Sales

Tool Box: Process Improvement, Sales Training and Customer Analytics Tips For You

November 19, 2015 by Mike McRitchie 6 Comments

: Elsie esq. / Foter.com / CC BY

Looking for some new ideas to jump start your business results?

Let’s go through the toolbox and see what is there that can help you improve your business’ bottom line today.

First lets start with…

Customer Analytics

What is customer analytics and why should you care? Customer analytics is just a fancy term for knowing how you get customers and what they do once they become a customer.

Customer Analytics is often the Holy Grail of business improvement tools. A tweak here, an adjustment there, and you can find your results skyrocketing in no time. This is the home of big leverage. Dig deep and you get to some amazing insights that will help you drive future results. Whether it is by understanding which marketing channels pull in most of your customers. Or which ones produce the best lifetime value (profit over the lifetime the customer buys from you).

Many of the insights you get from customer analytics require data collection on a large scale – often the domain of big businesses with deep pockets. However, with today’s internet tools, you can often get nearly as much key information as the big boys.

Go here to find out how you can use customer analytics to improve your bottom line.

Sales Training Videos

Feel like your sales are slipping? Is your sales force losing out to the competition? Or are prospects not converting as easily as they had in the past?

Sales skills are ever evolving. It is amazing in viewing many of these videos how many different styles and approaches are represented. A crash course in selling awaits you.

Check out these sales training videos.

Improve Your Processes

Process improvement is the red-headed-stepchild of consulting services. It isn’t sexy like selling skills. It isn’t flashy like marketing. It doesn’t translate into bottom line dollars immediately.

But if you have a business with any form of repetitive process – whether sales process, lead generation, production or delivery to the customer – process improvement consultants can be worth their weight in gold.

They’ll turn your business into a well-oiled machine.

See how these 30 experts weigh in.

If you learned something from this toolbox of business building ideas, please share with your friends. And if you have a business that needs a little boost into the new year, contact me today.

Sales Secrets from Alec Baldwin’s Glengarry Glen Ross Speech

October 23, 2015 by Mike McRitchie Leave a Comment

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk[/youtube]

Now just to warn you, if you’re offended by profanity then you’ll want to skip this video post.

But if you want a quick introduction to the classic boiler room sales mentality, it is on full display in this Glengarry Glen Ross movie clip.

Why did I choose to discuss this video? It is brash. Bombastic. Bullying in nature. Baldwin at his best. His essence.

I experienced this sales style early in my career. I remember sitting in a warehouse in a row of folding chairs. With a guy like Alec Baldwin pacing at the front of the room.

Slicked back hair. Rolex style gold watch. Patent leather, spit-shined shoes. Multi-pleated baggy slacks and white shirt.

Pontificating about how he made $200,000 a year. And if we listened to him and followed his guidance, we too could be successful like him.

All attitude. Complete confidence. A sales God…in his mind.

It took the classic sales process as the bible. A-B-C. Always Be Closing.

And when you use this approach what happens? You close a lot of deals…and you have a lot of refunds. You also have a lot of enemies. This approach is great for people with big egos and no empathy or no ability to reflect on their impact on others. It can be successful for one-time sales. But horrible for a repeat buying situation (who wants to be bullied into buying more than once).

So what ARE some good things you can take from the core message?

Confidence Sells

If you believe in the product or service you’re selling. And you know it will benefit your customer. And you believe they need you more than you need them. Then you have th perfect sales opportunity from what you bring to the table.

Nothing kills sales more than fear or worry or needing that sale so bad you won’t be able to pay the rent and put food on the table. That’s why you see such a disparity in sales results among a group of salespeople. Success begets success and failure brings more failure.

A-B-C

Always Be Closing. Salespeople are needed for a reason. Because people doubt. People worry about making a wrong decision. People need guidance. And a little prodding as well. More sales happen because someone helps them get past the decision hurdle itself.

And good salespeople make that easy for the prospective purchaser. But have not doubt. The best salespeople close when the time is right. And if you’re not always looking for closing signals, you’ll miss the opportunity. Or you’ll sell right through the right time and lose the sale.

Always be closing.

A-I-D-A

Attention – Interest – Decision – Action.

Getting attention. Whether it is a headline in an ad. Or an opening statement/greeting as someone walks into the store. Or the first few seconds of a phone call. You must get their attention and quick. Headlines are very important. People have lots of options. Lots of things vying for their attention. You need to get it and keep it.

Interest. This is the body copy of your sales letter. Or the body of your blog post or sales conversation. If you aren’t keeping it interesting or tying it back to something your prospect is interested in, they’re likely to move on to the next sparkley object.

