Mega Marketing and Sales

By working on your business just one hour per week, you will be able to build the ultimate business.

This one hour per week has to be proactive.

If you haven’t opened your business in a year, chances are you are highly reactive. There is not a lot of proactive time spent deliberately improving various aspects of the business, from time management to marketing and sales, because you come in and react to the various activities in the business. The difference in creating the ultimate business is when you sit down in a proactive manner and go about addressing the various nooks and crannies of your business, until each area is polished to a fine luster. We will outline which areas should be polished in a moment.

The biggest problem is owning a business.

The average consumer was besieged by 2000 commercial messages each day according to a research project conducted for Pacific Bell in 1991. In 1994, a new study was done for Thomson Newspapers and it showed that there were 3000 messages per day. According to some sources, the commercial overload is at 30,000 messages per day.

What has this done to your money?

The cost of sales is almost triple what it was ten years ago. It would be great if our sales efforts were three times more effective because of the tripling of the cost of sales. They are not. Sales effectiveness has fallen. We pay three times more to get the same result as ten years ago. It is hard to get noticed in the new millennium.

There is less mystery in the information age.

It’s great to sell and it’s great to educate. No one knew what made a great salesperson. It was a mystery. It used to be that all it took to be a good salesperson was a good personality and willingness to ask for the order. The most important trait of top producers is their passion to help the customer, even if they don’t like it.

Top producers believe that what they sell is important. Several other things are done by top producers, which can be easily modeled and built into your organization. Business will sky rocket, but also, everything will run a lot better if you do this.

Work on the business, not just in it.

A colleague wrote a book called The E-Myth. The acronym stands forEntrepreneur. Michael wrote that the problem with most practitioners who have a highly developed skill in a particular area is that they think they are also entrepreneurs. A mechanic thinks he can run a successful garage. A great cook thinks they can be a great restauranteur, or a great Chiropractor thinks he can run a successful business.

It doesn’t mean that you will be good at running the business that offers this service if you are good at the service you want to offer. Running a business requires different skills than working in a business. My friend Michael says that you have to work on the business, not just in the business.

People who go from zero to $100 million have two characteristics.

The difference between a corner store that stays a corner store and a corner store that becomes Wal-Mart is fascinating to study. Let us at least share two of the traits that our company has studied. The most important trait is decisiveness. A very decisive person is the person who is going to run an empire.

The people who make the big decisions have a total lack of proof. They use their instincts. Others are too timid to pursue a path that they make the decisions to do. They can change direction, hire new people or fire weak people. They are decisive and they are decisive quickly.

We can help you with more readily than decisiveness because decisiveness is a more innate personality trait that is difficult to teach. The second trait of empire builders is that they use the three P’s. You cannot build a successful business if you don’t have these.

Running a business requires three P’s. There are policies, planning and procedures.

If you are smart, you are going to sit down with your staff with the three P’s in front of you and you are going to engage in the proactive process of improving every area of your business.

If Wal-Mart didn’t have a policy for everything in the store, they wouldn’t become Wal-Mart. You can’t grow an organization if you don’t have good policies, procedures and planning sessions.

If you don’t have the three P’s.

If you don’t have the three P’s, it’s up to each individual employee to decide everything from customer treatment to sales procedures. Without a constant focus on the three P’s, everything in your organization will vary according to the individual talent, skill and even mood of each employee. Let everyone know how everything is supposed to be done. Each week you can do this in one hour. A separate weekly meeting for management of the various departments is done in a larger company. It can be done with the entire staff in a smaller company.

Keep taking different areas of the company and polishing them. We teach a very effective technique for really getting the most out of your one hour, but even without further help from us, be determined to have at least one proactive problem, solving, move-the-company-forward one hour per week (for larger companies, have one per department).

One hour per week.

After thousands of consulting sessions and extensive research on behalf of our clients, we discovered that there are 12 areas of competency that make for an excellent organization. For one hour per week, you will see a marked improvement in your business if you focus on these areas.

It is important that your effort is consistent. We have learned that consistency is the only way to improve. There is a secret to great accomplishment in karate. There are not many different moves in karate. There are 12 moves. If you want to become a master, you have to do 12 moves,4000 times each. All areas of accomplishment are the same. The areas of competency that require repetition are golf, tennis, sales, and customer service.

Sales are an example.

It’s true that one salesperson is good at follow up, but has a hard time getting in the door. A salesperson who is great at getting in the door has a bad time at follow up. Another salesperson closes like a champion, but has poor rapport skills, while another salesperson has excellent rapport skills, but is very soft in the close.

