Tips and techniques for achieving success in business.

Keep 'em Coming Back

Many businesses spend a lot of time and money trying to get new clients. It seems to be an ongoing process. So much time is spent generating leads, having conversations, submitting proposals, trying to close the sale. Unfortunately, I witness many businesses not spending as much time trying to get their existing clients to return. Once you have a customer why not spend some resources to get them to spend more with you?

Seal the Deal

You have generated the leads and set up appointments with qualified prospects. You have read all the sales training books and are ready to close some sales. You go on your appointments and follow the process you’ve learned. You build rapport, you ask the questions, you expose their pain, you offer the solution, you deal with the objections and you ask for the order. After all of that you still get “I want to think about it.” Or “I’m not sure this will work.” Or “I have to review this with my (boss, spouse, colleague etc). In the end you have difficulty sealing the deal.

Warm Up to Cold Calling

Most business people hate cold calling. Why is that? Primarily it is fear. Fear of rejection. Or maybe fear that you will be perceived as being aggressive or pushy on the phone. Or just that you are uncomfortable interrupting someone during their busy day. Whatever the issue is, I highly encourage you to get past these uncomfortable feelings.

The Bad Perception of Salespeople

In a recent workshop I facilitated I openly asked the business people in the room what they thought of salespeople. Now, mind you, most of the people in the room were business owners or employees all of which had a major role of growing their respective businesses. Here are some of the things I heard. “They lie.” “They’ll do anything to get the sale.” “All they care about is their own commission.” “They are irritating.” “I feel like I need to take a shower with antibiotic body wash after I deal with one” (actually, I made the last one up myself).

Do You Own a Business or a Job?

I’m sure you have heard these statistics before. Fifty percent of all businesses fail within two years, 80 percent fail within five years, and most businesses never come close to the original projections for revenue and profit.

Dealing With Employees During Hard Times

Managing your business during hard times is difficult. But managing people, the culture, the emotions, the behavior, can be doubly difficult when the business isn’t doing that well. Especially if you had to let some of the staff go. How do you keep the team upbeat and motivated when all there seems to be is bad news? How do you get the best out of your people during such times? There is so much uncertainty that employees seem to be constantly looking over their shoulder. Here are some ideas that may help you.

Staying Focused

How many of us have vowed to get back in shape? We want to start working out on a regular basis and lose that extra few pounds. So we join a gym or start an in home exercise program. We are gangbusters for the first couple of weeks but there is that one morning when we wake up and say, “maybe I’ll skip today, I just don’t feel like I have it this morning.” Then you try to get back into your exercise routine but you start exercising only three days a week instead of four. Then it goes to two days a week and then you get to the point you haven’t exercised in over a month.

How to Take Risks

As many of the people I have met know I am an avid golfer. Playing golf in this part of the country is primarily a summer sport unless you’re willing to layer up and confront the cold, which I am not. So what do I do in the winter months? This is where many people that I know are not aware of another passion I have. That is playing pool. I have played pool since my teenage years (some would say an ill spent youth) and take it very seriously. I have played every game imaginable on a pool table and constantly seek to increase my skills at the sport.

Making Mistakes

Who hasn’t made a mistake? We all have at some point. We would all like to think that we are perfect but we all know that is impossible. Yet we all try our hardest not to make mistakes. Some of us even get very anxious about it to the point it paralyzes us from doing things. We get fearful of making a mistake. It might make us look bad and maybe even embarrass us. These thoughts, of course, come from deep beliefs that were probably ingrained in us since we were young children.

How to DELEGATE

As a business owner are you exhausted at the end of the work day? Are you tired of doing everything yourself? Are your team members unwilling to make decisions and are coming to you for even the smallest of issues? The truth is that most business owners, who are skilled at just about every task in their company, struggle with the one thing that can make a big difference . .

Do You See What I See?

In a previous post, you may recall, I wrote about the four mental laws and how they impact the results we get in our business and personal lives. The common thread among all the laws was that the results we get are tied to our thoughts and beliefs. If we think in a certain way our actions will follow those thought patterns and the results will turn out accordingly. Consider this.

The Four Mental Laws

I was listening to a CD produced by Brian Tracey regarding changing yourself in order to change your results. These results could be business results or results in your personal life. He talked about the importance of 4 mental laws and how they shape who we are and what we achieve in business and in our life. I’d like to share these laws with you and see if you can understand why you are getting the things in your life you are getting. Whether those are good things or bad things. These laws have been around for quite some time and seem to apply at all times, w

What's Your Plan?

You may have heard this quote before . . . “A failure to plan is a plan for failure.” I’m not sure who said it but in my experience I believe it is a very true statement.

Is Your Business Working?

I meet many business owners every day that are working a tremendous amount of hours per week. When I ask them “is this what you expected when you started your business?” . . . most say they thought in the beginning they would have to work hard but as time went on they had hoped to work a lot less. They had dreams of spending more time in other interests or with their family. But here they are, years late, still working incredibly hard. Why is that? I would contend the reason they are working so hard is because their business isn’t working.

D.I.S.C.: What Is It and How Can It Help?

There have been many times in my consulting practice when I have used the DISC analysis to help people understand human behavior. Why would this be important in business? Well, if you have customers or employees (and most businesses have both) I’m sure you can see how understanding their behavior traits might help you deal with them in a better way. It could help you communicate with your employees and get them to “want’ to do the things you want them to do. It certainly could help you build rapport with prospects, which is essential in the selling process.

Leadership— How Well Do You Influence Others?

Your ability to influence other people determines how successful you are as a leader. As a leader you need to change people’s beliefs, thoughts and actions in order to have them follow you. This is true certainly in business but also in life in general. Parents try to influence their kids, kids try to influence their parents, bosses try to influence employees, sales people try to influence prospects and on it goes. So how are your skills at influencing others? And how can you improve your ability to influence others and become a great leader?

Customer Service That PAYS

Customer service is a cliché if there ever was one. And it must be one of the most misunderstood concepts in business today. The name of the game is making customer service PAY. I am always amazed at how most businesses go about tackling the question of customer service. What most businesses do is spend lots of money and lots of time in an attempt to impress their customers. What they fail to do is to find out if this will make them any more money or not. You see, great customer service without bottom line results is a waste of time and money.

Identity Iceberg

I think we all can agree that in order to get better results in our business we need to make changes. Most people would define that as making changes in your behavior or in the actions you take. However, there are elements that you need to change much deeper than simply behaviors and actions in order to make the necessary changes in your business and life.

Dreams and Goals

Dreams are different from goals. Both are essential in running a successful business.

The Fly on the Window

You may have heard this story or my guess is you have witnessed this first hand. There you are in your home or at work in a conference room on a warm summer day and you hear a nagging buzz sound near the window. As you approach the window you witness a fly futilely attempting to break through the glass to get outside. The fly just keeps on bagging and bagging against the window. It starts to work harder and harder to achieve the objective. And yet there is no hope. It is impossible for the fly to break through. Just yards away there is an open door where