Sales and Sales Management Blog

October 13, 2011

Finish 2011 Strong While Laying the Groundwork for a Great 2012

Filed under: business,sales,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 10:22 am
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Although somewhat hard to believe, we’re now at the end of another year.  With only two and a half months to go, your year is virtually over.  That doesn’t mean your production has to be over, it means that more than any other time during the year, you must have a laser focus in order to finish the year strong and lay the foundation for 2012.

Unfortunately the last quarter and the first quarter of the year are the least productive for a great many sellers. 

A great many sellers slack off during the last quarter thinking that there really isn’t much business to be had since “everyone” is consumed with the holidays and spending little time attending to business—especially when it comes to making purchasing decisions.

Likewise, the first quarter is written off by many with the excuse that people really aren’t back to concentrating on work until the middle of February—and then they’re really just beginning to look at potential purchases, meaning that the actual production won’t close until the second quarter.

While the majority is assuring themselves that their low production isn’t their fault but is simply a reflection of the reality of the calendar, there is a much smaller group of sellers who are busting sales goals.

Are those sellers who are making record sales during the “dead” time of the year just lucky?  Maybe they sandbagged business to make their last quarter look great?  Possibly they are out giving radical discounts in order generate the business most other sellers can’t seem to come up with?

The fact of the matter is that none of the above reasons are accurate as they are nothing but the excuses the majority of sellers use to justify their low sales.

The last and first quarters don’t have to be the valley of death for sales.  With just a few simple activities you can bust your sales goal in both quarters.  What you do right now will determine what your end of year and beginning of year are like—and whether you enjoy great paychecks over the next few months or go on your annual starvation diet until next April.

Take control of your sales business and income by:

  1.  Clean out your dead prospecting wood.  Refuse to waste more time on dead end prospects.  Take a critical look at your pipeline and get rid of all the prospects who aren’t worthy of your time and effort.  Yes, seeing those names on your pipeline can be comforting because they pad the numbers, buy in your heart you know they’re nothing more than wishful thinking.  Get real, get rid of them and see where you’re really at.
  2. Double down on prospecting.  Shortly most sellers will begin slacking off on prospecting figuring that no one will take their call anyway.  Don’t allow yourself to fall into that trap.  In fact, take advantage of your competition’s laziness and INCREASE your prospecting activity.  Not only will it pay off in the fourth quarter, you’ll have a breakout first quarter of 2012.
  3. Stay in touch.  Again, while your competition takes the next two to three months off, increase your activity.  Don’t allow your prospects and clients to forget you.  While your competition may send a Christmas card, you should be working.  Most of your prospects and clients will be working just as hard this quarter as they did last.  Most will still be making purchasing decisions.  While your competition writes off the quarter, you can write business. 
  4. Solve problems.  Your prospect’s problems don’t go away because Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays roll around.  Business problems don’t take holidays or vacations.  Neither should you.  Concentrate on solving prospect problems and you’ll magically find that your production problems go away too.

Turning the fourth and first quarters into high production quarters doesn’t take luck or magic, it simply takes focusing on business.  Treat the end and beginning of the year like any other quarter and your production will be just as strong as the second and third quarters. 

The reality is that production declines in the fourth and first quarters because our activity declines, not because the business isn’t there. 

Make this year and next banner years by doing what your competition won’t—continuing to prospect and solve issues.  You’ll find your bank account will really appreciate your effort.

July 22, 2011

Are Your Roadblocks to Success Really Real?

Filed under: attitude,career development,sales,Sales Failure,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 12:10 pm
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Ray is a seller for a software company that I have been working with for a few weeks.  Although he is a strong seller, he wants to develop more effective prospecting strategies so he can bang on the phone a less while increasing his sales.  We’ve been working on increasing the quality and quantity of the referrals he gets from his clients.

We began by reviewing his then current method of trying to get referrals.  It was no surprise that he used the typical, “do a good job and ask for referrals” method.  It was also no surprise to learn that he didn’t get many high quality referrals.  Mostly he just got names and phone numbers of companies that were either poor prospects or not prospects at all.

