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Business Insights

Dec 08 2014
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Limit The Options To Close The Sale

By Comments & Opinion, Business Insights, Sales Advice No Comments

Ever had those days where you just want a simple product, but are overwhelmed with the amount of choices involved? Let’s say you want to buy a MP3 player for Christmas and wander into Best Buy thinking it will be easy – but what colour do you want? What brand? Should it be water proof? Do you really need Bluetooth? What about the batteries it takes? There have been so many times where I go to buy something and am simply put off by the amount of options available that I lose interest in the product and put it off getting it – or sometimes I don’t get it at all!

This got me thinking to the typical sales person who tries to sell a “complete” solution to someone who doesn’t really need all of the bells and whistles. Offering the right solution to potential customers is critical to closing the sale, but giving them a list of too many options is bound to turn them off. Once your prospect suffers from information overload, they’ll either delay the decision or lose interest. Here’s what you should do to prevent this from happening:

Discuss Their Exact Needs: The first step of any successful sale’s process is having a deep understanding of what your prospect is looking for, meaning that you need to have an in-depth conversation with them – probably multiple conversations actually. It’s no secret that you need to develop a relationship with your potential clients since it’s rare that you’ll sell someone a product or service on your first meeting. As such, when you’re getting to know them you need to see what exactly they’re looking for in a solution and if you can concisely offer them the service instead of saying things like “You might like A, but B and C are probably better! And we can’t forget D, E and F either.”

Custom Tailor A Solution: Chances are that you may not one concise solution available to solve all of a customer’s problems, which is why you offer them so many solutions. In this case though, it would help a lot if you move things around to make a solution that best fits for them, that way they have all of their problems solved in one fell swoop. Sure, it might be a bit of a pain, but there’s no doubt that they’ll appreciate the effort you put into making something work for them. This will also limit their options to their yes or no, making the close dramatically easier.

By making the decision process for your prospects easier and making their choices meet their needs, I guarantee that you’ll have more success with closing sales.

Nov 24 2014
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Holiday Homestretch

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Business Insights, Business Health, Foundations of Success, Planning for the future, Personal Accountability No Comments

With 37 days left in 2014, families and organizations are undoubtedly feeling the pressure of holiday crunch time. I’m pretty guilty of waiting last minute to buy all of my Christmas presents, but when it comes to prepping for the next year I try hard not to lose my focus and keep it going.

This time of year it really does feel like everything is working against you, though. The dreary weather sometimes makes it impossible for you to even get into the office, unexpected family visiting, hysteria at every store you visit regardless of what you want to buy…. It seems endless. During this chaos though is when you need to carve time to review how the year has been, since you’ll be busy the next couple of weeks preparing for 2015.

Revisit Your Earlier Goals – Hopefully you made a list of goals at the beginning of the year to guide your business. With so little time left in the year, you shouldn’t be looking at your list and attempt a mad dash to the finish. Rather, it’s a time to look at your list and see what has worked well for you. Hopefully you’ll find that you not only surpassed some goals, but that you also surpassed goals you added on a little later in the year. You’re bound to find something that was meant to be your focus that you may have let slip through the cracks…

Tie Up Lose Ends – If you do see a few loose ends that you were supposed to focus on for the year, you should do one of two things: (a) see why you weren’t able to meet this goal and attempt it next year or (b) decide if you should make it a priority for the coming year or if it’s actually a critical goal. Losing sight of a particular goal isn’t always a bad thing. Perhaps you subconsciously realized that this goal wasn’t essential to growing your business – especially if you’ve experienced tremendous growth in the year without it. On the flip side, if your business didn’t grow as quickly as you expected, then you should probably make it a priority in 2015.

Plan Your Time Off Accordingly – You’re not seriously planning on neglecting your family over the holidays, are you? No matter what holiday you observe, this time of year is important to spend with your family. I’ve talked about balance before, but I can’t stress how important it is to actually put your phone and computer down for a bit and spend time with loved ones. I can completely sympathize if a 100% disconnect is impossible, but don’t completely neglect your family either!

I’m very interested to know what your game plan is for the final weeks of the year. Please share your thoughts with me in the comments!