Decision. You brought them to the edge of the cliff. Now you need to take them by the hand and convince them they need to jump. Getting decision isn’t for the weak of heart. This is where the excuses, the objections, the thousand things that attempt to derail the decision come to the surface. And you just have to wade into them and reiterate how important it is for them and their future to decide. And to decide now.

Action. They decided. Now write up the agreement. Walk them to the register. Close the deal.

Glengarry Leads Are Gold

Alec Baldwin’s character said he wouldn’t waste the Glengarry leads on that bunch of losers. They’re only for closers.

This one should hit home. How many people have spent time and money qualifying leads. Or collecting prospect business cards at trade shows. Or found a few new inside contacts within a prospective client’s organization. Only the not call. Or call once and not follow up. Or stumble around with a half baked reason to call that fell flat on the phone.

And the end result? You wasted perfectly good leads.

If you were a sales manager, who would you give your best leads to? Everyone equally? Well that’s great that you’re such a democratic manager. Well you were probably raised in the “Everyone gets a trophy” crowd. If it were me, I’d only entrust the best of the best with my gold leads. And I’d have people earn those leads by RESULTS. Because in the end, results do matter. They are the lifeblood of any organization. And if you don’t get results, you don’t stay around for long.

So whether you’re an employee, or an entrepreneur, or run a non-profit who wants to make a difference in the world. Know that you all must sell. The only question is do you sell well?

Coffee’s for closers. Now go close.

Dynamic Double-Team Donald Trump and Ben Carson

October 16, 2015 by Mike McRitchie Leave a Comment

: Gage Skidmore / Foter / CC BY-SA

: Gage Skidmore / Foter / CC BY-SA

Not playing by their rules is a way of life for Donald Trump. And recently Ben Carson has been following Donald’s lead.

And now they’ve double-teamed the media and turned the tables on the media – who prefers to back the Democrat party and control the narrative of Republicans.

So what did Donald do?

Well CNBC who is holding the next debate proposed a format designed to control the conversation and not allow the Republican candidates to get their message out like the Democrats were allowed to do on their last debate.

And knowing how the media views the Republican side of the narrative, Donald knew that this was a recipe for failure.

So he did what he always does…change the rules.

So he got with Ben Carson (the other candidate who doesn’t take too kindly to the media dictating the narrative) and they recognized that together they had major power to push CNBC to structure the debate in a way that would work for Donald and Ben.

And in that letter they said,

“Neither Mr. Trump or Dr. Carson will participate in your debate if it is longer than 120 minutes including commercials and does not include opening and closing statements,”

Why did they want that?

Over two hours hurts in two ways. First they have more chances to get tired and make a mistake that they’ll be roasted on later. Secondly they know the audience starts to tune out probably after an hour (Donald knows that from his TV shows and marketing savvy).
If they aren’t allowed to do opening and closing statements then the audience’s view of them is based on the choice of questions they are asked and the short rebuttal opportunities. And in that debate format you rarely get much of a chance to give people a view into what you’re vision for America is. And that is something that is often more important than the entertainment of the debate. Especially from a candidate’s perspective.

So what did that mean to CNBC?

Well if the top two frontrunners back out of the debate, we already know Donald Trump is the main reason the ratings are so high when he’s on TV. And CNBC knows that as well. And for them Trump = Money. And losing Trump and Carson = major loss of money or an opportunity lost.

So they caved.

And Trump and Carson got a major win under their belt. And I guarantee they both get more airtime on and off the debate stage because of this coup.

So what can you learn from this?

Ten Takeaways

There is always another route you can go if you think outside the box.
Recognize the leverage you do have (we often forget that).
Like on “Survivor” or “The Apprentice”, partnerships and alliances can make or break your success.
People respect and respond to strength and prey on weakness.
When you have the “bully pulpit” use it. And as President they’ll likely need to use it often.
Leaders lead. The rest of the candidates cowered. And by doing that they have probably already lost. Because who wants a weak leader? You need to lead in your life as well.
If you don’t take informed and calculated risks you won’t win…and you won’t be in business for long either.
Action wins over inaction.
You can make a difference.
There is always hope.

Now go tackle your biggest problems. You can make them bend to your will.

50 Plus Must Read Books for Small Business Entrepreneurs

September 21, 2015 by Mike McRitchie 4 Comments

: gpoo / Foter / CC BY

I’ve spent a good part of my life buried in books of all kinds. But none more than business and self improvement books. Taking notes and getting the best gems of information out of them.

