Are you happy and satisfied with the results you're getting out of life now? Maybe. Could you get more, do more and be more with minimal additional effort? Absolutely! Most people go through life thinking they're working hard and giving their all. In reality, most people are doing the bare minimum, because that's what's expected. They've grown comfortable and complacent. Not you of course. What would happen if you doubled or tripled your activities and effort? Would it really cause that much extra work and stress? A little for sure, but not that much. The payback though, is monumental. To up your game and triple your efforts won’t give you triple the results. The results will be exponentially more. Everyone, myself included, that has tripled their activities and efforts have all experienced the same phenomenon. Yes there’s a little more effort up front, and it’s not that difficult. What we’ve been paid back in return on our efforts is exponentially more. Tripling your efforts will positively affect every area of your life; your health, finances, relationships, etc. The challenge comes in getting out of your comfort zone to step up. Watch less tv, gossip less, get up earlier, stay up later, cut out a couple trips to the clubs or restaurants, and so on. Life’s real riches and rewards are there for the taking. Most people will never realize what they only fantasize about, because they are stuck in their comfort zone. They’re not willing to get a little uncomfortable. The dirty little secret of the super successful is that getting out of your comfort zone, tripling your efforts and activities and giving more of yourself leads to all of life’s rewards. So let me ask again - what would it take and what would happen if your tripled your efforts?
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How often do you negotiate? More frequently than you might guess. Most people say once or twice a month when in reality they are negotiating all day, everyday. Negotiation is a form of gaining buy-in from others. We all can agree that getting buy-in from our family’s, friends and colleagues certainly is a daily happening. Clearly your ability to negotiate effectively and fairly is critical to your life’s success. So what are the traits and strategies of world class negotiators? There are too many to mention in this short article, and there are three that are universally applied by all world class negotiators and masters of gaining buy-in from others. They are:
Cultivate them, practice them, and master them. Magic will happen fast! Do you ever feel your company should pay you more? Dumb question because the answer is probably, all the time. The better question is are you getting paid what your worth, or are you earning what you’re getting paid? I recently overheard a group of people talking (whining) about how much or little they were being paid. This group was a well-dressed, and clearly educated. They were talking about how hard they worked, how committed they were and how valuable to the company they were. This is a typical scene played out all over corporate America. Now let me set the rest of the stage; it was Wednesday at 10:30 am, in a Starbuck’s, they weren’t in sales and made excuses to get out of the office and they didn’t have any work material with them. Additionally, they also talked about leaving and working for other companies and pet projects. So I have to wonder, how hard are they really working, are they even earning what the company was paying them and how committed are they if they’re openly talking about greener grass? This scene is epidemic of today's workforce. People, not all of course, perceive they are working hard when in reality they are whining, gossiping, dreaming, wasting time and making excuses. Then they wonder why they aren’t being paid more. The answer is simple, if you want more you’re going to have to earn it. It’s time to stop talking and start working. How much you earn is directly proportionate to how hard you work and how valuable you are to your company. If you want to get paid what you’re worth, stop talking and start doing. Earn it! This may not be you, and I’m sure you have people you know who share the mentality of the Starbuck’s group I mentioned. If that’s the case, help them stop whining and making excuses and show them how to earn by producing. Get paid what your worth by executing, adding value and giving more of yourself than anyone else. Sales Managers, Vice Presidents, Presidents, and anyone in position of authority over most sales teams pay attention. Your strategies and tactics are causing your teams not to succeed. Let me rephrase that... You're causing them to fail - fail at closing sales, fail at meeting goals you set for them (another problem all together), and fail at meeting your company's budget. It's not that you intend too. It's that you've been taught that to be successful in sales you have to learn a sales process. This process is usually a combination of both strategic and tactical tools. The strategy is the high level overview of your sales process, and the tactical is the mechanics of implementing the strategy. Sales tactics at their core essence are; find the pain using questions and diagnosis, create solutions matched up to the pain/problems, sell yourself and your company, how to present, how to handle objections, and how to close. While all useful tactics, if you use them with the wrong top level strategy, your team will fail for the following 5 reasons:
