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Build A Relationship With Your Prospects

By Achieving Wealth, Sales Advice, Business Growth, Business Health, Foundations of Success No Comments

build-relationshipWhen you’re selling to potential customers, I sincerely hope you’re not taking a “one night stand” approach with them, for lack of a better term. As always, this was a point I touched on in my last blog post that I really want to elaborate on. No one wants to be sold to, which shouldn’t be a surprise to people anymore. The question then, is how do you sell to people without selling to them? The answer is to build a potentially long lasting relationship with them.

There are many benefits to establishing a relationship with your prospects, but the most obvious advantage is the fact that they’ll trust you, and people are more accepting of products and services being offered to them from people that they trust. Here are some insights to help you keep a personal touch with potential customers.

Don’t Treat Them Like a Target – Stop the sales pitch and start a conversation. In order to build a sincere and serious relationship, you need to have real conversations with people. That means that your sales pitch can’t sound ANYTHING like a sales pitch. Even if you’re just having a conversation, the instant that anyone thinks you’re trying to sell them something it’s over. Talk with them, find out their problems and treat them like real people.

Take Genuine Interest In Them – Taking the last point a little further, don’t feign interest in something a prospect brings up just to impress them. A critical part of building a relationship with people is that you have to be yourself. I know it’s cliché, but you shouldn’t have to put on a “sales persona” every time you talk with a potential customer – in fact, that’s probably the WORST thing you can do. Even though you may think that you might be doing a good job feigning interest, I guarantee that the person you’re speaking with knows and are just politely playing along. Only take an interest in topics that are of actual interest to you, and you’ll get a much better response.

Take Notes And Follow Up – When you’re talking with potential customers, a habit you should already be into is taking notes while you’re chatting. But try and take some notes on comments they make that might be interesting later, like if they mention they’ll be away on vacation or mention they’ll be out of the office to see their child in a play. When you follow up with them and bring up these little anecdotes, you’ll definitely stand out.

What kind of techniques do you use to build a genuine relationship with potential customers? I look forward to your feedback in the comments.

The Challenges of Executing and Delivering

By Success & Inspiration, Entrepreneurial, Business Insights, Sales Advice, Business Growth, Business Health, Foundations of Success No Comments

Wish_Group_Summer_ReunionWhether you only have one employee or 50 employees, execution will always be difficult. By execution I mean of course the way that you are completing tasks that will grow your business, and deliver positive results either to your leadership in the company or to yourself.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, the Wish Group went away for our bi-annual team building trip a couple of weeks ago. During these trips we like to have an overall theme for the event that will put a focus on the learning we’ll accomplish, with this year’s theme being execution.

The main goal for these trips is of course team building, but taking the time to discuss challenges and triumphs with your team is also an excellent way of doing that. When it comes to executing, we focused on four different areas that were loosely based on the four disciplines of execution, with a spotlight on sales of course:

Make Important Goals – The only way to achieve great success is to make goals that you can focus on. It may sound simple, but without a goal to focus on you simply won’t have the same drive that other sales people or companies have. One of the tasks we asked everyone at our Summer Reunion to complete is to write down their Wildly Important Goals for the year. This first step is really what sets the tone for how you’ll achieve success, since it’s important to actually define what success means to you!

Define Your Lead Measures – Even if you have a goal, what’s the point if you don’t have a practical way of reaching it? I put an emphasis on practical because it’s common to rush towards a goal instead of tackling it strategically. The best way I can explain this is with a common weight loss analogy. Your important goal may be to lose 50 pounds, but you can’t just make this goal and hope for the best. You’ll be keeping track of how much exercise you’re doing daily and even how many calories you’re taking in. The same thing applies to your sales team. Sure, they want to close a certain amount of deals, but victory lies in preparation. They’ll need to keep track of who they’re contacting, what prospects make the most sense to reach out to and what hasn’t been working for them in the past, just as a few examples.

Track Your Progress – It’s hard to admit, but there are only winners and losers when it comes to sales and business. People don’t pay to see two sports teams kick a ball around and not keep track of who wins. We pay to see one team win, which means another team has to lose. Keeping a scorecard of all of your successes will keep you focused on your goals in two ways. On one hand, having a visual record of the times when you didn’t quite reach your goals will motivate you to keep trying harder to turn those failures into triumphs. On the other hand, with the notes you keep from your lead measures combined with your scorecard, it’ll be extremely rewarding to have a solid trail of your success and how hard you’ve worked to get there.