Nov 17 2014
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Escaping Negativity

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Self Education, Business Insights, Leadership, Personal Accountability No Comments

escape-negativityYou know those days? Those days where everything seems to go wrong, be it on a technical level or something else entirely? Those days are extremely difficult to cope with, but that’s all they are – just single days. The trap to be weary of is letting these days turn to weeks, then weeks to months until you’re consumed by this negativity.

Doing your job becomes incredibly difficult when you constantly create barriers that stop you from performing well. As cheesy or clichéd as it sounds, your state of mind has a tremendous effect on your surroundings. I won’t turn this into a debate on whether you believe me or not, but I do want to offer some points on how to evaluate your negativity to see if something productive can come from it.

Talk It Out With Someone – This of course works with most difficulties in life, but its important to talk this out. Discussing your issues with different people in your life will give you a different view of your situation. You’d be surprised by how many coworkers might be going through the same situation you are. Don’t limit it to coworkers either. Friends, family, significant others… There are rarely any problems you experience that haven’t been dealt with by someone else. Perhaps you won’t like what you hear, but at the very least you’ll have a different opinion.

Pinpoint Your EXACT Cause – After you’ve discussed why you’re feeling so negative with other people, I imagine that you’d have a general idea of what type of negativity is consuming you. What’s important though is that you figure out EXACTLY why you’re being negative. Was it something that has been building over time, a bad experience that you can’t shake or do you feel unfulfilled with what you do? Pinpointing the exact reasons for of your bad vibes can have a better understanding of how to resolve these underlying problems.

Look At The Big Picture – After you’ve talked it out and narrowed down the exact reasons of your negativity, it’s time to act. This will depend entirely on you. Consider the options though, and don’t act on instinct. Perhaps you are long overdue for a vacation, or there’s been something brewing between you and your manager for a long time coming. As drastic as it sounds, you also have to consider that you are simply not happy with the organization you’re with, and its time to move on. As difficult as that might be, in the long run staying somewhere that makes you feel negative isn’t beneficial for either party.

Escaping negativity isn’t easy, but you’ll be thankful once all is said and done.

Nov 03 2014
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Is There A “Give Up” Point?

By Comments & Opinion, Business Insights No Comments

virgin-galactic-crashSomething that really struck a cord with me was the news about Virgin Galactic’s failure of their SpaceShip2. The story itself is really tragic, and ended with the death of one of the pilots. There is a lot of speculation on what exactly went wrong, but that doesn’t matter. In the end, pioneering this new field of Space Tourism will continue to be inherently dangerous. Should they continue with this work though?

A gut reaction is to say “no, they should obviously stop with this because it’s too dangerous.” But Virgin Galactic remains undeterred, and will in fact continue forward with their company. Personally, I agree that they should continue as well. Space travel being dangerous is nothing new. In fact, earlier last week saw another spaceship malfunction too, which was luckily unmanned but still could just have easily ended in tragedy and ended up costing millions. NASA, of course, will continue their work despite the loss of the scientific equipment and resources.

Commercial space flight seems extremely dangerous, but it’s far too simple to forget that commercial airline flights took years of trail and error as well to get to safe standards. Even then, there are still unfortunately accidents involved with there flights, as pioneering commercial flights took plenty of years of persistence and unfortunately there were good pilots lost to reach the formula to what we have today. The same principle applies to the automotive industry, as accidents were a regular occurrence when cars first appeared and there were many civilian casualties in the process.

The fact that this sounds cold isn’t lost on me, but hear me out. Virgin Galactic is on the forefront of this industry and truly pioneering what’s to be expected in the future. Science fiction stories have romanticized what space travel could look like centuries away, but we have many years until we reach that point – if we ever in fact reach it. We are going to have to put up with the grim reality that if we seriously want to take a stab at making space tourism and commercial space flight viable, there are bound to be more casualties. Is it worth it? It may be a tough pill to swallow and face, but throughout history there’s always a tough road with tragedies, but in order to make progress it’s sometimes necessary.

I’m very curious to hear your opinions on this matter, both from a personal perspective and from an entrepreneurial point of view. Should Virgin Galactic continue with this endeavour?

Oct 27 2014
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“Thanks For All Your Hard Work”

By Business Insights, Business Growth, Foundations of Success, Leadership No Comments

86539528When you’re sucked into the day to day of running your business, it becomes far too easy to let some things slip through the crack. Administrative tasks, maybe a deadline on a project…but these things you can recover from. What you should NEVER let fall through the cracks is how much you appreciate your employees.

