Success-Multiplying Factors

If you knew five absolutely unstoppable ideas to increase your business, would you do them on a regular basis? How about if these five ideas were guaranteed to increase your bottom and top line, would you acclimate yourself and commit to trying them for 30 days?

A few months ago I finished a marketing seminar titled; “Piranha Marketing.” This self-guided seminar is as genius as it was applicable in today’s market place. The principle fact which the entire seminar is based upon is uncomplicated and focused like a laser beam; is to recognize the undeniable fact that “someone” is having measurable success in the same business you’re in. Look around, stack up your competition, I’m certain you know of at least one that is well ahead of the market in revenue, profits and ideas. Some how they’ve “cracked the code” in dealing with your customers; they’ve figured out how to deal with the ups and downs of the business cycle. It’s time for you to conduct some research, get inside your buyers mind and deliver better, timelier ideas now. “Piranha Marketing” will help unlock your creativity and look at your business through a new prism.

“The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” –Charles DuBos

“The starting point of ALL achievement is desire!” –Napoleon Hill

It’s safe to say; we want to be the best, earn more and have fun doing what we do…sales. I’ve developed a simple reminder for keeping your sales mind uncluttered and focused. Think—Topsales, it’s what we all want. If you’re anything like me, you want to be perceived as the expert in your category, you want to be trusted and respected and it goes without saying, you want to lead in sales output. You want to be Topsales…
T- think
O- optimistic
P- proactive
S- strategic
A- action
L- lead
E- efficient
S- synergy

Piranha Marketing reinforces these points through ELF selling, the Happy Client Experience, the Champion Creator, the Testimonial Tidal Wave and the No-Slow Time System. The writers of Piranha Marketing have developed this seminar with your business in mind; slow growth, down economy, saturated with competition and challenging margins. First and foremost Piranha Marketing is about creating business that is ELF, easy, lucrative and fun. It is always a great time to do business, even in tough times. You need to figure out how you can make doing business with your company easy, lucrative and fun. The people you see having fun, growing their business today have figured it out. They’ve taken the time to learn what needs to be done and have planned accordingly. Regardless of your present situation, regardless of the economy, regardless of who is the leader of the country, regardless of your past, you can be a success. It all starts with planning to succeed, and knowing where you want to go.

Napoleon Hill, an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature has written extensively about the power of the mind. His most famous work, “Think and Grow Rich,” is one of the best-selling books of all time. One of Hill’s hallmark expression was, “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Napoleon Hill developed the five characteristics of Successful People;
Number One: Burning Desire
The most successful people in the world have a burning desire to succeed. A burning desire is absolutely critical.
Number Two: Specialized Knowledge
Individuals who want to have great success in marketing and in business, need to have specialized knowledge in the area of your business. Take the time to explore, think and know your business better than your competition and buyers.
Number Three: Decisiveness
The most successful people are decisive. It’s very important to make correct decisions. Successful people say, “You know what, I want to do it and I want to do it now.”
Number Four: Goal Oriented
The most successful people in the world are goal oriented. A goal unwritten is only a wish. Write it down.
Number Five: The Mastermind Group
The most successful people have one common characteristic: they belong to a Mastermind Group. A strategic set of high achievers that hold each other accountable to their goals and aspirations.

It’s time to TOPSALES your routine and to measure yourself against Napoleon Hill’s five characteristics of success.

“Great marketing makes selling easy and ideally unnecessary”- Steve Harden

In everything you do: try to inculcate the five characteristics listed above. If you do this for 30 short days, I guarantee you will be a positively changed person. Get out there and turbo-charge your life, make something special happen every day.

Selling In Tough Economic Times...

We hear it every day… “I can’t…the boss won’t let me…we have too much inventory…your stuff didn’t sell through and my favorite, simply NO!”

When most sales people hear these comments; their normal routine calls for them to restate product benefits and features, push for the sell and adopt a take no prisoners mindset. This is old school selling and it doesn’t work today. The opposite is also true; even the best sales talent when faced with obstacles, will often compound the situation by not returning calls and emails.