Accountability to Yourself and Your Team – Your plans, your efforts and triumphs don’t mean anything if you don’t hold yourself accountable by actually following through with your action plan. It’s important to understand that this means keeping track of your failures too, because you’ll never be able to improve if you don’t look at both sides of your endeavors.

As you can clearly see, executing is by no means an easy task, and overnight results shouldn’t be expected. Like with most things in life, if you want to achieve greatness, you’ll need to take it one step at a time. And like most things as well, the first step is always the most difficult – but after that I guarantee that you’ll be able to do it!

3 Things I Would Tell My Younger Self

By Comments & Opinion, Success & Inspiration, Business Insights, Business Health, Personal Accountability No Comments

YoungerSelfI’ve made plenty of mistakes during my time as an entrepreneur. While I could have dwelled on them and got crushed by them, luckily I’ve always used them as lessons to push me forward. That being said, there’s a reason why mentors are usually those who are older than us.

Simply put, they’ve lived through the mistakes first hand and as such, know how to deal with any new problems that arise by thinking back on how they handled previous problems and applying these lessons to their current situation.

Now that I’m at an age where I frequently mentor young entrepreneurs, I honestly wish that I could tell my younger self some key lessons. Although there are many of them, here are my most important ones.

Learn to Say No – This one is one of the most difficult things to learn because we often see any new opportunity as an opportunity for growth. However, not all opportunities will be valuable in the long run. Take the time to evaluate your opportunities and cut the cord if it will act as a roadblock to your success.

Learn to Listen – Two ears and one mouth – they should be used in that order. Few people actually stop to take the time to listen, preventing them from truly understanding and learning. There are often times when you need to slow down because your deeper understanding of a subject that you got from listening will take you to the next level.

Don’t Be Afraid to Be You – We spend our childhood trying to fit in and our adult years trying to be different. Sometimes we never grow out of the desire to be like those around us. However, trying to be someone that you’re not will lead to an unfulfilled life. The best thing that you can offer those who you do business with is your genuine self. Your unique personality and insight is what your clients are truly after, since those traits and talents shine through your company.

These are the pieces of advice that I simply didn’t understand when I was younger. In fact, even I was to go back and tell my younger self this, I’m not sure if (a) I would understand or (b) if I would even listen. I believe that, for better or worse, people learn from harsh lessons rather than always heeding advice from others. It may not be simple, but try to keep your mentors advice in the back of your mind the next time you make a big decision.

Failure Isn’t The End

By Comments & Opinion, Success & Inspiration, Entrepreneurial, Self Education, Business Insights, Business Health, Foundations of Success, Personal Accountability One Comment

Failure-Isnt-The-EndThere’s a big misconception when it comes to failure. Ever since we’ve been children, we’ve seen that failing is nothing but a negative experience. Teachers would be disappointed and parents would yell at you for failing a test. If you failed a course, you’d use up your valuable summer time taking make-up courses. There has always been negativity associated with failure.

Things change once you’re an entrepreneur. By no means am I saying that failure gets easier. It still sucks, and it still stings and lingers with you for quite a while. However, when either your business or your product fails, it doesn’t mean that you should call it quits and give up. Quite the opposite, actually. I’ve touched on this in a few previous blog posts, but I thought it was time to dedicate an entire post on the often not discussed upsides of a failure.

It Makes You Stronger: As I mentioned in my previous post, when an athlete experiences failure, they don’t let it crush them. How many times have you seen a team lose a game, only to have the whole team give up? Obviously they don’t and neither should you. There is no one failure that should completely make you give up entirely. You need to dig deep and find out what you could have done to prevent the failure. If you couldn’t have prevented it, at the very least the experience will make you a better person and teach you about yourself.

It Teaches You Multiple Lessons: Besides teaching you about yourself, you’ll also learn a lot about your business. Specifically, it’ll teach you about the strengths of your team, which is always valuable to know. While you shouldn’t necessarily blame a team member for the failure, you’ll know what areas they can improve on, and where you can mentor them to become better. If the failure revolves around a product launch, you’ll be able to pinpoint what needs to be changed about your product and why the market didn’t latch onto it.

It Makes You Re-Evaluate: Once failure teaches you a lesson, the obvious next step is to re-evaluate. As hard as it might be to accept, perhaps there simply isn’t a market for your product, or perhaps there’s a crucial element that you’ve over looked. This is the time where you make changes to your work formula and make some tough decisions to continue moving forward. This is also the time to listen to any feedback that you’ve received, particularly negative feedback, as this is what will accurately tell you what you need to reconsider.