Notice how each reason is strategy related and not tactical. That's because the tactics will be right if you match them to the right top level strategy. So what can you do? Change your strategic approach. Find out what stage the prospect is in their buying cycle and match your approach to that stage. Discover how they make decisions and how they like to buy. Investigate past purchases/investments and look for commonalities. Hint, they'll be obvious. Have open discussions where you're not focused on the objections to come, but rather serving your prospects real needs and projected needs. If you don't change the top level strategy it doesn't matter what tactics you use, your team will fail. Set them up to succeed by teaching them a strategy focused on learning about your prospects buying motives, patterns, strategy, history and what stage they're in. Then and only then, can you and your team apply the correct tactical strategy to close more sales. Covey said have the end in mind - your RESULT. So what is, or are, results really? Let's break down the word - RESULTS: Reverse Engineering Success Using Leadership Tactics and Strategies. That ties in nicely with Steven Covey’s, 3rd Habit, Begin With The End in Mind. In other words, if you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know how to get there or when you get there. You can’t just start taking actions towards a result until you know exactly what it is you’re after. Your results must be crystal clear in your mind. That way you can focus your attention like a laser on exactly what you want. It’s the single-minded focus that makes all the difference. Some activities, actions and strategies will cause your success faster than others. It’s those that you must spend your time on for the highest ROI on your time, effort and money. You’ll never know that specific “how-to” until you know the specific “what” you’re going for. That’s why it’s so important to first decide what you want, and then reverse-engineer your success - the ‘how-to” part - with leadership tactics and strategies. To clarify, strategies are the big pictures plans and the tactics are the “get-to-work’ implementation of the strategies. The topdown approach, begin with the end in mind, will provide clarity, focus and most importantly, your RESULTS to happen much much faster. When you brag about yourself it’s an absolute lie in your customer and prospects eyes. When someone else says it, oh boy, that’s the promised land! No truer words exist than those in a testimonial. When someone else sings your praises, it’s the gospel in your prospects and customers minds. When you say it, it’s just bragging and lying in their minds. You should be proud of yourself, and want to sing your praises. Just let someone else do it for you. To give you specific examples of what I mean, here are actual testimonials I received in the past 2 weeks alone: I learned so much from Greg at his seminar and excited to implement what I learned into my daily routine. Brian | Charter Steel Greg’s personal interaction had the single biggest effect on my learning experience. The role plays, activities and games all more than exceeded my learning expectations. Kristin G. | GOJO Industries Greg far exceeded my expectations. He is a dynamic speaker, and you can tell he knows, believes in and practices what he teaches. Kevin | ONShift This was an excellent workshop. Greg relayed the information in a manner that helped my understanding immensely. Along with myself, the other members from my team what attended the meeting felt this was well worth our time and contained information that well better our programs in the future. Frank | ONShift Greg made this learning experience fun! I can’t wait to start using the tools he gave us too create seriously better sales results. Thank you! Michelle S. | Devenou Corp Now I could have easily said all those wonderful things about myself, but really it’s just bragging. The fact that my clients said them, is proof. Growing up I was taught to let my playing and results speak for themselves. Now that has evolved. It’s not just my performance but also what my seminar attendees and clients are saying. They sing my praises, not me. What are your clients and prospects saying about you? If I said to you that if you failed to make this one change, you are guaranteed to fail. What would you think? That’s a pretty bold statement. Here’s the deal, unless you raise your standards of what your willing to accept in your life, nothing will ever change or improve. Raising your standards is easy. Maintaining your standards is a completely different. You can raise your standards, but living them becomes impossible when the majority of your peers are brining you down with destructive attitudes, mindless conversations, lack of contribution and zero personal or professional growth. Part “A” of the one thing is raising your standards, and Part “B thru Z” is surrounding yourself with peers that have significantly higher standards than you. The secret to raising your standards is also the one change that you cannot fail to make or you will fail. You must change your peers. Most people, not you of course, surround themselves with people who settle in life. They have very common standards that will not support your growth and advancement in life. That’s why most people never get ahead. If you look at anyone who’s achieved any level of personal or professional success, they surround themselves with peers who have higher standards. They realize that you “become who you spend time with”. Being around these people will elevate your game, and if you drop your standards, they will kick you out. Does this mean you need to throw your friends and family away? First, love your family. Then decide if they should be in your peer group or not. In terms of your friends, some need to go and some can come along for the ride. Only you can make that choice. Just remember that you become who you spend time with. Choose wisely. If you don’t raise your standards and surround yourself with peers