Episode 26: Build Relationships with People that Bring Customers in Your Door, with David Stern

In this episode, you will learn about how to get 50% of all your customers from referrals.

Driven by a conviction that the business of selling creates freedom, David brings an exceptional 40-year career as a salesperson, speaker, coach, and author of “Are you for real?!” (Aviva, 2015), an inspiring sales-career survival guide. He empowers all types of individuals to new heights thanks to his time-tested methodologies, an ability to motivate others beyond their expectations, and his genuine joy in seeing others succeed.

David’s entrepreneurial spirit was ignited early in life from parents who owned an Oriental rug company. At 15, he launched a business brokering the sale of used appliances, earning the princely sum of $200 per month in the 1970s. Upon graduating high school, he secured an entry-level job at a bank and quickly rose to managerial roles, becoming vice president six years later. David’s warmth, sincerity, and passion for person-to-person business would become an asset throughout his sales career, spanning many industries.

The roots of his coaching career go back 30 years when he overcame his wall in sales through an intensive personal growth process that led to exponential increases in his revenues. Today, David shares his secrets with others, using a coaching methodology based on the value of work and self. He imparts in his clients the belief that a willingness to change and become a better person will drive sales and business success.

According to David, success comes down to awareness, self-acceptance, self-development, communication, change, belief in yourself and the service you provide, and, most importantly, being honest and caring.

He resides in his hometown of Brooklyn, New York with his wife.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• Understanding the tourist’s desires by thinking like them
• Success in business through building and maintaining relationships with the people that will bring customers in your door (tour operators, travel agents, hotel concierges, taxi drivers, etc.)
• How to get 50% of all customers from referrals (a number David saw during his time as Director of Tourism Marketing at B&H Photo Video) by delivering QSSP: Quality of Service, Selection, and Price
• Making sure that you have team members that speak tourist’s language to make tourists feel comfortable
• Training salespeople on products they sell so they help customers with their specific needs
• Teaming up with non-competing businesses to provide customers with fantastic deals
• How to get a tour operator in a foreign country to put your voucher in their itinerary packets
• Building out a strategy for strategic follow up
• Solving the time management problem
• David’s book: “Are You For Real?!: Going From Excuses to Authentic Selling and Living Your Dreams” about authenticity as the key to personal growth
• Focusing on the experience, not the sale
• The importance of proactivity in the travel and tourism industry
• The danger of making promises you can’t deliver on
• Collaborating by referring customers to who can help them (if that person is not you) and how that will come back tenfold

Ways to contact David:

• Website: coachstern.com

Resources:

• Book: “Are You For Real?!: Going From Excuses to Authentic Selling and Living Your Dreams” (If you purchase, David will send you an autographed copy plus provide you a free 45-minute consultation)
• Blog post: How time management can help boost your commissions by David Stern