At the end of the day, don’t let one or even multiple failures stop you. You need to build your own path, and stay strong while you’re on the road to greatness. I’m curious to know what failures you’ve had as entrepreneurs, and what lessons have they taught you?

Don’t Let Fear Hold Back Your Entrepreneurial Instincts

By Comments & Opinion, Success & Inspiration, Entrepreneurial, Business Insights, Business Health, Foundations of Success 2 Comments

Don’t-Let-Fear-Hold-Back-Your-Entrepreneurial-InstinctsIf you decide to leave your job and open your own business, there are a few things you assume you’ll leave behind as well. Job security, consistency and a personal life are what some people think they’ll leave behind – and sometimes this is true. The problem here is that when people really start to think about these things, they get worried, and that worrying more often than not leads to fear.

This fear can be used as motivation for some, but more often than not this fear will inevitably stop you from taking the plunge and stop you from creating your dream company. We’re all familiar with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s quote on fear: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” While the quote may be used quite often, that’s simply because it rings true, and if you can overcome your fear you will head towards greatness. Here are a few things that you need to keep in mind to keep your fears in check.

Take That First Step – No matter what your instincts may be telling you, the hardest part is taking the first step. However, if you find that the results from this first step aren’t encouraging, don’t abandon hope so quickly. Much like with losing weight, the first step is difficult and most get discouraged when they don’t see any immediate results. Just have patience, and know that the road is long but well worth it. Creating a business plan, getting your financials in order or reaching out to other entrepreneurs are just a few things that you can do to get you started.

Keep The Big Picture In Mind, But Take It One Step At A Time – Tying in above, once you take that first step, make a list of other goals you want to attain. You should keep the big picture in mind, like wanting to become a multi-million dollar company for example, but also make sure to have smaller attainable goals first. Acquiring a certain number of new clients, finding an office space and other similar things are small goals you can start off with. Meeting these smaller goals will keep you motivated as well, since reaching them will let you know that you’re well on your way to the end game.

Drop The Negativity – One of the biggest side effects from fear is the non-stop negativity that comes with it. Your fear makes you believe that you’re incapable of meeting your goals, or worse, that you don’t deserve to reach your goals. There’s no one way to get over this, but it’s important to know that this will take time. Write down what is making you afraid and then list off realistically if your fear is based on facts, or simply something you’ve made up in your head.

Do you feel that you’re now over your fears, or are there still things that you feel are holding you back? I’d love to discuss this topic with you in more detail.

Don’t Neglect Your Existing Customers

By Business Insights, Sales Advice, Business Growth, Business Health, Foundations of Success One Comment

There’s no doubt that your sales team is always calling, sending
e-mails, following up and doing whatever they can to capture new customers, but during this process there is one critical point that gets lost in the shuffle – your existing clients. There’s a danger of your sales team putting so much focus on attracting new customers that your existing customers will start to feel neglected.

Initially you may think that new customers should be your primary focus as you’re trying to grow your business, but there are numerous statistics that show why keeping your current customers happy is important. Bain and Co.’s research shows that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%, and Gartner Group statistics reveal that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers.

The numbers sound nice, but what exactly does this mean for business owners? At the end of the day, you need to take a look at how you’re currently servicing your customers and see if there are ways you can improve the existing relationship. Here are a few tricks that I’ve learned over the years that will help make your current customers happy.

Go Above and Beyond – This first point goes without saying, but over time it’s easy to let your customer service levels drop. A lot of the time this drop is so gradual that you don’t notice it until it’s too late – which is when your customer decides to move on. Make sure that you reinforce the importance of top notch customer service to your team by sharing success stories or great examples that you’ve heard or experienced firsthand.

Appreciate Them When They Don’t Expect it – If I was to take a guess, I’d say that a majority of you send some form of appreciation to your customers during Christmas time. While that’s fine, what people don’t realize is that everyone expects something during the holidays, so in reality your gift that was supposed to make an emotional impact probably won’t be remembered for too long. Instead, why not take the gifts that you were supposed to send during the Christmas season and send them on March 24th, meaning no specific holiday or reason behind them. The gesture is sure to turn some heads, and will definitely leave a longer lasting impression.

Implement a Loyalty Program – A loyalty program is one of the best ways that you can keep your existing customers. An interesting article from Help Scout shows that if you want to get a customer heavily involved with a customer loyalty program, you should automatically get them started. Pick a relevant date (birthday, anniversary of contract, etc) and simply send them an e-mail telling them how much you appreciate their business and that you’ve enrolled them in your “VIP” program. There’s no doubt that they’ll appreciate the gesture and stay loyal to your brand.