He did get a referred sale here and there, just enough to keep him asking, but not enough to really make a difference in his production.

He agreed with me when I explained why the “process” he was using to get referrals didn’t work very well.  He recognized all the problems—clients uncomfortable with the request, clients not having time to think about who to refer, clients not knowing who to refer, him feeling uncomfortable asking as he knew he was making his clients uncomfortable by putting them on the spot.

He also agreed with me when I showed him a much more effective and natural way to work with his clients to generate high quality introductions to prospects that he knew he wanted to be introduced to.

We did some role playing.  We made a list of possible introductions he could get from his clients.  We reviewed all the steps he needed to take and all the potential issues and problems that could arise.

Ray was ready to begin talking to some clients and getting some quality introductions.

Off he went—and quickly back he came.

He had gone to talk to a client he had just finished selling and installing the software and training the staff.  The client was a plumbing company.  The software was a package of accounting and payroll modules.

The sale had gone well.  The software was doing exactly what it should.  The client and his staff were happy.

Ray had identified a great prospect who he really wanted his client to introduce him to—another plumbing company in town.  His identified prospect was one Ray had been trying to connect with for months but couldn’t get the owner to take his calls or acknowledge his letters or emails.  He was getting nowhere—but he also believed this was a great prospect for him.

His plumbing client was going to be the key to getting in.

That is until he went to see his client.

When Ray was visiting with his client, he thought about all the reasons his client wouldn’t give him an introduction to the other plumber—that other plumber was a competitor after all and that other plumber was bigger than Ray’s client; why would the client want to give the competitor anything that would help them?  In addition, Ray knew that his client was bidding on a big project and that other plumbing company was probably bidding on it too.  There were just too many reasons for his client to turn him down, Ray reasoned.

Knowing that he was off to get his first introduction commitment, I called Ray that afternoon to get a report.  I was dismayed with what I heard.

Why again, I asked, did Ray believe his client knew the other plumber and were friends?

Because there was a picture in the client’s office of the client and the other plumber each holding a huge Bass and were both smiling and obviously comparing them.

Ah, I reminded him, they really were friends.

Anything else?

Yes, Ray said, his client used to work for the other plumber.  In fact, they still do some jobs together where the other plumber will sub-contract Ray’s client when needed.

Ah, they’re friends and they work closely together.  In fact, Ray’s client makes money off the other company.  Sounds like cut throat competitors to me.

So why did he determine it would be useless to ask his client for an introduction to the other company?

Well, Ray said, they’re competitors.  Why would his client want to give a competitor an advantage?

What advantage, I asked?  Did his software package improve his client’s quality as a plumber?

Well, no, not really, Ray answered.

Did the package give him an advantage when competing for business?

Sorta, Ray said, in the sense that it made his company more efficient.

Efficient enough to blow his competition out of the water?

No.

If his competition had the same package would it blow Ray’s client out of the water?

No.

So, I asked, what’s the problem?  Give me one good reason why his client wouldn’t recommend to a friend and someone he works closely with something that might help him save time and money if the chances are that that something really isn’t going to hurt him?

Ray couldn’t, of course, come up with a good reason.

He went back, asked for and got the introduction—and eventually a new client

So often when they can’t find them out there naturally, sellers put roadblocks in their way themselves.

Ray was so concerned about getting a negative response that he thought of all kinds of reasons why his client would say ‘no’ instead of why the client would say ‘yes,’ and that predetermined ‘no’ almost cost him a sale.

How about you?  What are the predetermined reasons you can’t pick up the phone and call that great prospect?  What are the predetermined reasons you can’t close that sale?  What are the predetermined reasons you can’t get that job?

Don’t be Ray—don’t defeat yourself before you even try.  A great many of those roadblocks that keep us from success have been put there not by others but by ourselves.  What roadblocks have you created?  Find them and get rid of them.  Life is hard enough without you defeating yourself.