Your employees are the backbone of your company. Whether they’re in sales or operations, you wouldn’t have a business without them. You might be shaking your head in agreement, but I challenge you to remember the last time that you truly appreciated a stand out employee of yours. Taking the time out of your day to praise your employees can make the world of difference to them. Here’s why I think that appreciating your employees will work wonders for your company:

They’ll Work Harder – This should be an obvious point. If you never appreciate how hard your staff member’s work, they’ll eventually stop working hard for you. Everyone works hard for different reasons. Some work hard because they want to shine better than everyone else, while others truly believe in the growth of the company. It’s critical that you get to know your employees and what motivates them. Everyone takes appreciation in a different way, so you can’t assume that just telling one person “good work” will suffice. Take the time to examine how exactly their work has helped the business, and explain the positive impact to them. Doing this will make your appreciation towards them seem much more sincere.

They’ll Feel Needed – Have you ever worked at a company where you felt expendable? Those are the worst possible conditions to stay motivated in because you’ll feel that no matter how hard you work, it won’t make a bit of difference since you don’t think that your employer needs you. This is easily the most important reason to take the time to praise your employees, because they will understand exactly how all of those long hours are helping the company and having a positive impact. This is also the time where you can work in some mentorship with your staff, as they’ll not only be looking at your for guidance when they do things right, but also for some advice on how to always do things right.

If your staff feels needed at your company, they’ll want to stay at your company AND work hard to ensure successful business growth. It may look like these points can stand on their own, but it’s when you do a combination of all this appreciation towards your employees that you’ll really see your business grow and prosper.

Oct 14 2014
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Do You Treat Success Like Turkey And Pumpkin Pie?

By Comments & Opinion, Business Insights, Business Growth, Business Health, Planning for the future, Leadership, Personal Accountability No Comments

I hope that everyone enjoyed time with their family during Thanksgiving and that everyone had a chance to eat to their heart’s content. I have a very soft spot for pumpkin pie and as such I happen to over indulge a bit over the past weekend, along with a bunch of other food. If it’s in abundance, it’s the time to enjoy it as much as you can, correct?

I don’t think I need to tell you the consequences of enjoying too much pie, but I’ve found that many business owners treat success the same way as Thanksgiving treats – they gorge themselves on it without thinking of the consequences of the future. Here are some things to consider when it comes to celebrating your success:

Success Isn’t Given, It’s Created – It’s always nice to not be the host during Thanksgiving every now and then because it means that you’re not the one who is preparing the food. But just because it was handed to you doesn’t mean that it didn’t take hard work to make it happen. Don’t get lazy once your company starts seeing a lot of success, because it won’t always come as easily to you. You shouldn’t depend on success being given to you, you ALWAYS need to work hard and earn it.

Save Some For Later… – I don’t think I need to tell you, but I hope that once your company starts seeing financial success that you’re not spending it on unnecessary and extravagant expenses. There’s hardly any worse feeling than realizing that all of this infamous pie is gone, so imagine how it must feel when you realize that enjoying too much of your financial success and you’re almost back where you started or worse. It’s a good habit to keep an ongoing tally of your success and budget, and make sure that you’re properly investing in areas of your company that will ensure growth.

…But Still Enjoy It – Of course, we’re only human so don’t take this as me simply telling you to not enjoy your success. If your team worked hard to land an account, or your business has been consistently growing for a few months, treat your team and show them that this success was entirely possible because of their hard work and dedication. As with everything in life, balance is important. Be responsible with your celebrations.

It’s always tempting to go for more and want more, but as long as you’re responsible about how you do it, there’s nothing wrong with indulging every now and then.

Sep 29 2014
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Ask For The Close To Get The Close

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Achieving Wealth, Self Education, Business Insights, Sales Advice, Foundations of Success No Comments

Let’s face it, closing the sale is the end game for every sales person. And while we’re at it, let’s face another truth – it’s also the most difficult part of selling. But that doesn’t have to be the cace. A lot of the time, difficulty in closing a sale is only perceived to be much more difficult than it truly is. While every case is different, here are three things to keep in mind that’ll help you close that pesky sale.

