Joe da Silva

Joe da Silva is a Business Adviser/Trainer/Coach to multi-million dollar companies in Canada as well as internationally. He has uncovered the many secrets to Sales and Business Success over his 40 years in the field. He shares his experience and knowledge with fellow professionals to significantly increase their proficiency, productivity, and profitability through group and individual training, seminars and ongoing sessions such as The Action Suite. Joe's passion and goals are to mentor individuals with their professional challenges by shortening the learning curve and showing them how to grow into their own success. (JoedaSilva.ca)

THE FABLE: THE SNAKE AND THE FISHERMAN

by Joe da SilvaMay 14, 2018May 14, 2018Leave a comment

I was reminded in the book by Michael LeBoeuf, Ph.D.; “How to Win Customers & Keep Them For Life.” of a management course that I took many years ago and a fable with a very important lesson for all of us.

The fable was; ‘The Snake and Fisherman.’ There existed this old fisherman that would go out every day by himself in his small boat. One day, he looked over the side and spotted a snake swimming by with a frog in its mouth. Feeling sorry for the frog, he bent over and removed it from the snake’s mouth and set it free. However, he then started to feel bad for the snake as it would now grow hungry. He looked around his small boat but had no food. All he had was a bottle of brandy. He opened the bottle and gave the snake three shots. The snake happily swam away and everything was good. About an hour later the fisherman heard this insisting banging on his boat and when he peered over the side, there was the snake, but this time it had two frogs in its mouth.

THE BENEFIT OF THE BENEFIT

by Joe da SilvaMay 7, 2018Leave a comment

You have an incredible product/service. You have a phenomenal presentation showing the features and benefits of your product/service. However, you are not making any headway. Why?

Is this scenario familiar to anyone? Let’s take a closer look at this often occurring situation.

What we must all accept, is that consumers today are aware and educated about our products/services even before they meet us. Therefore, if you are still highlighting the features of your product/service, you are putting your audience to sleep as they in all likelihood know as much, if not more, than you may. Do not sell on features. If you do have to mention features, keep it to a minimum. When you have a good feel for the minimum, cut it in half.

Read More “THE BENEFIT OF THE BENEFIT”

THE COST OF TRAINING YOUR STAFF

by Joe da SilvaApril 29, 20181 Comment

In every company, there is a hierarchy which can be easily charted. However, I have yet to see a correct hierarchy chart.

The top rectangle is usually reserved for the CEO, or President, or owner. Then the second tier is made up of; General Managers, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer etc. This second tier reports to the big rectangle. Reporting to the second tier is the third tier. Usually, these are; Sales Manager, Procurement Manager, Logistics etc. Then a fourth tier we get into Store Managers, Supervisors of the different sections of the business; warehouse, sales, logistics. At the bottom are the employees that report to the fourth tier.

TIPS ON HOW TO KEEP LOYAL, PAYING CUSTOMER

by Joe da SilvaApril 24, 2018Leave a comment

You have successfully moved a prospect to a customer. they are not clients until they have bought the second time.

Once that is accomplished how does one keep them keeping back? As I promised you last week, I will be providing some tips on not only keeping your customers but to also make them loyal and paying customers for life.

HOW TO RETAIN HAPPY, LOYAL, PAYING CUSTOMERS.

by Joe da SilvaApril 13, 2018Leave a comment

We are all consumers. We have our favorite restaurants, body shops, gyms, clothing and even grocery stores. We expect and quite frankly, demand a certain level of customer service. If we do not experience it, we walk go someone who will.

What baffles me is that as business people we expect a certain level of service, but are we providing that same, or even better level of service in our own businesses? Recent surveys suggest we are not.

BEST TIME TO MAKE THE CALL

by Joe da SilvaApril 6, 2018Leave a comment

I have been asked many times: “Joe, when is it the best time to make a cold call?”

Dr. James Oldroyd, from the Kellog School of Management in studying over a million cold calls from approximately 50 companies came up with a few observations:

Thursdays are the best day to call.
Friday is the worst day to call.
Between 8 am and 9 am are the best followed by 4 pm to 5 pm.
The worst time to call is between 1 pm and 2 pm.

With all due respect to Dr. Oldroyd, I am going to have to disagree for the following reasons:

How many industries were the 50 companies in? Was there a good cross section from high end IT products, to manufacturing machinery as well as simple commodity retail products?
Is the best day and time to call dependent on industry-specific organizations or even the level of the person that you may be attempting to connect with? By the way, if you are trying to connect with the purchasing agent, you are wasting your time. Therefore, stop it!
Was there consistency as to the objective/outcome for making the call.

I would like to provide a concept of the best time and day to place a call. What opportunities are you uncovering by not making the call? Go ahead take a minute to think of the answer. Right, there are no bad times or days to make calls. However, there are really bad times and days for not making the calls.

This goes also for special times of the year. I would like to share a personal story. Back in my corporate life my team and I were selling construction marking and measuring systems and commodity items. The summer months were thought of as a dead time as everyone had already purchased everything they needed and were being productive at work and further, had no time to talk to us. Generally speaking, September was the next time that everyone got a big rush of orders to get the projects done before the weather closed it down.

Summertime is where my team and I put the pedal to the metal for a couple of reasons:

First, everyone always runs out of something and as long as you are front of mind they will always call you first.
Secondly, because you were there during the summer and planted all the seeds, who do you think they are calling in September for the big fill in last push order?

We did exactly the same thing over the Christmas holiday period. When it came time to start up again, who do you think they called? Also, a lot of companies have leftover budgets that they need to spend at the end of the year, but how many of us fall into the trap of: “There is no business over Christmas.” Decembers were some of my highest months throughout my career.

You will never know the right day or time for your industry unless you actually make the call. However, make sure you are ready to make the call. If you waste their time and have no objective or goal for the call, all you will do is annoy a potential client. Is that something you really want to do?

We invite you to join The Action Suite to make sure you are prepared as you can be to make the call that has to be made in order to turn that prospect into a happy, loyal and satisfied client.

By the way, the answer to the question asked at the beginning is always: “Right now.”