Today’s buyers are responsible for numerous categories, several which they have little knowledge of. It’s more about meeting dealines, ROI, timing and sell through versus sell in. The buying process is remarkably more nuanced than ever before. Our current economic situation magnifies the negatives and forces buyers to be even more risk adverse than normal.

What is the difference between selling in a robust economy and selling in a failing economy? The easy answer…A LOT. But perhaps not what you might think;
Your product is the same
Your pitch/presentation is the same
The buyer’s need is the same

The difference is the decision-making process the buyers need to go through and the information they need to provide to their supervisors to justify a purchase preference. Knowing that, wouldn’t you agree that it is your job to provide the best answers to everything the buyer needs? Wouldn’t it be smart to know what the supervisor wants? The only way to uncover these needs is to ask questions and facilitate discovery that gets to the heart of why buyers buy. Webster’s defines facilitation as: the act of facilitating, to make easy. I’m not suggesting that selling is easy. However, when you know the answers to a test, it greatly reduces the pre-test angst and significantly improves your results. The same can be said for the selling process.

“Strategic planning is a rational planning process, but has strong psychological effects on an organization and the people involved in the process.” – Dr. Shirley McCune

In a depressed or pressurized climate it is all the more vital to avoid the urge to persuade and influence the other person to do what you want. They simply cannot. So they won’t. Instead, follow a facilitative methodology, and you will rise head and shoulders above all those (your competitors) who are persisting with old-style push and persuade techniques. I suggest creating a paradigm change in your style; enable, rather than persuade. Help, rather than sell. Offer a broad expert overview, rather than narrow self-interest. Until your buyer figures out what immediate needs must be addressed- whatever that means to them- they will take no action. In other words, getting their ‘needs met’ is job one. Regardless if it is a creative or temporary solution rather than a product purchase or help figuring out their immediate needs, will put you in line as the first vendor they connect with once they decide to purchase. Adopting a “trusted business advisor” mentality and providing solutions to problems will assuredly place you inside the buyer’s circle of influence. This could be as simple as providing industry feedback and eyes & ears to what is important to them. If you can augment your job to include being a ‘decision consultant’ or a ‘trusted business advisor’, you can make good use of economic uncertainty. While your competitors continue to push and persuade- which gets nowhere. You can be seen as a helpful advisor and eventually part of the buying process. Make use of difficult economic times to differentiate yourself as a true trusted expert advisor. You’ll not only get more business than you otherwise would, you’ll also gain access to the buying decision team, line up future business that will close once the economy turns around, and be seen as a genuinely helpful external resource. The best book I’ve read on this topic, Mahan Khalsa’s Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, provides an approach that is as eloquent as it is sensible: “The decision to trust doesn’t start inside (your prospect)—it starts inside you. Intent is a choice, and your choice will have consequences. You will communicate intent whether you want to or not…Based on your intent people will decide to trust you or not.”

“A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

Asking the right questions will provide the road map of discovery and best practices in meeting your buyer’s needs. Always be prepared with thought provoking and strategic questions that you can use in future meetings to always be one-step ahead of your buyer and several ahead of your competition. Over a cup of coffee or lunch outside of the office conversationally ask;
What type of questions does your boss ask when you present your buy plan?
What information do you need to be a rock-star in your boss’s mind?
What can I provide to help this process?
Do you need industry, competitor or product information?
What kind of frustrations and obstacles do you have and how can I help you resolve them?
What keeps you up at night?

You may be thinking how might I improve my discovery skills? Here are a few key habits I’d suggest applying;
Bring an insatiable curiosity to your appointments.
Don’t assume you know the answers to your most important questions.
Endeavor to see the world through your client’s eyes. This empathetic view requires one to ask questions.
Listen for unexpected answers, probe further and have the agility to capitalize on the resulting opportunities.

The best idea I received was this one: “If I am unclear about who, what, when, where and why, I keep asking questions. Uncovering answers to these questions will absolutely improve your selling success. Have fun, ask questions, learn and apply.