Focus on the Customer Problem – The best sales people aren’t out there pounding the pavement just mindlessly pushing their product or service in front of people. The best sales people are the ones that actively listen to their prospects and try to understand their problem first. More importantly, they understand that what you’re trying to sell simply can’t solve their problem. This is truly what will set you apart from the rest! Take the time to actively listen and discuss the problem that they’re having. Prep yourself with some questions to ask to learn about their problems, like “what would you like to focus on improving during the next few months” or even a straight to the point question of “what’s the biggest problem your department is currently dealing with?” You’ll lose hard earned rapport if you just present a solution without listening to the problem. If they feel as though you genuinely want to solve their problem, I guarantee that they’ll be more likely to want your product.

Develop a Relationship – People don’t like being sold to, so don’t treat a prospect like just another target. If you’re thoroughly trying to solve a potential customer’s problem though, this shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s extremely rare that you’ll be able to close any deal from just one meeting or phone call. This means that you’ll need to keep in touch with the prospects who show interest, or who you truly believe that you’ll be able to solve their problems with your product or service. By regularly keeping in contact and paying attention to the conversations that you have, you’ll be able to pick up on some little details about their life that you’ll be able to bring up again in regular conversation. These little gestures will mean a lot when it comes to closing a sale, because I know from experience that people are far more likely to buy something from someone who asks “how was your daughter’s dentist appointment” instead of someone who clearly doesn’t care about you.

Ask For It! – As like with many things in life, it’s extremely rare that you’ll simply be handed something without working or asking for it. There have been many instances where my sales team is lamenting the fact that they were discussing a sale with a potential customer for a long time, but it just didn’t work out. Then I ask if they actually asked for the sale, and they almost always say no. This ties back into an old blog post I had about fear, and it’s almost always fear of rejection that makes people not simply ask them if they want to buy what you’re selling. If you’ve been focusing their problem and have developed a great relationship with them, the results will almost always be positive.

Does this closely follow what you’re currently doing? If not, what steps are you taking to make sure that you close the sale? I’d be very interested to hear your techniques in the comments.

Sep 22 2014
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Make The Most Of 24 Hours

By Entrepreneurial, Achieving Wealth, Self Education, Business Insights, Sales Advice, Foundations of Success, Leadership, Personal Accountability No Comments

24-Hours24 hours in a day – to some people it seems like that’s never enough to accomplish anything, but then there are the people who seem like they can get everything done in that time, plus still have time for their family, friends and a million other personal tasks. Your gut reaction might be to be envious of these people, but it’s not as if they’re cheating and getting an extra hour from somewhere. We ALL have 24 hours to make the most out of, which means that it really just comes down to time management.

Managing your time really is an art. It takes a lot of practice and experience to know how to best use your time, especially when you’re a sales person. Selling isn’t as simple as calling random names in a phonebook (which admittedly is a dated phrase), sending random emails and then patiently awaiting the results. You’ll need to be tactical of how you organize your time to ensure that you’re getting the best results while taking advantage of the time you have. I’ll provide you with a few insights from years of selling:

Write EVERYTHING Down – The key to any form of time management is to keep track of your day. Eventually you’ll be able to adjust and plan ahead, but to first start things out you should just write down everything that you’re currently doing in a typical day. This way you’ll get a solid understanding of how you currently spend your time. You’ll also get a very stark view of how much time you’re not using effectively, which might be difficult to accept. Everyone likes to believe they’re productivity machines, but we all fall victim to distraction.

(Try To) Limit Distractions, Or Schedule Them In – Once you get an understanding of how you’re using your time and see how you’re distracting yourself, the next step is to try and limit your distractions. I put an emphasis on “try” because I know that it’s not as simple as just cutting yourself off from the internet or turning your phone off. At the end of the day, we’re all human and can’t keep working hours on end without some form of distraction. What you can, and should, start doing is penciling time to be distracted. That way, you’ll make the most out of the bit of time that you have. Keep in mind though, that there will be many times when you can’t predict things coming up, and you’ll need to just act on instinct.

Know When You’re Good – Not everyone is an early bird, and not everyone is a night owl. Every person is efficient at different times of the day. For example, those who prefer working early mornings will tackle their most important tasks first thing, while those who are more functional in the afternoon will focus their mornings on less vital tasks and preparing for the tasks ahead. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to this. Figure out what works best for you and try to work around it. If you can prove results to your manager, you can even try changing your working schedule to accommodate this!