July 21, 2011

Questioning the Value of Questions in the Sales Process

Filed under: attitude,Client Relationships,Communication,sales,Sales Process,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 10:17 am
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I had the honor yesterday of participating in a roundtable discussion organized and presented by Focus.com about the use of questions in the sales process. Moderated by Andy Rudin of Outside Technologies, the panel consisted of some outstanding sales minds:  Dave Brock of Partners in Excellence, Jack Malcolm of Falcon Performance Group, Dan Waldschmidt of Waldschmidt/Arp, and finally, myself, of course.

Our discussion addressed some of the most fundamental myths and misconceptions sellers have about the use of questions in sales.  In fact, we deconstructed the whole idea of questioning as the central aspect of selling.

By all means, all involved agreed that questions are an essential and important aspect of information gathering and rapport building.  Questions help open prospects up so we can uncover new information and help get to core issues and concerns.  Questions can help focus both ourselves and our prospects to dig deeper and look more closely at what’s really going on in a company.

But in the end, questions are only a tool.  They aren’t the be all and end all of our interaction with prospects and clients.

The problem is that some sellers have walked away from their training on questioning feeling that questions are the secret key to success or that in order to be effective sellers they must be ever conscious of asking the “right” question or the “right” kind of question.

That’s simply bull.

Our object with a prospect or client isn’t to ask questions, even though as mentioned above, questions are tremendous tools.  Our object with prospects and clients has to be to communicate—to connect with them in a meaningful way that helps us understand who they are as well as their problems, needs, and wants.

Communication demands far more than an ability to ask questions.  It requires that, as Dan Waldschmidt pointed out, we care—that we care about the prospect, about the issues, about our reasons for doing what we do, about who we are and who we’re dealing with.

Communication demands that we connect on both an intellectual and emotional level.  Communication demands that we go beyond the gathering of information and actually touch the other person’s humanity (as well as our own).

Yes, we did talk about questions and their importance.  But in the end, it was about one human connecting with another, not about how to ask the perfect question.

The real question ends up being why are you asking questions?  Is it to connect and build a bridge to help solve issues for a fellow human—or to get into someone’s wallet?  That, sellers, is the first question that must be answered.

July 16, 2011

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Secret to Sales Success

Filed under: career development,lead generation,prospecting,sales,Sales Failure,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 10:49 am
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A little over one hundred years ago the father of a young 8 year old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon encouraged her to write to a then leading New York newspaper, The Sun, and ask the question she’d just asked him—if there were in fact a Santa Claus, for all of her friends were telling her that he really didn’t exist and she wanted to know if they were correct.

The Sun answered Virginia in one of the most famous editorials ever published—Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.  The reply was a resounding YES, there is a Santa Claus and the writer of the editorial laid out his proof.

Unfortunately, today all too many deny there is a real secret to sales success also.  Like Virginia’s friends, the claim is made that there really isn’t one single thing that if done can guarantee success in sales.  No, they say, you must become a master of every aspect of selling and then you’ll be prepared to become successful.  Oh, sure, they’ll admit, a few here and there appear to succeed by blind luck, but they’re the exception, not the rule.  Forget your silly search for the magic bullet of selling and resign yourself to learning the minutia of sales before seriously turning your eye to becoming truly successful.

Many, many others are all too eager to promote the idea of the sales secret—and to let you know that they are the sole keepers of the great secret that so few have known.  Better yet, they tell you, they’ll be happy to share the secret with you, but since it is such a valuable thing and should only be shared with those who are truly deserving of knowing, they must make sure you are worthy.  But since they really don’t have any other way of discerning who is and who isn’t worthy, they must charge an exorbitant fee to keep the riff-raff and undeserving from attaining it–and since you have the money to acquire it, you must be worthy and deserving of being given the great secret (as soon as your check clears, of course)..

Lucky for you I know this great secret and I’ll give it to you—and it won’t cost you $1,995.  Won’t even cost $995.  Heck, I’m not even going to charge you $9.95.  I’m simply going to give it to you—no charge.

