mail too, it’s so nice to open it and have somebody say thank you for whatever it was. That’s just a lovely gift as well.
Fred Diamond: Alice, I want to thank you so much for being on our webinar today and for being a frequent guest, and for all the work that you’ve done in your career. You’ve been helping sales professionals around the globe for – I don’t want to say how many years [laughs], but you’ve brought so much value. You’ve constantly been very generous with so many people, you’ve led conferences, you’ve led training, you’ve frequently introduced people, you’ve brought so much value to people in the professional sales arena over your career and I want to applaud you for all the value that you’ve continued to bring. Obviously your family’s name is one of the leading names in performance improvement and you’ve kept that mantle going, you and your company. Give us one final thought, give us one final action step. You’ve given us so many ideas but give us one to leave on today.
Alice Heiman: The last gift I think that you can give or a way to show gratitude is by making an introduction and you just mentioned that, that is something I do often for those of you who know me. That’s something that anyone can take, an introduction, there’s no rules that you can’t take an introduction just like there’s no rule that you can’t send them a little thank-you note. I know for some of you, you have to reach out to thousands of people to get 10 appointments and that makes me kind of sad because that’s so much work, you need to get an introduction and so do the people that you know. That is a great gift, when you can make a very thoughtful introduction to someone that they might need to know either because they want to change their career or they needed a resource or it’s just someone that they’ve admired for a long time and they’d really love to be in that person’s network or it’s someone that you just think they should know. For example, a couple months ago I was like, “I have so many friends in Toronto, that is so interesting” so what I decided to do was introduce them all to each other because they didn’t know each other but they all knew me, and they had so much fun getting to know each other. That was a fun way to show gratitude, to thank someone, simply be in their path one more time, let them see me and know that I care. Just make an introduction for someone.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo