Rick Demko

The 5 Crucial Sales Questions You're Afraid to Ask

The five questions you're afraid to ask a buyer are actually the key to increasing sales and ramping up efficiency. Hey, no one ever said sales was easy.

By Tom Searcy |  Dec 5, 2011

If you want to increase your sales conversion rate dramatically, stop selling to people who can’t or won’t buy. Ok, sounds simple, but the next logical question is “How do I know whether a qualified prospect, who should buy from us, fits into the category of can’t or won’t buy?”

The first step in increasing your conversion rate is to have the courage to ask the questions that will give you the answers you need to know. Too often sales people don’t ask questions when they are afraid of the answers. Those answers may eliminate that prospect from their list, confirming that they are wasting their time.

Here are the questions you need to be asking a potential buyer:
 

1. In terms of time, money, and risk, what business problem will working with us solve for you? 
This answer will tell you whether the prospect has a real issue they are willing to pay to resolve or if they’re just curious. Companies tire-kick in the market for alternative vendors all the time. Sometimes their rules require them to do this, other times they are keeping their incumbent vendor “honest” on price and features and there is always the desire to stay current. Regardless, if there is not a sizable business problem that they are looking to solve, your prospect is just curious, not really interested. No interest, no engagement, no money.

2. How will you measure our success together 60 days after we start work?
Success measures, specific measures are a great determinant of sincerity and seriousness in the consideration process of a buyer. The reason that we limit our review period to 60 days is because we want to determine urgency and clarity. If you get urgency and clarity at the right level, you are talking to someone who is going to make a decision faster.

3. How much better does our “better” have to be for you to work with us?
I love threshold questions. Thresholds set a defined bar as to how good something has to be for there to be action taken. You can first find out if there is such a bar determined to assess sincerity of interest, then you can decide if you can make that bar. Both answers can keep you from wasting your time.

4. How soon does this problem need to show improvement for you to feel that our work together is successful?
Another type of threshold question, this focuses on urgency and one of the leverage points that smaller companies have- speed. If your client can see success way out in the future as being their goal, chances are that anyone can be their partner. When that is the case, you have lost an important advantage and your bigger branded competitors are the more likely winners.

5. What process will you follow in bringing us on as your provider?
Process questions let you know how far out your prospect has thought through bringing on a replacement solution provider. If they have no answer to this question, then you are probably talking to the wrong level of person, or they are not seriously considering a big change.

As a part of this process of asking better questions to increase all aspects of your sales performance, I encourage you to check out my article, 3 Ways to Get Better Information From Sales Prospects. 

Getting a higher conversion rate is about pitching fewer losers so you have more time for the winners- pick the high potential winners earlier by not leaving it to chance. Ask the hard questions and let the hard facts guide your path.

5 Easy Ways to Stay Motivated

No matter what you do for a living, the key to success is superlative performance, day after day after day.  And that’s only possible if you make optimism, expectancy, and enthusiasm part of your daily experience.

That’s easy if you’re pursuing your life’s dearest dreams.  But what if, like almost everybody else in this world, you’ve got a job that’s not exactly perfect. Here’s how to remain a go-getter, even when the getting gets tough:

STEP #1: Realize That YOU Are in Control

Your attitude isn’t controlled by the outside world.  That’s an illusion, a fantasy that, if you believe it, you’re simply using to escape responsibility for managing this all-important part of your career.

For example, if you run into snowstorm that’s making you late to a customer meeting, you can get frustrated and start cursing..., or you can look forward to the appreciation that the customer might feel because you were committed enough to fight the weather to make the meeting.

Similarly, when the economy goes south, you can start obsessing about how it’s going to affect your job, or you can be one of those individuals who use tighter budgets as a way to streamline operations, develop new markets and create innovations.

It’s all in how you see it!

STEP #2: Neutralize Your Negative Triggers

Stop letting exterior events trigger negative thoughts.

For example, suppose you’re traveling to a customer meeting but keep running into red lights and traffic delays. That IS a problem, but if you get flustered, you’ve got TWO problems: the fact that you’re late, and the fact that you’re flustered.

And if you walk into the meeting flustered, the customer might wonder if you’re moody and unreliable. So now you’ve got THREE problems.

To get a better result (and achieve a better attitude), modify your interpretation of exterior events that tend to trigger a negative outlook. Once the events in your life take on a different, more useful meaning, they won’t trigger a bad attitude.

For example, while the delays may be making you late, use the extra time to collect your thoughts, consider your options, and decide on a damage control strategy. Or use the time to come up with a better schedule, so that you always leave plenty of time, just in case there’s traffic.

As a mentor of mine once said: “Life is like those signs that say ‘You Are Here’  What you make of where you are is up to you.”

STEP #3: Detoxify Your Media Consumption

Much of today’s news programming consists of “if it bleeds it leads” stories followed by commercials offering some form of (often addictive) security or comfort. The constant flow of negative imagery automatically creates a negative attitude about life, the world, and everything in it.

If you want to maintain a positive attitude, you MUST reduce or even eliminate your exposure to broadcast news programming. Rather than waste time with that garbage, add material and content into your life that will help you become more successful (like this column!) 

Start and end each day reading something positive! When you’re on the road, rather than listening to negative, emotionally-charged talk radio, listen to motivational tapes, music that raises your spirits, or maybe great literature.

STEP #4: Avoid Negative People

You probably have one or more friends, relatives, or acquaintances who make you feel tired and drained. They always seem to have something sour to say; criticisms come to their lips far more quickly than compliments.

Such folk are toxic to your attitude (and hence to your success) because, if they’re not actively tearing down your enthusiasm, they’re trying to get you to think the same way about the world as they do.  What a drag!  Literally.

If you want to maintain a positive attitude, consider sharply limiting your daily exposure to such people. Don’t show up at the daily “water cooler complain-fest.” Don’t go to lunch with the “grouse and grumble” crowd. If you’ve got family members who are constantly negative, tune them out.

STEP #5: Adopt a Positive Vocabulary

The words that you use—both what you speak aloud and your internal dialogue—have a vast influence in how you perceive what’s happening in the world. All words carry a certain amount of emotional baggage, inherent in their exact definition and the way that they’ve been used in the past.

For instance, the words “despise,” “hate,” and “dislike” mean essentially the same thing, but carry very different emotional baggage. If you “dislike” something, but tell yourself that you “hate it” over and over and over, it will intensify the original emotion.

To keep a positive attitude, use weak words for negative feelings and strong words for positive ones. This thwarts the downward spiral of negative feelings and words, and accelerates the upward spiral of positive feelings and words.

The above is based upon a conversation with one my favorite people, motivation-guru extraordinaire Jeff Keller, and is a shortened version of one of the chapters in my newly-published book How to Say It: Business to Business Selling.

 

About Geoffrey James

Geoffrey James is an award-winning journalist and author of Inc.com’s Sales Source column. Previously, he wrote Sales Machine, the world's most-visited sales-oriented blog. James has written hundreds of articles on sales and marketing for publications like Technology Marketing and SellingPower, and has helped dozens of sales training and technology vendors communicate more effectively with their customers. James' newly published book (based on his most popular columns and posts) is How to Say It: Business to Business Selling. If you've got a question about selling or want to get his "insider" newsletter, visit James’ website.

Insurance, Meet Technology - We Use 'Smart Phones' Around Here

Becky Yerak wrote a wonderful article for the Chicago Tribune yesterday. Becky brings up several good points and I wanted to do my best to highlight some of these advances in technology as they apply to the world of insurance.

As I have been with State Farm I find myself playing with everything I can get my hands on. Being the technology guy in my office, one of the things that I keep gravitating back to is the State Farm Pocket Agent. I am an advocate of having the ability to access useful information when it is needed. Unless you sat in the office with our team and went through our Steer Clear program, there is a chance that you may not know exactly what you need if you are involved in or witness an accident… Unfortunately if you don’t get the right information, we may never find the other party involved in the incident again.

Becky’s article from December 4th highlights other insurance professionals voicing some of the same concerns that I have. Using your smart phone, and the State Farm Pocket Agent, you have tools literally at your fingertips should an accident occur. You will know the proper steps and a platform to document an incident, phone numbers for a body shop, towing company, or if you need to call for roadside service; no matter where you are (the app uses your location to determine whom to call).

“Why can't I use the phone to take pictures of my damaged car and generate an automated claim?"

You can. The State Farm Pocket Agent uses an easy to use graphic interface to help you document where damage on a vehicle occurred, the ability to snap photos of the scene and allows you to send the information to State Farm Insurance hence alerting your Agent and staff.

"Our industry is evolving rapidly due to trends associated with advanced technology in vehicles and homes; the power and ubiquity of mobile devices, tablet computing and social media; and customer expectations for a remarkable experience," said Mike Lamb, a State Farm strategic resources director. In 2009, the Bloomington, Ill.-based company began what it calls a collaborative foresight and innovation program.

Two innovations emerging from State Farm's collaborative foresight and innovation unit are On the Move and Driver Feedback.

These systems allow Android smartphone users to preload messages that can be sent as automated responses to text messages while State Farm policyholders are driving. The Driver Feedback app, which relies on sensors in the iPhone, has technology that measures acceleration, braking and cornering. Policyholders who sign up are given a score for each, as well as an overall score for each trip.

Said State Farm's Lamb, "We've seen husbands and wives compare scores."

As a State Farm Insurance team member I would love the opportunity to show you how this technology works before you have to use it in a real life situation. If you aren’t a State Farm insured, please contact myself or our team at 636.978.4800. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter or on our website.

For Becky Yerak’s entire article featured in the Chicago Tribune, please follow this link.

Drive safely everyone! 

Searching for your Business (and Home, Auto, Life..)

As promised I have a request for all of you, a call to action if you will. I understand the power of both Social Media and networking however I have refrained from utilizing it for myself. My clients and the other professionals I coach have all seen the dividends from posting relevant and easy to share information pertaining to whatever their industry may be. I hope this message is received warmly and that all of you will help me spread this message, specifically in the St. Louis area.

Many of you may already know that I personally believe in taking risk, but I also believe in transferring and managing it. I believe in helping people manage the risk in their lives and protecting their assets from any peril that may come their way. Often what I cover is truly what’s most important to my customers.

I do this with an extensive platform of products that range from auto, banking, home, business and life insurance as a team member with State Farm Insurance in O’Fallon Missouri. I enjoy what I do because I know how valuable the lives and assets are to the people I insure; and I know that when push comes to shove, myself and State Farm will be there!

Enter where I would like to see how magical Social Networks can spread information.. One in every four automobiles on the road is currently insured by State Farm.  We mantain an impeccable reputation for standing by our clients.  In 2011, J.D. Power and Associates ranked State Farm second in US Auto Claims Satisfaction.  I myself have seen my agent Jim Schilkoski go to bat for his insured’s.   Auto insurance is just the beginning, I am hoping that I can show you why so many people have chosen State Farm Insurance to manage all of the perils that cause us pain. Know that myself, as well as our entire team will be there when the unexpected happens.

I am constantly impressed with the professionalism and effectiveness of everyone in my network, so thank you for allowing me to be a part of yours.  I feel like we all have an extraordinary ability to help each other and extend our reach.  That is really what I would like you to help me with.  Please share this message and if you are not already insured by State Farm I hope you would allow me to quote your polices.  I feel that my quotes will be competitive with your current insurer and in many cases I may be able save you money.  Obviously I will guarantee the service myself and I hope you would consider our team to earn your business.

Will Science Make Selling Impossible in the Future?

This is another reminder of why you really need to think about how you're selling.  If you happen to be a devoted reader of my blog, far and few between I am sure, you would recall a post where I featured Simon Sienk from the TEDxPugetSound series.  People buy for their reasons, often on a gut feeling.  The emotion and the behavior of why we buy things comes from the limbic system.  The same lessons are applied and presented nicely here by  Geoffrey James.

Enter Mr. James:

Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system. It's a big deal in the academic world—and it could end up being a big deal in the business world, too. Here's why.

In recent years, neuroscientists have begun to examine how the brain behaves and changes when buying and selling is taking place.

For example, there's been research into brain activity suggesting that decision-making does not take place in the neocortex (where the brain processes language, abstraction, planning, and perception). Instead, it appears that people make decisions in the limbic system, the more-basic level of the brain that controls the hormones responsible for feeding, reproductive behavior, and parental behavior.  

Apparently, the limbic system is the source of the pleasure that people feel when they solve problems. And that's what happens when people buy things.

In other words, neuroscience is now proving what many sales professionals have long suspected: that decision-making, even among top executives, takes place mostly at a "gut" level.

Other neuroscientists are using brain scans to measure variations in electrical activity while people are buying and selling things.

It is now possible to scan the brains of people viewing sales presentations to see whether or not they’re being convinced. Don’t be surprised if some of this research proves that your much-loved “closing techniques” are actually annoying your customers.
 
Does that sound like science fiction? Well, it turns out that there are already companies using neuroscience to assess the emotional state of potential buyers.
 
