Posts

One Hour of Goal Setting

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As part of my sales training for my clients, we hold monthly telephone calls with small groups of sales people. On those calls, we talk about deals they struggle with, opportunities they see and tactics on how to land those prospects.

On a recent call, I was asked about goal setting. Specifically, “How much time should we spend in goal setting activities?”

GoalVSwish

My answer surprised them. I suggested that for every hour they spend setting goals, they should spend 20 hours planning them out. 20 hours!!!??!

The idea with “goal planning” is to give yourself a roadmap of EXACTLY how you will accomplish the goal.

Doubling Your Business

Let’s say you have a goal to double your business in the next year. Pretty awesome goal I’d say! But before you hit the streets to accomplish it, write it out on a piece of paper, place it in front of you and set aside 4 hours for Goal Planning. Read more

Selling Isn’t Meant To Be A Struggle

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51pCTMwjjLL._SX355_BO1,204,203,200_One of my favorite books of all time was a 60-pager written by Stuart Wilde called, “Life Was Never Meant to be a Struggle.”

In this book, he addresses how life demands effort, but not struggle. As he defines it, “struggle is effort, laced with negative emotion.”

In sales, we struggle a lot, don’t we? Struggle to get an appointment. Struggle to get to the right person. Struggle to position our product in the best possible light. Struggle to close the sale.

But, should we feel ‘struggle?’ I don’t think so.

Life-Not-Struggle

In markets that are abundant, you should be on the lookout for “ideal fit” between your customer’s pain and aspirations, and your solution. If there is no ideal fit, then you must move on.

Traditionalists among you will say, “No, Bill, you must be persistent and press hard to make the sale.”

Really? Is that really what you think? Sounds like struggle to me.

Instead….

1. Be clear about the value you bring. How can you determine an “ideal fit” if you aren’t quite sure of the value you bring and what problems it will solve for the customer? Bullet-list the elements of your value so you can become clearer about it.

Another bulleted list you should make is the characterization of your ideal client. Do they have money? Are they interested in growth? Do they look outside for help? Do they respect your ideas?

These two lists should be the filters that you shoot prospects through to see if you should spend one more minute with them.

2. Align behavior with purpose.  If you struggle in a component of the sales process, say lead generation, then you aren’t looking at it correctly. I had a mentor who said, “If you’re feeling pressure, you’re doing something wrong.” This is why I say, “align with purpose.” This means to state what your purpose is in your profession.

If it’s to make a lot of money for yourself, then you aren’t operating from a place of High Intent. Every thing that happens to you in the sales process will be seen as a threat to your core purpose.

But if your purpose is to be a hero to your target audience…or to serve them exquisitely…or to solve the biggest problems they have, then you are “on purpose” and in sync with what they want. You both want the same ting.

And when you are on purpose, prospecting behavior will never be a struggle. 

3. Take the pressure off early. Tell the customer upfront that it’s OK if this is not a fit. Why would you have any other point of view than that? If it’s not a fit in his/her eyes, are you going to continue to hang around? No, of course not.

But by saying it…out loud…you separate yourself from the hundreds of amateurs who have come before you.

When you apply pressure, you are not in-disposable. Your are DISPOSABLE.And if you are disposable (or feel like you are), you will struggle in the profession.

Let me know how you do at implementing these three simple ideas!

Building Your Platform To Make Selling Easy(ier)

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Last week, I got called by a CPA firm who wanted training for their people. This you must know: CPAs are not very good at selling. It’s not that they don’t have the expertise. That’s not it at all.

It’s that selling spooks them. It’s not in their comfort zone.

So, when I get a call from a professional services firm (or any company), I always start with one simple question: Do you have a platform?

Platform

After the weird looks they give me, I go on to educate them to what a “Platform” is.

Platform: definition, A position in the market that you occupy where people look to you for expertise.

Physical Platform

Just as you would speak at a conference from a podium (platform) the same thing applies here. In the physical world, it is you speaking from the stage, on a topic that you have some degree of expertise in, where all eyes are on you.

There, you don’t have to fight for attention. You ARE the show.

In the sales & marketing world, your platform could be a variety of things. LinkedIN is a platform. Any kind of social media could be a platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). Your email list is a platform. A podcast is a platform.

Simply, it is a place where you command attention of the people you’re trying to reach.

Your platform is a positioning tool that raises you above the din of competition and market confusion.

You Have One Right Now, But You May Not Know It Read more

What You Can Learn About Achievement From The Stacey Dash Interview?

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Recently, Stacey Dash (unknown to me until I saw this and researched her) was on Meredith Vieria. Personally, I don’t watch Vieria mainly because of the tact she took in this “interview.” The video is below.  Watch it, then come back and read on.

I love this girl! Unafraid to speak on a hot, controversial issue, and speak her truth.

I hear this all the time: “My territory isn’t large enough.” “My compensation plan isn’t fair enough.” “People don’t answer the phone like they used to.” “Prospects lie.” “I can’t get referrals anymore.” My company doesn’t invest in me.” “My company has no vision.”

All of these statements (and Meredith’s unbelievably arrogant questions) are perfect examples of our buy-in to a victim mentality. And it wears us out. Actually, it renders us unable to adopt a stance of personal empowerment.
Read more

The Problem With Idea Generation – And a Solution

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More ideas are not better. I know there is a saying, “If you want to come up with a great idea, come up with lots of ideas.”

Ideas

But I see Presidents and Salespeople generate idea after idea – and yet have little to show for them. So what happens. Here’s my take.

My sense is that the person that has the idea (the creator) is seldom the person who will implement the idea and bring it to profit. I didn’t say “never,” I said seldom.

So the idea-creator needs to have either a) someone around him/her who can flesh out the idea before investing too much time dreaming about it. Or, b) a system that walks them through the ‘fleshing out’ process. Read more

A Common Enemy

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Do you and your prospect share a common enemy? The enemy could be mediocrity, averageness, or even a competitor. But, when you figure out who that common enemy is, you’ll become a united force battling it together.

When To Coach In The Moment

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There are two philosophies of how to coach people’s behavior. One is to save up the counsel and dump it all on them at one time. (I use the word “dump” kindly). The other way, which I talk about in this audio clip, is to coach them at the moment of infraction. Hope you can learn from this.

The One Thing That Will Change Your Sales World

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Apologies to the person who created the “flower and the bee” concept but I think that epitomizes perfectly the problem with most sales processes today.

The-Flower-Does-Not

And do we ever have a problem.

The ‘flower and the bee’ phenomena goes like this: in nature the flower must pollinate itself. It sits there waiting for the bee (one of the many ways pollination happens) to pollinate it. The flower does not labor, nor does it stress about bees showing up. Bees, on the other hand, are scurrying about trying to find food, and pollinating the flower.

In business, sales people are typically the bees and the customer is the flower. Sales people scurry around the country looking for food.

Why does it have to be that way? Why shouldn’t the sales professional be sitting – allowing the prospect to show up for them? Why?

It’s because we don’t plan it out that way. (We actually might, secretly, like the scurrying about looking for plants -err prospects.)

We have bought into the flower/bee process so heavily in sales that we refuse to even admit that it’s all wrong. (We also do this when job searching…wrong again.) Read more

Want to Make More Money? Bring More Value!

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Jim Rohn said it decades ago but it still rings true, if you want more money, bring more value! In this audio clip, Bill lays out a way for you to make more money by becoming move valuable to those who pay you. Your income is a by-product of that, but unless you get your arms wrapped tightly around that concept, you and I might be fighting a losing battle. At your next sales meeting, play this clip and spend 20 minutes discussing it.