What we consider to be the basics of selling are skill areas. Standard procedures of minimum acceptable behavior will make a salesperson good at follow up. It goes on for every area of your company.

There is a secret to improvement in your company.

How many times have you come back from a seminar with a great idea only to have it go nowhere? You told your staff about it. They all agreed it was a good idea. They agreed to try it. They tried it. Within a few weeks, no one was doing it again. What happened?

If you don’t revisit the 12 areas of competency listed below, they won’t do much for you. Greatness can only be accomplished by a process and not by an event. A consistent process.

You should rotate the 12 areas of competency every 12 weeks. For an hour per week, go over one of the 12 areas. Three months of proactive work on the business.

The real secret comes at the end of the 12 weeks. If you want to go back through all 12 competencies over the next 12 weeks, begin again with the first area. Within a year, you will run through these 12 areas four times. That is how you make progress. Pick a single task or area of business to focus on when you go through the 12 areas. Put the three P’s in that area. Make plans, policies and procedures that will improve and enhance each area.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, There are 12 areas of focus for your business.

Training can be used to enhance skill. Most people don’t engage in the three P’s on a regular basis. Your skills and business improve when you do. This cannot happen if you are working alone and trying to fill in people. In order to build a great team in which everyone is on the same page, you must involve your staff in the process.

Tell your staff that you want to improve the business and make it run better. A policies and procedures manual is needed if you want a business that can run without you. We will show you how it can be done in one hour a week.

You can grow your business more effectively by building a manual. Look at each area of skill necessary to run a business, choosing one small item or area at a time, and then look at what type of training and how the three P’s might make the area improve. There are many ways to help people learn. Which ways work best with individuals? Again, we can show you dozens of ways to implement anything, but with or without our help, you need to be doing it on your own.

The strategy and the strategy are related. There are tactics. The most important area of competency is this one. In the biggest companies in the world, most executives are so tactical that they don’t even understand strategy. If you want to understand this important competency, you need to increase your marketing abilities without spending more money.

The overall impact is the ultimate position that you would like to have in the market. The things that you do to achieve that position are called tactics. Strategic opportunities can be found in every tactical interaction you have with a customer or potential customer. An ad, a direct mail piece, a trade show, a sales call are all strategic opportunities. Do you have an ultimate position in mind for each strategy, first as a company and second as a strategy?

We can give you a few ideas. To be the best known, most trusted and respected company in your target market is a great strategic position. If you want to achieve this important goal, you have to ask what your tactics are. The salesperson is operating tactically if they are just trying to make a sale.

If you can think strategically, you need to ask yourself what the most you could accomplish with each tactic. You will always be chasing the sale of the day, and not building anything sustainable if you answer: To make a sale. If you have the right thoughts, plans, policies and procedures, you can achieve the same objectives with the same tactic.

They want to buy from us whenever they need our type of product or service. Referrals are generated from every current, past and new customer. Each aspect of your deployment must have highly motivational policies, plans and procedures built into it. To be respected above our competitors. This is a great goal, but what are you doing at the tactical level to make it happen?

We could give you at least six more strategic objectives for each tactic, but the point is that you need to be thinking and acting strategically so that your tactics maximize.

Does the ad in the newspaper appeal to the broadest possible audience? An example would be a chiropractic ad. The majority of Chiropractor advertising is tactical. Smith Chiropractic will get you out of pain quickly.

Back pain is the second most common reason for visiting a medical doctor, and studies show that 85% of the population complains of neck or back problems. The majority of people aren’t interested in chiropractic care, and may even be against it. When you put the word Chiropractor in the heading of your ad, it reduces the potential appeal of the ad. There are three things you better know if you suffer from back or neck pain.

There is a broader appeal to an ad with a headline like this. This heading appeals to 85% of the population, whereas an ad with the word Chiropractor in it immediately limits the draw power of the ad to those who are actually in the market for a Chiropractor. It was limited, versus the broadest possible appeal. This is an example of tactics and strategy. If you want to further explore this concept, we have tons of help for you. Meanwhile…

Think about strategy for an hour every 12 weeks. Think about how much you can accomplish with each tactic. From the way the phones are answered to the education process with customers, look at everything in your business. These are tactics. Every situation is maximized when you use strategy with these tactical opportunities.

Get customers. You should think about new ways to attract customers every 12 weeks. If you can add ideas to what is working right now, act differently. Add a few more ideas to attract customers. By having the goal to think of more ways to get customers, you will begin to develop ideas. How many ways can you think of to attract customers? Six? Ten? The 66 Ways To Get Customers program was developed by our organization. Over the course of several years, this came from focusing on it. There are 22 ways that your business attracts customers. At least once every 12 weeks, focus on it for a proactive hour.