For example, the start-up Affectiva is marketing a "wearable, wireless biosensor that measures emotional arousal via skin conductance [which] grows higher during states such as excitement, attention, or anxiety and lower during states such as boredom or relaxation."  
 
And Affectiva isn't some fly-by-night blue-sky company, either. I happen to have interviewed the CEO, David Berman, back when he was president of sales and service at Webex. He's a sales guy, through and through, and you can bet that he "gets" how this technology will change the world of sales and marketing.
 
But companies like Affectiva (which is based upon MIT research) are just the start of a huge wave of sales-oriented neuroscience.
 
For example, Meghana A. Bhatt, a fellow at Baylor College of Medicine's department of neuroscience, recently used brains scans to determine how people's minds work when they're trying to get somebody else to believe something that’s not true.

The study monitored the brains of 76 volunteers who took part in a "bargaining game" between a "buyer" and a "seller." Scans of the participants' brains during the game revealed that a "very significant difference in brain responses" between those who bluffed and those who didn't.

Now think about that for a second.

There now exists a device that can tell whether you are telling the truth when you're trying to sell something. Project that technology 30 years into the future.

It's not hard to imagine sales negotiations taking place in "BS-free" zones, where it's impossible to bluff without the other person knowing that you're bluffing.

What's hard to imagine is what "selling" would look like in that kind of business environment. Or, indeed, whether selling would be achievable at all. What do you think about that possibility?

The promise of Social Media isn’t in leveraging your customers, it’s in better understanding them

The company found Social Media and thought it was glorious to see, “I can use this tool to help them talk about me!”

by MACK COLLIER

I saw this update on Facebook from Toby: ‘BIG pr agency VIP “our job is no longer control in social media; job is to arm fans with talking points to spread wom thru their social graph.” Sigh Is the “social” of social media gone forever?’

When I saw this, I realized that this thought had been bubbling up with me for a while: Most companies aren’t trying to leverage how their customers use social media to better understand them, they are trying to leverage how their customers use social media to create a new promotional channel for the company.  I noticed during last Friday’s Blog World keynote with Ford’s CMO Jim Farley that he kept talking about how powerful social media was because it let Ford spread its message through its customers.  I heard similar stories in other sessions and from other companies.

Good companies/organizations of Planet Earth, please understand that the promise of social media isn’t that it will let customers tell your story, but it will help you to better understand their’s.

At the Live #Blogchat at the FIRE Sessions in September, John Moore made a fabulous point: “In a way, it can be so easy and yet so difficult to engage with customers using social media.  Easy meaning it’s a tool we all have at out disposal to use.  Big companies, small companies, they’re using the same tools.  This allows you to scale the conversation, but just because you can scale the conversation, doesn’t mean you should scale the conversation.  The theme we have here today is ‘Let’s Get Dirty’, meaning hands-on…Doing it dirty, getting dirty is going in and understanding the passion and motivations behind the individual that is tweeting, blogging, updating, whatever….The ‘Easy’ part is the blast, the difficult part is to get your hands dirty, getting hands-on, and getting to know people.  That takes time.  Social media, for many of us, makes us lazy….Social media is so easy, but yet so difficult.  We’re losing the personal touches of getting our hands dirty and taking the time to truly and individually connect on a personal level.”

John’s right.  The promise of Social Media for many companies is that it provides them with a new promotional channel to reach their customers.  Or better still, to connect with their customers and help them promote the brand.  There is a shift in the idea of embracing a brand’s advocates, but as I told Toby on Facebook, what brands need to understand is that their advocates don’t love them for their talking points.  There is some common thread that runs through the brand, that binds them.  Figuring out what those ties are and truly understanding your advocates takes digging and work.

The great promise of social media is that it can help brands better communicate with, and understand their customers.  With a higher level of understanding comes more effective and efficient communication, which leads to even more understanding between the brand and its customers.  At some point, both groups begin to trust the other a bit, and that’s when advocacy on behalf of the customers can come into play.  The end result is the brand can use social media to better understand its customers, to build trust and advocacy with them, and improve their marketing and communication efforts, making them more efficient and saving the brand money.  All while improving customer satisfaction, growing customer retention rates and lowering customer acquisition costs.

Or companies can go on thinking that the beauty of social media is that it allows them to use their customers to RT their press release.

Six Questions Your Client Needs You To Answer

NOVEMBER 1, 2011 BY S. ANTHONY IANNARINO

Who does your client need you to be? Answering these questions from your dream client’s perspective will help you?