Like I mentioned, each step might vary slightly based on the results that you find, but once you find out what works for you, stick with it and you’ll find yourself using time a lot more efficiently – both in your work life and personal life.

Sep 08 2014
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Setting Standards and Expectations

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Self Education, Business Insights, Foundations of Success, Planning for the future, Leadership, Personal Accountability No Comments

setting-expectations-and-standardsSurely you’ve heard people mention in passing that they live by a “code”, but what does that mean exactly? While I could delve into many different territories here, something that I believe all “codes” follow is that they set certain standards and expectations.

Standards and expectations are important because they dictate vital elements of how your business will operate, like how you’ll treat your clients and who’s accountable in your organization. If you try to operate your business without setting any form of standards to follow, the results are guaranteed to be disastrous.

To me, these are the three most important people you need to set standards and expectations for:

For Your Clients – This should naturally be your priority. Who will be the point of contact for clients? How will you communicate with them? What type of tone will you use, professional or casual? How do you want them to perceive your organization? These types of questions may seem arbitrary, but if nothing is set in place before your team starts liaising with clients, the disorganization will be obvious. There are few things more annoying than multiple people from your organization reaching out to a client to ask the same questions.

For Your Co-workers – Another equally important set of standards that you need to have in place are for your coworkers. You may think that you have them in place, but are you sure that everyone truly understands what they are? This goes far beyond simple things like a dress code. This means that everyone understands deliverables for each project, how much time to allocate for different clients and who will deliver what work. Again, this may sound arbitrary, but you might be surprised once you discover what people on your team are expecting from each other – and from you.

For Yourself – This point ties in with what I was discussing earlier when I mentioned living by a “code”. When you set standards for where you work, then it makes sense that you should set standards for yourself, correct? While everyone’s idea of ideal expectations will differ, sit down and pencil out what exactly is important to you. How will you treat your clients? How often do you want to regroup with your coworkers? Are you realistically making enough time for yourself and your loved ones? These things matter in the long run. Once you have an idea of what people can expect from you, make it known to them.

One last thing I want to mention about expectations and standards is that once they’re set, don’t neglect them. While not having standards can be pretty rough, setting them and not following through is much worse.

Aug 25 2014
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Say No Without The Guilt

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Self Education, Business Insights, Leadership, Personal Accountability No Comments

NOAs entrepreneurs we generally want control of everything within our company, which means that when someone hands something off to us “yes” is the first thing that usually comes. That isn’t always a good thing because when you say yes without really thinking about it, things don’t always work out.

Whenever we need to say no but never end up saying it, it’s usually because of guilt. We feel guilty that if something goes wrong with a project it’s because we, personally, didn’t do something about it or simply because we don’t want to offend our peers.

You might not realize it, but saying no can actually save you from many headaches that you have to deal with. Here are some ways to say “no” without feeling guilty.

Think About It First – ‘Yes’ is often the answer we give people almost instantly without even thinking about how this may benefit you or potentially damage you. People would much rather have a well thought out no rather than an instant response without any consideration. A simple, “Can I think about it and get back to you later?” can work wonders for you, and it will generally lead you to an answer that you’re happy with after the fact.

Aces In Their Places – Sometimes we accept tasks because we simply want control over the situation. This is where delegation is critical. You should know the strengths and weaknesses of your team members, and who would be the best person for each task. If someone else can do the job as well as you can, it’s worth it to delegate. Entrepreneurs are busy people, so you need to prioritize and maintain balance.

Learn To Accept “No” From Others – If you can dish it, you have to be able to take it too. Learn to accept no from others. You need to understand that other people’s priorities aren’t always aligned with your own, and know that it’s almost never personal when someone says no.

You Can’t Do Everything – Is it really going to kill someone if you say no? No, it is not.  You can’t do everything. Do things that you genuinely want to do for others and not just because you feel like obligated.  It will make the things that you participate in much more rewarding and the 100% effort will be recognized because it’s genuine.

Make your commitments genuine by saying no to things you are not particularly interested in or do not have the time to do. You only have 24 hours in a day so use them wisely.

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