Why in the world would I give such a tremendous secret away for nothing?  Because I know that once learned, the vast majority won’t put it into practice.  You see, the secret is simple, but it is far from easy.

Anyone can take this secret and become a successful seller—just how successful will depend on their commitment to implementing it.

So what is this secret?

Is it a super-duper sales process?  No.

Maybe a super special leads list?  Nope, not that.

How about some special words that will immediately connect with prospects?  Not that either.

Could it be a special super power like a super hero has?   Now we’re getting warm.

The secret is a super power of sorts–one that few are capable of acquiring.

This super power is tough-mindedness.  It’s the ability to out work and out prospect your competitors.  It’s the ability to take the rejection, the ‘no’s’, the frustration of making calls and not reaching anyone, of being stopped dead by a gatekeeper, by having the phone slammed down in your ear, of networking until you feel like you can’t network anymore–and to then do it again and again and again until you’ve reached your goals.

The secret is simple—if you have the determination and commitment to prospect longer and harder than anyone else, you will become successful.

I’ve seen this truth worked out time after time as new sellers enter the field and out work and outperform even the top sellers in their office. They know nothing–but work their tails off and sell like crazy. Unfortunately, many times after they “learn” that they’re not supposed to be having the success that they’re having their production craters. They’ve “learned” how to be average. Sometimes we simply learn the wrong things–such as there isn’t a secret to sales success.

This isn’t to say that all the other things in sales aren’t important.  They are.  You need a great sales process; you need to know how to probe and discover needs and wants; you need to know how to solve issues.  There is a great deal that every professional seller must learn.

But there is still one key to being successful in sales above all others—prospecting.

The better you become at qualifying suspects; the better you become at finding and solving real needs; the better you become at finding and connecting with your quality prospects; the easier success will be and the less time you’ll have to spend prospecting.

That being said, even if you know nothing about sales, have the world’s worst close ratio, have no discretion in who you spend time talking to. and haven’t the slightest idea of the difference between a closed-end and open-end question, if you outwork your competition in prospecting, you will reach a measure of success.

Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t a simple secret to success in selling that alone can make you successful because there is.  It certainly isn’t complicated—but it is hard.  And it can be claimed and implemented by anyone. 

By all means, acquire a great sales process, learn the most sophisticated and effective prospecting strategies you can, learn to become great at identifying and solving prospect issues, learn all you can to make selling easier, but if you aren’t having the success you want, take heart—you now have the secret.

Take it, claim it as yours, implement it, and enjoy the rewards.

And know that even if your competitors know it too, few, if any, will claim it as their own because it simply costs too much for most.

June 22, 2011

Get Rid of Your Seagulls Before They Devour You

Filed under: business,Client Relationships,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 10:34 am
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My wife Debbie and I have an 18 month old grandson, Colton.  Knowing that we’ll soon be watching animated movies with him, we’ve been catching up on them every chance we get.  Not having watched them much in the last twenty years or so, I’m amazed at how many there are—and how good some of them are.

In Finding Nemo, as the action progresses toward Sydney Harbor, we witness a large group of Seagulls fighting for food.  The Seagulls know only one word which they repeat incessantly—“mine.”  Their dialog is a constant stream of “Mine, mine, mine, mine,” as they try to grab and fight for whatever food there might be.  And they’re not the least bit inhibited in how they go about getting it; nor are they concerned about how their actions might be impacting those around them.  Their only concern is for themselves and what’s in it for them.

Do they remind you of anyone?

If you said some salespeople, you’d be right, of course. 

But those aren’t the ones I’m thinking of.

Instead, I’m thinking of a group—hopefully a small group—that virtually every seller in the world knows all too well—some of their prospects, customers, and clients.

We all have them in our pipeline and in our client database.  They bleed us dry with their constant cry of “mine, mine, mine,’ with unreasonable demands and never-ending attempts to get lower and still lower prices.