who have significantly higher standards than you, than I guarantee you will fail. Have you ever been presented with an opportunity, a sales meeting, a date, a challenge, or really anything that had a positive upside and you backed down? Of course, and just like millions of others FEAR stopped you from taking any action. There’s a chance of failure, and there’s a chance of success, but fear can be crippling. When I was in my 20’s I seem to run the success cycle. I was unstoppable and had lots of failures and lots of successes. Most of my failures came because I was held back by fear and let life pass me by while I made poor decisions. My successes were the result of better decisions that involved me overcoming my fears. Ironically when I went from failure to success, I went back to failure again. The very fears that I overcame to achieve grew to be fears that I wasn’t enough and didn’t deserve the level of success I achieved at such a young age. So I let my fear sabotage my success and took myself right back to the poor house. Over the years I’ve learned to consistently beat back my fears, but not before I came to a critical realization. Fear - False Evidence Appearing Real - really boils down to a feeling that you’re not going to be enough, and that means loss of love for most. When I understood this, it was easy to beat fear with a strategy. If you do your best and succeed or fail, those that truly love you won’t mind. Those that do mind don’t matter, and they have no place in your life. What made success come infinitely easier and beating down fear since those tumultuous years, was really a two-fold strategy. First, I surrounded myself with a different kind of friend, and you must do the same. Make sure your friends and peers are genuinely loving people and they are playing life at a higher level. They must be winning and want to help you raise your standards. Second, I consistently conditioned my mind for success. Specifically, you must write and review your goals at least twice per day, you must ask yourself more empowering questions everyday, and you must visualize your success multiple times per day. In other words, re-program your fearful negative thoughts. Fear is crippling, fear will either impede or sabotage your success and fear is universally experienced. You can overcome your fears if you’re willing to make some minor adjustments. Surround yourself with the right people and feed your brain the right information. You will eat your fear for breakfast. Technology is wonderful, and it’s also a big curse in sales specifically when it comes time to deliver the proposal. While using software to craft and construct the proposal is a necessity, using email to deliver the proposal is costing you lots of money. Wait, scratch that. Let me put it this way, if you’re emailing your proposals you’re guaranteeing that you will lose the majority of your sales opportunities. Email is one of the single biggest killers to closing the sale. When you email a proposal, you’ve essentially closed the door yourself to communication. Sure its easy to press send, and you certainly don’t have to worry about someone saying “no” right to your face and having hurt feelings. The moment you hit send though, is the moment you’ve given up 100% control of your sale. You just put the prospect in control. They now decide when and how it’s appropriate to respond to you or not. They can ignore you permanently. You will lose to someone who has a $1 lower price, because at the point its all about price. You gave up your differentiation when you gave up control. Don’t use the excuse that email is how your clients and prospects want to conduct business. Of course it is, its easier that way. You must find ways to work around that, um, objection/stall. So what can you do?
Come on, you know the drill - you’re pitching your product or service to a prospect and they ask for a discount, or match a competitors quote or you simply offer a discount to get the business today. Are your discounts helping you close, or are you just discounting you?
The reality is while discounts may help some of the time, they hurt you all of the time in ways you may not be aware. There’s the trust factor, the profit loss factor and the commoditization factor. The moment you offer a discount or agree to a discount to win the deal you are automatically admitting that you didn’t really give your best price. This means you “lied”. It brings your integrity into question. They may not say anything to you, but they’re certainly questioning your honesty. I’ll bet if you look back and track your “discount conversion ratio” you’ve lost more deals than won. Those you’ve lost, will never become clients because of trust. That hurts long term. In terms of profit, if you haven’t crunched the numbers, do you know what it really costs you for every 10% discount you offer? I suspect not, or you wouldn’t offer discounts. Every time you drop your price by 10% you have to sell 22% more to make up for the lost revenue. That’s a ton of extra prospecting and selling, because we know that doesn’t get made up on 1 deal. Talk about shooting yourself and your sales budget. This leads to the third issue when you discount; you commoditize yourself. The moment you drop your price to meet a competitors is the moment you admit that your offering is identical. There is no differentiation, there is no value and you have no way to win. Stop discounting you. You are different. You have value to offer. You are not a commodity. You do not need to work harder to make up lost revenue. You are the difference. Your discounts are killing your integrity and your business. |
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April 2018
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