What Are My Business Goals and Objectives?

Your dream client needs you to know and understand their business goals and objectives. They need you to ask the questions that help them to identify their own business goals and objectives, and they need you to connect those goals to the solution you build for—and with—them.

Do You Have the Business Acumen to Help Me?

Your prospect needs to know that you have the business acumen to help them. It isn’t enough to ask questions. You need to be able to ask the questions that get to the real issues, the issues that must be resolved in order to produce the results that they need. Business acumen means knowing how to help answer those questions. You must also know and understand how to help them get results.

Who Do We Need on Our Team?

Your prospective clients need you to know who you will need on your team to produce results. This team includes people from their organization, their stakeholders. It also includes members of your team that you will need to lead to produce results as your client’s partner. You need to know more than what is necessary—you also need to know who is necessary.

How Do You Help Me Make a Compelling Case?

Your dream client is going to need to make the case for your solution within his or her own organization. They need you to help provide them with the business case. They also need you to help them build the consensus for your solution. They need a compelling case, and they need you to help them make it.

What Are My Constraints?

Your prospect needs you to understand their constraints? What are the limitations when it comes to producing a business result? What can be done, and what will be more difficult to accomplish? How do they mitigate their constraints? What can be done to provide an improvement? What might be changed?

Will You Be Here?

Your client needs to know that you will be there. When the problems appear, when things get tough, your client needs to know that you are going to be there in the foxhole beside them. Your client needs to know that you are committed to more than selling them a solution; they need to know that you will own the outcome.

Questions

What does your client need from you?

Who does your client need you to be?

What questions do you need to be able to answer for your clients?

Nothing Focuses the Mind Like an Impending Hanging

I think that Samuel Johnson wrote the oft-quoted sentiment like this: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

For your dream clients, urgency is found in the implications of failing to change. The event that would compel your dream client to change isn’t the dissatisfactionthey are experiencing right now. What compels your dream client to change is the negative implications of the dissatisfaction that they are experiencing now (or that they are certain to experience if they don’t change). It’s the hanging that worries them.

Impending doom compels change.

How Real Are the Implications?

The more real and certain the implications, the more your dream client will feel the urgency.

If the implications of not changing threaten your prospect’s survival, if they are strategic in nature, they create more urgency. If the implications of staying the course and taking the blue pill mean that business will suffer a financial setback—or not perform as well financially as they might otherwise—the urgency will compel your dream client to change.

Implications move your opportunities forward faster.

This is why in sales we focus on understanding our client’s business objectives, as well as the obstacles and challenges that they face. The implications of unresolved issues create urgency, and so do missed opportunities.

If the implications of not changing aren’t significant, if it’s a hangnail instead of a hanging, there isn’t a compelling event. Your opportunity can drag on for what seems like forever.

How Soon Will The Implications Be Realized?

The sooner the implications will be realized and felt, the more your dream client will feel the urgency to change.

Impending means soon. If your dream client feels the implications of their dissatisfaction now, they will act with urgency (although I have encountered some organizations that get so used to the status quo that, even when it means they are underperforming, they learn to live with that as their reality).

If staying the course means that your prospective client is going to very shortly hit an iceberg that they can clearly see in front of them, they will act with urgency.

As salespeople, we struggle with creating a sense of urgency when the implications are too far into the future to be felt. People can get comfortable and avoid change when the price won’t be paid until some time in the distant future.

It’s difficult to move your prospective client to act when the cost of change is still greater than the cost of the status quo. Hence, implications.

Seeing Into Your Future

There are two hangings to consider here. Your dream client may be facing the noose. You may be facing a noose of your own.

Your urgent need to acquire clients is wholly unrelated to your dream client’s urgency—or lack thereof. Your impending hanging—your need to make your number—is not a compelling event for your dream client. It’s nice when these two potential negative events line up nicely, but mostly they don’t.

As a salesperson, you don’t have the luxury of waiting for your impending doom to get close before you begin to act. No one is coming to rescue you. You have to save yourself by taking the actions now that allow you to later make your number. You know the implications all to well.

7 Reasons to Stop Emailing Your Pricing

October 20, 2011 By S. Anthony Iannarino;  Twitter: (@Iannarino)

Email has become the preferred method for all kinds of communication. In sales, our clients and prospective clients want us to deliver some communication and some information by email. But for most of us, including our clients, email is a graveyard for things other people need from us. Most of what goes into our inbox is useless, and even some of what is useful gets ignored anyway.