This small set of prospects and clients take up far more time and energy than they are worth.  Yet most of us dutifully take care of them, even when we know it is to the determent of our other prospects and clients.

What should we be doing with this flock of self-centered Seagulls?

Get rid of them.  Turn them loose and let them suck the blood out of your competition.

There is no rule that says you can’t get rid of prospects and clients.  It’s your sales business; you can keep or get rid of anyone you like, and you must do some culling in order to maintain a healthy business.

If you have Seagulls as clients, get rid of them.  If when you prospect you come across a Seagull, eliminate them from your prospecting list

We all want and need sales, but prospects and clients who only know the word “mine” aren’t going to do anything for you except ultimately cost you business and money.  Shoo them away before they devour you.

May 18, 2011

Guest Article: “Identify and Develop the Competencies that Lead to Success in Sales,” by Sean Conrad

Filed under: career development,sales,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 1:26 pm
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Identify and Develop the Competencies that Lead to Success in Sales
by Sean Conrad

 

One of the questions sales managers often ask themselves is how they can get their entire team to produce like their star performers do.

You might be surprised to know that your employee performance appraisal process can hold a key. You see, most organizations include a competency section on their performance appraisal form. Managers are asked to rate their employees’ performance of core and sometimes job specific competencies, and put development plans in place to address skill gaps. But ask yourself: Are you assessing and developing the right competencies?

Here’s how to use your employee performance appraisal process to develop the competencies that lead to success.

First, don’t just use a canned set of competencies to evaluate your sales team’s performance. Instead, look at your star performers… What makes them successful in your industry and with your customers? What are the qualities, skills and behaviors that give them the edge when it comes to sales? Is it their listening skills? Is it their ability to research companies and prospects to get the background info they need to build rapport and identify needs? Is it their presentation skills, communication skills, persuasion skills, or technical knowledge? Every market and customer set is unique, and may require slightly different sales skills. You need to identify and clearly define the competencies that are demonstrably leading to success in your sales team.

Next, come up with clear definitions for those competencies. What do great, average and poor performance of these competencies look like? Document examples of how these key competencies are used and when they’re important. You’ll need more than a competency name and one sentence description. Provide enough detail so that your sales staff clearly understand the competency and what the various levels of proficiency in it look like. It can be helpful to do this exercise with a small team, and then have your descriptions reviewed by a few members of your sales staff to ensure your descriptions are clear and informative. Your goal is to clearly define and describe the competencies that underpin success.

Then, figure out what training and development activities can help develop these competencies. What book, articles, blogs, conferences or courses zero in on them? Build a list. Make sure you include a variety of learning activities that appeal to various learning styles so there’s something for everyone.

Finally, use these custom defined competencies on your sales team’s performance appraisal forms and regularly evaluate each sales person’s demonstration of them. Where skill gaps are identified, use the learning activities you’ve identified to create development plans for employees. Give your employees ongoing feedback and coach their performance. Track everyone’s progress and performance. Look for improvements in performance to validate the effectiveness of development activities and revise your list as required. Slowly but surely, you’ll build individual and organizational bench-strength in the competencies you’ve identified as critical to your sales team.

By identifying the competencies that contribute to your star performers’ success and using your performance appraisal process to systematically cultivate these in your entire sales staff, you can raise the performance level of your entire sales team.

Sean Conrad is a Certified Human Capital Strategist and Senior Product Analyst at Halogen Software, one of the leading providers of performance appraisal software. For more of his insights on talent management, read his posts on the Halogen Software blog.

May 9, 2011

Register for the 2011 Sales and Marketing Success Conference

Filed under: career development,sales,Sales Resources,sales training,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 8:15 am
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Article first published as ‘http://technorati.com/business/small-business/article/help-japan-and-attend-one-of/ Help Japan and Attend One of the Web Sessions of the 2011 Sales and Marketing Success Conference Beginning Monday, May 9</a> on Technorati.

