When times are tough one of the first things that generally gets ditched is training, coaching and sharpening the saw. And this can be a big mistake.
Why?
When competition is fierce you need an edge and the only way is to continually improve, learn new skills and sometimes just go back to basics.
As such Rashid and I attended a two day sales boot camp earlier this week. And boy was it worthwhile.
You see, sometimes as good as we are, we often forget the basics. We forget to do the things that made us successful in the first place and often become either cocky or jaded.
So over two days we sat in a mastermind with about 15 other very successful people and sharpened our collective saws.
People like John and Peter, both retired Insurance salesmen who want help younger people succeed like they’ve done. People with over 40 years professional sales experience who were back for more – so that they kept fresh.
And then there were younger people who either had their own businesses, or were employees who wanted to improve their skills.
Skills such as Strategic Story Telling – where you casually let prospects and clients know about what you’ve achieved for other people just like them.
Stories like how we helped one organisation go from $3,000,000 turnover to $11,500,000 turnover after working with them for 9 short months.
Or how we helped Australia’s premier professional photographic lab who were struggling to get their message out go to number one in the industry while their competitors have fallen by the wayside (and that’s in a supposed recession).
Or the person in the finance industry who put an extra 30% on his bottom line using our strategies – working less and enjoying life more.
Over the last 5 years we’ve been doing more and more stuff online. Taking bricks and mortar businesses and helping them create completely new sales channels online with a local and often global audience.
Internet marketers who built a lot of their success on advice we gave them and systems we created. People who have small sites doing a few thousand dollars a year to a couple who do millions of dollars a year online.
Reflecting on these stories we realised that we’ve been hiding our light under a bushel… containing ourselves rather than getting the message out.
We realised our major strengths lie with fusing online and offline marketing and sales strategies with real world communication skills and leadership to make a major difference in the lives of the hundreds of businesses we’ve worked with over the last 9 years.
So here’s our offer to you.
Whether you’re struggling or things are going splendidly, there is always room for improvement. One tweak, a single question in a sales process, a comment on a website or other strategy could make a massive difference, but you’ll never know until you try.
Book yourself in for a no obligation 30 minute chat and let’s talk about what’s happening for you and how you can get better results both for yourself and your organisation. Call us on (02) 9499-7958 or reply to this email.
Remember growth and success usually comes from a combination of both internal and external help. None of us knows everything and an outside perspective can be the catalyst to achieving even greater success.
So why am I telling you all this?
Well taking two days out of our business and doing the “homework” – packaging up exactly what it is we do gave us some major
The bottom line is that you’re either growing or decaying. There is no standing still.
And I’m sitting here, feeling that I should share some of the learning’s with our readers.
The facilitators were Leigh Farnell and John Blake, two men we’ve known for a couple of years now. Not only are the two very successful and professional, their nice guys too. This really makes it a lot easier to participate and enjoy the learning.
The seminar gave us specific ways of sharpening your sales tool.
Great job boys!!
Given the current economic climate, it seems even more important to keep our minds sharp and alert.
We both were so inspired that we took a day out yesterday and worked our way through some questions that we’ve had for quite some time.
One of the biggies for us was; “What are we really selling?”
You know how it is; sometimes it’s easier to look at someone else’s business to see and understand what’s happening and to reflect the results back on to your own business.
This is exactly what we’ve done and guess what came out? The answer we’ve been searching for!
And the answer is………”WE’RE SELLING OUR RESULTS”
Now this may well sound a bit strange but just bear with me.
What I’m really saying here is the following.
We as prospects and potential clients want to reduce the risk of making a bad decision.
By telling your prospect what the results are that you have achieved with working with your clients your giving your prospect a feeling of comfort and security. And you’re also telling them that you’ve got experience in the field.
One of the most efficient ways of proving this is via testimonial you’ve received from your clients.
This delivers social proof and helps the prospect make a decision to come with you over someone else.
Remember, if I’m giving my hard earned money to someone I’d like to make sure that the solution I’m presented with is going to work, and that the person giving me the advice is qualified and experienced in the field.
This is why qualifications, testimonials etc are such an important part in the marketing and sales process. They deliver much needed social proof and give your prospect a sense of safety, trust and security.
So let’s be a bit more specific.
Say you’re a business owner or leader of a company. You know that if you want to keep up with modern ways of doing business you either need a website, or that your current website needs a face lift.
Now you’d have to ask yourself what you’d expect your website to deliver for your business and how you can measure the results.
Because you know, that testing and measuring is critical for your business success. I’m aware that testing and measuring can be really tedious and time consuming. And therefore it often gets overlooked or worse ignored.
You may or may not have heard about Google analytics and other analytics tools to test and measure your successes with your online campaigns. Their great, their accurate and their at your finger tips.
This is about being clear and concise as to what you have achieved for your clients and how much better their lives are because of the “interventions” you’ve made on their behalf.
You see if you don’t tell your stories, nobody will ever know. In fact you’re actually standing in the way to help more people to improve their financial situation.
If you’ve been able to help someone retire earlier, and therefore enjoying a better more comfortable lifestyle. Don’t you think you should let your prospects know?
If you have a product or service that helps safeguard your client’s assets, which protects them from loosing money in the current economic climate, this is an achievement and a result many people would be interested in knowing more about.
You need to communicate these results in a clear and consistent manner so that prospects can pick up the phone to let you know their interested.
Just remember – they won’t know unless you tell them.
Just like yourself – you need to be told by your suppliers that there’s a new product/service they’re launching to help you improve your business. If they kept it to themselves, they’d never sell anything.
I strongly suggest you go through the list of all the clients you’ve worked with in the past, and list the positive impacts you’ve had on their lives and business.
Not only will it help you and your business – equally importantly it will give you reasons to start marketing and selling your knowledge to people who are in need of your successes.
In case you’re struggling with this, we’re happy to give you some pointers as to how you could do this.
Drop us an email rk@revealedresources.com or call us on 02) 9499 7958.