Why, then, would you ever email pricing?

You are taking yourself out of the sale: By emailing pricing, you have taken yourself out of the sale. You have eliminated your ability to influence or control the sale process by providing your prospective client with pricing. Now that they have your price, they believe that the process is complete and they can make a decision. 

It eliminates the possibility of a discussion: Providing pricing by email eliminates the opportunity to have a discussion about the pricing. It eliminates the chance to clear up any misconceptions, and it eliminates the potential to capture and deal with your prospective client’s immediate feedback or questions.

It screams that you are a commodity: Emailing pricing screams that you are a commodity. It indicates that there is no real value creation—least of all by the salesperson—and that pricing should be used a deciding factor. Here’s why . . .

It’s disconnected from the value that you are creating: When you email pricing, you are disconnecting the pricing from the value that you create and that your company creates as a result of it’s pricing. Without reviewing the dissatisfaction that your solutions resolves, and without reminding your prospective client what it is they are paying you to do, the pricing is going be compared to other pricing—not the value created.

It eliminates any potential sense of urgency: Emailing pricing eliminates any sense of urgency. It can sit in your dream client’s inbox for days, or weeks, or months. In fact, they never have to look at if they don’t want to. If you were helping your dream client with their dissatisfaction, emailing the pricing and waiting will kill your momentum.

It destroys your ability capture an advance: The key to keeping the sales process moving forward is to move from advance to advance, always confirming the next commitment that moves you closer to a deal. You may have put some call to action at the end of your email, but if you have ever tried this, you know that obtaining that commitment on an email with pricing is unlikely. You have brought your own sales process to a screeching halt.

It eliminates communication: After you have emailed pricing, you will find it exponentially more difficult to get your client on the telephone. Your calls and voice mails will go unanswered. Your emails will not be returned. It’s like your prospect with the urgent need has entered the witness protection program.

With today’s technology, even inside salespeople making a transactional, low value sale can still do better than emailing pricing. With tools like GoToMeeting or Glance, you can easily schedule a meeting to review pricing and eliminate the problems you create by emailing the pricing.

For more information on how to improve your sales team, Give Anthony Iannarino a call (614) 212-4729 or subscribe to the Sales Blog, http://thesalesblog.com/2010/08/feed/

10 More Reasons why you should come to the St. Louis Downtown Rotary Club

There really are too many to count, to piggy back the post last week, here are ten more reasons why I am leaving you with an open invitation to be my guest at the Downtown Rotary.

1. Entertainment - Every Rotary Club and district has parties and activities that provide diversion in one's business life.  Rotary has conferences, conventions, assemblies, and institutes that  provide entertainment in addition to Rotary information, education and service.
2. The Development of Social Skills - Every week and at various events Rotary develops one's personality, social and people skills.
3. Family Programs - Rotary provides one of the world's largest youth exchange programs, high school and college clubs for future Rotarians, and a host of activities designed to assist family members in growth and the development of ethical values.
4. Vocational Skills - Every Rotarian is expected to take a part in the growth and development of his or her own profession or vocation, to serve on committees and to teach youth about one's job or vocation.
5. The Development of Ethics - Rotarians practice the 4-Way Test, which governs one's ethical standards. Rotarians are expected to be ethical in business and personal relationships.
6. Cultural Awareness - Around the world, practically every religion, country, culture, race, creed, political persuasion, language, color and ethnic identity is found in Rotary.  It is a cross section of the world's most prominent citizens from every background.  Rotarians become aware of other cultures and learn to love and work with people everywhere.
7. Prestige - Rotary is the oldest and most prestigious service club in the world.  Its ranks are executives, managers, and professionals: people who make decisions and influence policy.
8. Nice People - Rotarians above all are nice people, the nicest people on the face of the earth. They are important people who adhere to the policy that - while it is nice to be important, it is more important to be nice.
9. The Absence of an "Official Creed" - Rotary has no secret handshake, no secret policy, no official creed, no secret meeting or rituals. It is an open society of men and women who simply believe in helping others.
10. The Opportunity to Serve - Rotary is a service club. Its business is mankind; its product is service.

Rotarians provide community service - to both the local and international communities. This is the best reason perhaps for becoming a Rotarian: The chance to do something for somebody else, and to sense the self-fulfillment, which comes in the process.

Feel free to visit rotarystl.org or for a direct link to our weekly newsletter visit the Pepperbox.