Books I’ve read decades ago still provide ideas that are just as effective today as when I first read them. And re-reading these books (particularly if you’ve read them a while ago) can provide you new insights that you might not have noticed originally.

And so here are over 50 business and personal growth books for you to dive into. They’ll be like rocket fuel for you and your business.

I’ve read nearly all of the books on this list and highly recommend them. A few others are on my upcoming reading list but have good reviews from others who are in the know.

So jump in and enjoy.

General Business

: Celestine Chua / Foter / CC BY

These books cover everything from high level strategy to in-the-trenches tactics to grow your business. These ideas work for everyone from small business entrepreneur to medium and large business leaders.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t – Jim Collins

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference – Malcolm Gladwell

The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less – Richard Koch

The Art of War – Sun Tzu

The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything – Stephen M.R. Covey

Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition – Jay Abraham

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It – Michael E. Gerber

Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition – Harvey B. Mackay

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses – Eric Ries

The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything – Guy Kawasaki

: coolinsights / Foter / CC BY

Sales is one of those topics that have hundreds of books written on them. These are some great classic sales books. You’ll likely find at least one that fits your selling style. And regardless you’ll learn a lot about what it takes to be successful in the selling profession.

Many of these authors have quite a few other books on related topics that are worth checking out as well.

Particularly Zig Ziglar (I saw him several times in person and he was a wonderful person, speaker, and salesman), Brian Tracy (all his books are easy reads and covers a variety of business topics but mostly in the sales category), and Jeffrey Gitomer (a leader in the field today).

The Greatest Salesman in the World – Og Mandino

Secrets of Closing the Sale – Zig Ziglar

The Psychology of Selling – Brian Tracy

How to Master the Art of Selling – Tom Hopkins

How to Sell Anything to Anybody – Joe Girard

Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness – Jeffrey Gitomer

Marketing/Advertising

: Foter / Public domain

This section covers everything from how the brain works to small business marketing tactics to how to differentiate yourself and classic advertising tomes. A ton of great reads in this group.

Guerilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business – Jay Conrad Levinson

Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brain – Patrick Renvoise & Christophe Morin

Outrageous Advertising That’s Outrageously Successful: Created for the 99% of Small Business Owners Who are Dissatisfied with the Results They Get From Their Current Advertising – Bill Glazer

No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-Direct Marketing Businesses – Dan S. Kennedy

Creating Competitive Advantage: Give Customers a Reason to Choose You Over Your Competitors – Jaynie L. Smith

Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable – Seth Godin

80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More – Perry Marshall

Scientific Advertising – Claude Hopkins

Tested Advertising Methods – John Caples

Ogilvy on Advertising – David Ogilvy

Breakthrough Advertising – Eugene M. Schwartz

The Robert Collier Letter Book – Robert Collier

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind – Al Ries & Jack Trout

Psychology/Persuasion

: Dean Hochman / Foter / CC BY

Starting with the persuasion classic by Cialdini and moving into some newer persuasion experts like Kevin Hogan, you’ll learn a ton about how to influence and ultimately prepare better offers for your prospects that are more likely to convert to a sale.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert B. Cialdini

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions – Dan Ariely

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive – Noah J. Goldstein, Ph.D.

The Psychology of Persuasion: How To Persuade Others To Your Way Of Thinking – Kevin Hogan

Triggers: 30 Sales Tools you can use to Control the Mind of your Prospect to Motivate, Influence and Persuade – Joseph Sugarman

Hypnotic Writing: How to Seduce and Persuade Customers with Only Your Words – Joe Vitale

The Irresistible Offer: How to Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less – Mark Joyner

Management/Leadership

: Foter / CC BY-SA

The management/leadership section covers everything from general management topics (One Minute Manager) and leadership (Five Dysfunctions) to technical situations (Fierce Conversations). If you have a management problem, here’s where you need to head next to solve it.

The One Minute Manager – Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. and Spencer Johnson, M.D.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable – Patrick Lencioni

Who Moved My Cheese – Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Jack: Straight from the Gut – Jack Welch

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You – John C. Maxwell

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time – Susan Scott

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently – Marcus Buckingham

Personal Improvement/Motivational

: drcliffordchoi / Foter / CC BY

You can’t lead unless you’ve developed your own personal power and understand how to get the most out of yourself. These are books from each of major change leaders in the personal growth industry both past and present. All are good reads (although the 7 Habits takes a bit to get into – once you’re past the first few chapters it picks up and is definitely worth the investment of time).

Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill

How to Win Friends & Influence People – Dale Carnegie

Awaken the Giant Within : How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny! – Tony Robbins

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change – Stephen R. Covey

Personal Finance

: 401(K) 2013 / Foter / CC BY-SA

If you can’t handle the money on a personal level and don’t understand how to make the most of your working life, then the rest probably won’t matter. There are some great ideas here as to what it means to be financially successful, how to get there, and how not to let debt take over your life. These are focused as much on overcoming human nature (that causes your financial life to come apart) as it is the mechanics of handling money and investing.

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! – Robert T. Kiyosaki

The Richest Man in Babylon – George S. Clason

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy – Thomas J. Stanley

The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich – David Bach

The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke – Suze Orman

The The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness – Dave Ramsey

Hope you enjoyed this journey from some of the most read and most influential business related books of all time. If you have others you like and would recommend, please add them in the comments.

P. S. After this first posted, Jay Abraham posted his Jay Abraham’s Readers Choice “Book List” (Shade # 19 of Jay’s “50 Shades of Jay” series) for which I provided five book suggestions and reasons why they were my favorites.

Below is a listing of those books (from the full list at the link above) and how they impacted me.

#111 – Good to Great – “The biggest key point for me was putting the right people in the right seat on the bus (put them in the right job/role). Often people who are good for the team may not be the stars but make everyone around them better.”

#334 – The Art of the Deal – “Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is a great businessman and this book lets us in on some of the largest deals that he had made up to that point. The book was a little overblown on the personality of DT, but his persona is a huge part of his brand. The nuggets of wisdom contained in this book bump it onto my top 5 list because they are both valuable and relevant.”

#367 – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – “Having gone through challenging times and the break up of an executive team, I learned how both trust, and lack of trust, can make or break a team. And as I learned also from Jay and Stephen M.R.
Covey’s “The Speed of Trust”, trust is a key factor to getting things done.”

#440 – The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People – “Seek first to understand then to be understood. The book was a hard read through the first few chapters (took me three times to get through it). This point was about learning to listen (I used to interrupt and get impatient to talk). By learning to truly listen…and
listen and reflect back what I heard, this reduced many future problems that could have been headed off earlier.”

#451 – The Tipping Point – “Broken Windows Theory (from the days of Rudy Giuliani trying to fix the crime problem in New York City). Basically if there is one broken window then it is easier for non‐criminals to treat the area like broken windows are standard and not treat the city with care. This also tied to understanding that you might not see results until there is critical mass ‐ then all of a sudden the results show up. With the broken windows, crime didn’t immediately drop off but once people learned and saw that even petty crimes would no longer be tolerated, crime dropped off substantially. This ties pretty well to what you see in business as well. If you are doing marketing, you may see few results until the effects of repetition of your marketing message kick in. Then the results show.”

Trump…Hand Raised…Alone

August 7, 2015 by Mike McRitchie Leave a Comment

What does it mean? Trump refuses to take the Republican Pledge to support the eventual nominee and to not run as a 3rd party candidate.

Now if you watched the focus groups and post-debate commentary you’d think Trump had touched the 3rd rail of politics and deep six’ed his run for President.

And you’d expect that from Republican insiders and people who self-selected into Fox focus groups.

But is that the whole story?

Another way of looking at it is Trump raised his hand ALONE. He was the only one willing to do that. To stand up against the crowd. Against a hostile crowd. On National television…the largest audience in TV News History.

And doesn’t that make him more likely to be effective…

Against the “go-along” Republican establishment;
Against the influx of illegals at the border;
Against the Iranian Terrorist State;
Against the Russian expansionist tendencies;
Against China’s dominance of our financial affairs;
Against the anti-business government strangulation of small business
To return the United States to preeminent status in the world?

You know those are not going to be easy negotiations.

You know that the current crop of Republicans in Congress haven’t made an impact.

Trump stands alone. He takes the flak from all sides. And withstands it all and continues to grow in followers and voters.

And this is something that business owners like you need to know. Whether it is a strategy of preeminence, or better positioning, being bold and willing to stand alone for what you believe in is what separates the winners from everyone else.

And it gets you more press.

And it is admired by those who may not be willing or able to take that step themselves.

So when you’re looking at your business, what are you saving your customers from? What pain and suffering? What vision are you selling that they get excited about? Why are you different than the status quo or the industry insiders who are pedaling the same retread trash?

Make sure you’re different…in a good and powerful way. You need to make sure it fits your personality and that of your business. But then you need to drive that home. In your marketing. In your delivery. In every fiber of your business.

And when you do, you’ll see success unlike you’ve ever experienced.