The presentation is effective. You need to keep focused on your presentation skills and experience. What do you think will make you more effective at communicating? What do you think will make a communication experience more effective? 85% of motivation is stimulated by light. Is it possible to build visual aides that will help you communicate more effectively? How do you put on a great presentation? How do you present yourself in a retail store? Do you know what attracts people to your business or how you present yourself? They are critical. What would be in a formal presentation to sell to customers? How many times have you looked at this area? Is it possible to look at it at least one hour every three months?

Master the phone. If you want to get more business from your current customers, you should use the telephone. What policies procedures and plans can you add to use this device more effectively? List the current procedures and how they are implemented for every way the telephone is used in your organization. Set about improving them. How can the phone be used in area six?

The 12 steps to capture your best buyers. Get in front of as many people as you can. Do you have a program that will help you get more exposure with potential buyers? We recommend that you work on your best buyers regularly and build a special program for them. No matter what business you are in, there are always better buyers. If you focus on your best buyers, your business will grow much more dramatically than it ever will. Why? It is cheaper to focus on the best buyers than it is on all buyers.

This works better than you think. We have a program that has helped many businesses double their sales in 12 to 15 months. We call it The Dream 100 Sell. Who are your dream clients? Do you have a special program for them? They will come if you build it.

Follow up. It is one thing to get the best buyer, what is your program for keeping them? Think about how you can build better relationships with customers and organizations once every twelve weeks. The most successful businesses have strong relationships with their customers.

Is your follow up planned out or is it up to each individual? A pound of results is equal to an ounce of planning. Every 12 weeks, you should spend an hour on this area. How much time are you spending on it now? Start with an hour. Most people don’t change their organization for the better because they try to do big things. The longest journey begins with a single step. The little steps are the same as the big result. Start with an hour per week.

Time management is important. If you become more organized, your productivity can double and triple. You will be amazed at how much you can get done if you plan your days more effectively. The program is called The Six Steps To Time Management. Over the course of a long period of time, this was developed. Time management should not take a lot of time. It’s a good idea to sit down with your staff once every 12 weeks to work on time management procedures. You have to work on this area with or without us.

Goal setting Set regular goals for yourself and your staff. Goals give us higher results because they focus on results. Goal setting is proactive, which is how most businesses function. Set out some goals for each of the competencies by looking at them once every three months. If you want to increase your monthly new customer tally, have goals. Institute goals for improving productivity.

There are some characteristics of overachievers. You have to motivate yourself and your staff to try and achieve. What kind of behavior would be above the call of duty? What would make your customers feel special? If you work with your staff, you can develop as many as ten overachievers, which can be posted on your website as you grow and evolve. Everyone is expected to behave in a certain way. You can have a program like this for pennies of what it cost us to develop, but you can also develop your own. You can’t improve anything if you’re not focused on it.

It is necessary to hire and motivate. You now have a foundation to hire and motivate your staff once you establish these overachievers. Look to hire people who are more likely to act like overachievers. When we put ads in the newspaper for new staff, we end them with the phrase, we don’t hire background, we hire superstars.

The ad attracts some unusual people, but it also attracts some very bright superstars who adapt very quickly and end up beating people who have the perfect background. If you want to motivate certain behavior, think about ways to reward it. When certain behavior is desired, run contests and give bonuses. If your entire staff gets behind a yearlong push to increase customer purchasing, you can get $50,000 in new business with a quarterly bonus of $200.

Understanding the sales process If you analyze the steps that a customer goes through in order to make a decision to purchase, and then break them down and focus on improving them, you will become better and better at that process. Every field has steps that a person has to go through in order to make a decision. How do your customers make a decision to purchase your products or services? How can you improve your skills? Work on it once every 12 weeks. You will improve if you do this.

The key is magic. Consistency is the most important thing. If you consistently approach each of these areas, at least one hour per week, forever, you will experience an ever-improving organization that becomes bulletproof in the face of the massive change and onslaught of commercial clutter. Our company has found 2400 subtle little areas of potential improvement within these 12 areas, all of which are centralized around the core 12 areas mentioned above. A few core areas of improvement will do more for your organization than 100 one-day seminar events. The seminars are like comedy shows. You remember that they were funny, but you can’t remember any of the jokes. There isn’t much happening from a one-day seminar event. It may provide the vehicles to start the change you need. A lot can be achieved from a constant focus on a few simple proven areas once the motivation is there. When you attend an event training program, make a determination that you will commit to at least a few things for the rest of your life.

You can get it at nextskillup.com.