The 2011 Sales and Marketing Success Conference, a five day web-based conference featuring 35 of the top sales minds in the world begins tomorrow, Monday, May 9 at Noon Eastern as Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling,  starts the conference off with a session titled Selling Successfully to Crazy-Busy People.

Each session will be a quick but highly targeted 30 minutes.

Each day features 7 different sessions, each lead by a different leading light in the world of sales training and coaching.

Just a few of the top names featured during the week are: Linda Richardson, Dave Kurlan, Colleen Francis, Nigel Edelshain, John Doerr, Wendy Weiss, Dave Stein, and many, many more.

Sessions will cover virtually every segment of the sales process, including how to successfully use social media, as well as sessions on leadership and sales management.

You can see the whole list of sessions HERE

And here’s even better news—when you attend any given session you’ll be helping the Red Cross in their mission in Japan.

Jonathan Farrington, the host of the conference says,

Just four weeks after the Magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake and a tsunami which delivered 46ft waves, we learn that the death toll is likely to top 25.000, and recovery is going to take not years, but possibly decades, maybe even a generation, at a cost of at least $250 billion.

This is our opportunity to show that the sales community – so often derided for being shallow and materialistic, amongst other things – actually has a very big heart.

We plan to charge just $5 registration fee per presentation, and we are limited to 1000 guests per session, so places will be allocated on a “first come – first served” basis.

Can I count on your support? Together we can make a worthwhile *contribution to the people of Japan.

That’s right, it only costs $5 to attend any one session and 100% of those dollars will be donated to the Red Cross specifically for Japan.  At the end of each session you’ll be given an opportunity to donate an additional $1, $5, or $10 if you so wish.

Here is a tremendous opportunity to contribute to the efforts in Japan and get great training at the same time. 

What a great deal!!!

I encourage you to seriously consider attending my session Friday, May 13 at noon Eastern time as I’ll be giving you the tools you’ll need to do the detective work to figure out exactly who your client knows that you know you want to be referred to—and knowing that will allow you to both greatly increase the number of referrals you get and, more importantly, get referrals to prospects that you know are great prospects for you.

Here is the registration page for my session.

Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity to help yourself improve your sales while helping those who are in desperate need of help.

April 15, 2011

2011 Sales and Marketing Success Conference—Improve Your Skills and Help Japan at the Same time

Filed under: business,marketing,sales,Sales 2.0,sales training,selling,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 8:48 am
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Get out your calendar and start making plans for the week of Monday, May 9 through Friday, the 13th.  During those five days you’ll have the opportunity to attend up to 35 incredible webinar sessions—7 every single day—presented by 35 of the top sales minds in the world. 

Each session will be a quick but highly targeted 30 minutes.

Who are some of these presenters?  Well, there’s Dave Kurlan, Jill Konrath, Kelley Robertson, Colleen Francis, Linda Richardson, John Doerr, myself, and many others.  Topics covered will range from Sales 101 Isn’t Enough: Advanced Selling Capabilities For Outselling Your Competition to 7 Habits of Highly Effective (Social) Salespeople to Successfully Profiting from the New Buying Cycle to my session on Build a Successful Business on Referrals by Knowing Who Your Client Knows and, of course, many, many more.

You can see the whole list of sessions HERE

And here’s even better news—when you attend any given session you’ll be helping the Red Cross in their mission in Japan.

Jonathan Farrington, the host of the conference says,

Just four weeks after the Magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake and a tsunami which delivered 46ft waves, we learn that the death toll is likely to top 25.000, and recovery is going to take not years, but possibly decades, maybe even a generation, at a cost of at least $250 billion.

This is our opportunity to show that the sales community – so often derided for being shallow and materialistic, amongst other things – actually has a very big heart.

We plan to charge just $5 registration fee per presentation, and we are limited to 1000 guests per session, so places will be allocated on a “first come – first served” basis.

Can I count on your support? Together we can make a worthwhile *contribution to the people of Japan.

