An Interview with M. H. "Lefty" Monson

[jmather]

I had the wonderful opportunity to interview M. H. "Lefty" Monson

Lefty was a 2012 inductee into the RSPA Hall of Fame. Over 50 years ago Lefty began selling sharp cash registers and he went on to provide the POS industry with two of the top distribution companies ever seen. These were ECR Sales Management and POS Sales Management, he is also the co-founder of Ready Distribution.

On top of all this Lefty has a particular passion for sales training helping to ensure the younger generation coming up in the industry achieve success. In this conversation we cover some of Lefty's background, how he got into all of this, his passions, some nuggets for salespeople and how to stay positive in sales and in life.

Interview Notes

00:44:07 - Industry Hall of Fame / Intro

01:16:05 - Ageless Habit Card Introduction and Taking care of the customer

04:16:10 - Convention Awards, how they were won and why

06:01:07 - How this ties into the making of the card and how he got his start in this industry

07:51:20 - How he got into sales, the fears of cold calling, how to find out what people need, and how to deal with common sales issues.

11:06:20 - How to engage with people that have little knowledge of the industry you are in.

12:10:00 - Finding what your customers need

13:16:07 - Price Cutting and how to deal with it

14:10:00 - How the sales schools started

15:43:15 - How to deal with discounting

18:35:00 - Sales Cultivation "to sell"

20:25:00 - The Four Principles of sales success

25:03:07 - Is there an innate ability to sell?

26:45:00 - How do you teach patience in sales?

28:20:00 - Positivity

31:36:00 - How lefty loves helping people