The takeaway you should communicate to your team is that at the end of the day, keeping your current customers happy is equally as important as finding new customers, so make sure not to lack in either category. How are you currently making your current customers happy? I’d love to discuss some techniques in the comments.

Pruning the Tree

By Comments & Opinion, Business Insights, Business Growth, Business Health No Comments

With the calendar now midway through November, winter is definitely in the air. One of my routines for this time of year is to prepare the gardens around my property for the coming winter by pruning the shrubs and trees. As you might know, pruning trees is helpful for a variety of reasons:

  • to remove dead or diseased branches
  • to thin the crown to permit new growth and better air circulation
  • to remove obstructing lower branches
  • to shape a tree for design purposes

Okay, so I confess that I’m not actually the one out in the backyard with snips trimming branches but I do know the critical importance to the health, safety and aesthetics of my trees and shrubs that the annual pruning exercise means.

So what is your point Frank, I’ll bet your wondering. Quite simply, I find that there is an astonishing parallel between maintaining a garden and ensuring you have a healthy and growing company. Let me break it down a bit.

Trimming the dead branches

First, I’ll describe the practice of trimming away dead branches. There are three main benefits of cutting off dead or diseased branches from trees and shrubs:  it makes way for new growth to sprout and flourish, it mitigates the spread of disease and it improves the beauty of the tree.

Every company has the same issue of “dead branches” – unproductive and poor performing employees – and reaps the same benefits by doing some “pruning” – that is, letting those employees go. No matter how successful an organization is, it is inevitable that some employees will always fall into this category and business leaders need to be vigilant with their trimming. By removing these underperforming employees, the company’s up-and-comers have a better chance to stand out and be recognized for their achievements, and grow and prosper as the rest of the company grows.

Furthermore, like a diseased branch the employees that fall into this deadwood category often have a poor attitude that can infect the rest of the company. Pruning will help prevent the spread of morale and culturing-impacting negativism and pessimism.

Pruning also serves to enhance the attraction of the company to potential high-performing candidates, what I call the rock stars… hopefully they will see that this is an organization that doesn’t countenance low or poor performance, enhancing their attraction to the company.

Culling living branches

While it is of critical importance to cut off dead branches, pruning live branches is equally important. Sometimes this mean removing branches that are lower down on the trunk, or thinning out the crown of the shrub or tree. The art and act of trimming living branches is a bit more complex and strategic than removing dead branches. The desired outcome is to selectively remove those branches that are impeding (or will impede) others from growing properly, or are growing in a different direction than you want the tree to grow.

Again, the analogy to a company is striking. Oftentimes you may have a strong and productive employee, but that person’s behaviours or mindset are such that – while maybe acceptable at one point in time – she is now impeding others in the organization from performing to the maximum of their ability. As hard as it may seem, that person needs to go. Similarly, an employee that has a set of skills and capabilities that were extremely valuable to the organization at one point in time – say, during the start-up phase – but now that the company has grown and matured the value of that employee’s capabilities has greatly diminished. He, too, must go for the greater good of the organization.

I know that some of you are thinking, “But what if I make a mistake?  What if I cut the wrong person, or too many for that matter?”.  Read on and I’ll explain my view on that.

A Living Organism

The last point I will make on this topic is perhaps stating the obvious – much like a tree or a shrub, a company is a living organism. A tree or shrub that is not properly maintained and pruned will over time grow in ways that leave it less strong, vibrant and attractive compared to ones that have been consistently and properly pruned. While a case can be made that it’s never too late to prune a tree, if you let it go too long the amount of effort to get it back into the shape you want it will be high and it in fact may take years to get it going in the direction you want it to.

And so too it goes with a company: let it go untended too long, deferring those tough decisions on cutting out those seemingly healthy and productive “branches” or making excuses for keeping the deadwood around, means some really tough work ahead.

And to address your concern about cutting the wrong employee, or maybe removing too many (perhaps because you’ve left it too long), do not fear. Companies like trees are resilient and naturally rejuvenate – if you snip off the wrong branch while unfortunate another one will grow to take its place; similarly, if you lop off a few too many undeniably it will have a short term impact, but the reality is that it won’t take too long before ample new ones sprout in their place.

My message here is quite simple:  at least once a year – and fall is one of the best times – get your organizational “trimmers” out and do your company and employees a favour by cutting back selectively and with determination. I can assure you that if you do so, your company will be stronger, healthier and more prosperous as a result. Why?  I practice what I preach and I hold up the success of my companies past and present as the proof in the pudding. Oh, and you should see the trees in my backyard.