That’s right, it only costs $5 to attend any one session and 100% of those dollars will be donated to the Red Cross specifically for Japan.  At the end of each session you’ll be given an opportunity to donate an additional $1, $5, or $10 if you so wish.

Here is a tremendous opportunity to contribute to the efforts in Japan and get great training at the same time. 

What a great deal!!!

I encourage you to seriously consider attending my session Friday, May 13 at noon Eastern time as I’ll be giving you the tools you’ll need to do the detective work to figure out exactly who your client knows that you know you want to be referred to—and knowing that will allow you to both greatly increase the number of referrals you get and, more importantly, get referrals to prospects that you know are great prospects for you.

Here is the registration page for my session.

Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity to help yourself improve your sales while helping those who are in desperate need of help.

February 26, 2011

Guest Article: “How to Set Goals That Will Excite You,” by Daniel M Wood

Filed under: goals,success — Paul McCord @ 10:10 am
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How to Set Goals That Will Excite You
by Daniel M Wood 

Anyone will tell you that setting goals is required for success.

“If you do not know what you want, you won’t have a reason to go after it.”
Your motivation stands in direct relation to your goals.  If you do not know why you are working, there is no reason to work hard.

This is the first thing I teach new employees at our company.
To set meaningful goals that motivates them to work hard and achieve results.
They do not have to share their goals with me, the important thing is that they set them and use them.

The below method of setting goals has helped many improve their results, their motivation and to find a better balance in their lives.
What is difficult is knowing if the goal is one you feel is worthwhile or if it is one someone else thinks is worthwhile. 

A goal someone else thinks you should set, won’t help you

Listen to yourself
If a goal you set for yourself in the future makes you feel happy and motivated now, it is a good goal. If it doesn’t do anything for you or if it makes you feel stressed and anxious, you are aiming for failure. The goal isn’t one you really want and care about and therefore you won’t be able to complete it. 

A fatal mistake
I set a goal for myself when I was 14 years old to be financially independent and play baseball all day long. This goal worked for me for a long time, it was a source of motivation. 

But one day I started noticing that I wanted something else, I updated my goal to fit my new reality, I still have a goal of being financially independent, but I do not want to only play baseball. I will now be helping people, making a difference, with the freedoms financial independence gives me.

Set goals that empower you
The whole point of goal setting is to become more motivated. To want to do more to accomplish your goals, to try and find opportunities that you otherwise wouldn’t. If you don’t care about the goal, you won’t lift a finger to complete it.

4 Steps of goal setting
1.    Think about what you want in the major areas of your life. Family, Health, Career and Finance.

2.    Write down your goals on a piece of paper in the positive present tense, as if you already have completed them.

3.    Set a deadline for each goal

4.    Read your goals, listen to yourself, what do you feel? Do you feel motivated to start working on your goals at once? Are you motivated to take action?
If not the goal isn’t worth your time. Go back and set one you really want.

Conclusion
If you want to succeed, in any aspect of your life, you need to set goals.
You need to give yourself reasons to go the extra mile.

Start today by setting goals that motivate and inspire you to perform.

Daniel M. Wood writes the Lookingtobusiness.com blog.  He writes about Sales Technique, Motivation and Success

 

February 22, 2011

Process: Can Success Really Be Just Mechanical?

Filed under: attitude,career development,motivation,sales,Sales Process,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 9:33 am
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Today you hear some version of the same message almost everywhere you turn:

“What makes a company successful is process . . . . [successful companies] find a formula that works.”

“You simply cannot be successful in complex sales unless you have a solid process.  A proven process is more important than anything and everything else.”

“If you want to be successful, you must concentrate on developing an effective sales process that produces the results you want because that IS the secret of success.”

“Top producers have a repeatable process.  Everyone else has only unfounded hope.”

All of the above were picked from things I have read in just the past week.  And these are far from the only ones, I could go on and on with statements in the same vein from recent articles and forum discussions. 

Process is the concept du jour. 

Process=Success

No process=Fail 

Everyone’s on the bandwagon promoting the current hot topic.

Now, don’t me wrong, I’m a firm believer in process.  I have a process for almost everything I do and I’m a strong promoter of process.  I’ve written numerous articles and two books that are centered on process.  I firmly believe that a proven, effective, repeatable process is one of the foundations to a successful sales career or a successful business.

I don’t, however, think it is the most important ingredient or the one that determines whether or not one is successful.

Important, yes.  Absolutely, positively, 100% critical?  No, not really.

Success in sales or business is far more than simply turning the right mechanical knobs or punching the right buttons.

Don’t we wish it were that easy?  Simply create a formula that seems to work and success is guaranteed.

We can all think of companies who have a formula that works and appears to be the cornerstone of their success.  Let’s take three examples that we all know: McDonald’s, Disney, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  I’m taking these because they are familiar to everyone and the real reason for their success is easy to identify.  We could take examples from any industry and any selling situation, but these three are very simple, straightforward examples of where the cornerstone of success for them lay.  In each instance their business formula helped, but it wasn’t the thing that exploded these companies.

What made McDonald’s, McDonald’s?  Was it Ronald or the Hamburglar?  Not at all.  Was it the machine like efficiency demanded of each franchise and the requirement that the food taste exactly the same no matter what franchise one visited?  No, that came later. 

McDonald’s success lay in the heart and soul of Ray Kroc.  Kroc was a never tiring evangelist for McDonald’s.  He lived and breathed McDonald’s.  In a sense, Kroc forced McDonald’s success because he wouldn’t settle for anything less. 

McDonald’s successful formula was built and perfected over time.  Kroc’s drive and determination gave him the time needed to refine and improve the system that the original founders of the McDonald’s concept had begun to devise.  It took Kroc three years and a bunch of money to develop his successful process—a process that is still being perfected today.  If Ray Kroc hadn’t had the passion to demand success, there wouldn’t be a McDonald’s, at least not as we know it today.

In the same manner, Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto didn’t create Disney.  Disney was more a creation of Walt Disney’s drive and passion than Mickey’s popularity.  Long before Mickey was born, Walt had to overcome lost contracts, a former buyer of his cartoons stealing his entire staff of artists save one and his at that time one original cartoon character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.  Oswald might have been lucky, but Walt wasn’t.  Most would have folded their tent and given up after having everything they’d built torn down—especially by someone they had worked with and trusted.

But like Kroc, Walt had passion and unlimited drive.  He believed in himself and he believed that success was right around the corner—if he just continued to sell his passion.  His dedication and drive paid off.  Shortly after losing his staff and Oswald, he found Mickey.  Although Mickey was a success, he still wasn’t the success formula that “made” Disney—Mickey gave Walt the money and time necessary to find his ultimate mega success formula which was turning cartoons into feature length animated movies and the spinoffs from them that continue to this day.

Likewise, Colonel Harland Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s success isn’t due to a business formula but rather to a man who believed so passionately in his product and his vision that retired and broke, he hit the road to sell his chicken formula to cafes and restaurants across the country—and his share if they used his secret recipe?  A nickel for every chicken they sold using it.  It’s hard to make a living at a nickel a chicken—even in 1955.

Process is a tool for a salesperson just as a paintbrush is a tool for an artist.  Put a paintbrush in the hands of an artist with the passion and drive of a Leonardo and it becomes an instrument to create beauty; put it in the hands of someone one who is only looking to make a buck and it is nothing more than a tool used to paint a wall.

The same is true with sales.  Put an effective process in the hands of someone with the passion and drive of Harland Sanders and it becomes an instrument for changing lives; put it in the hands of someone who is disconnected and only interested in making money and it becomes nothing more than a way to make a sale every once in awhile.

By all means, find a predictable and effective process; it will help you make sales.  If you want success, you must marry that process to deep, heartfelt passion and drive because whether we like it or not, success isn’t mechanical; success is nothing more than the outward expression of one’s passion, drive, and vision.

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