Books for Building and Growing Successful Businesses

Books for Building and Growing Successful Businesses

• The E-Myth Revisited – Michael Gerber (Business strategy)
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven Covey (Sales/Management)
• The Game of Work – Chuck Coonradt (Sales Management)
• The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team – Pat Lencioni (Leadership)
• How to Become a Great Boss: The Rules for Getting and Keeping the Best Employees – Jeffery Fox (Management, Leadership)
• Everyone’s A Coach – Don Shula & Ken Blanchard (Sales Management, Leadership)
• Execution – Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan (Leadership)
• How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie (Sales, Leadership)
• Guerrilla Marketing Excellence – Jay Conrad Levinson (Marketing)
• 21 Things I Wish My Broker had Told Me: Practical Advice for New Real Estate
• Professionals – Frank Cook (General Real Estate)
• The Millionaire Real Estate Agent – Gary Keller (General Real Estate)

Effective Client Business Reviews

Business Reviews

Strategic objective - It is OK to tell your client what your objective is...if you want to insulate them, tell them, if you want a bigger share of their pie, tell them... this will help you:

• Insulating Your Best Clients from Competitors
• Growing Your Share of a Low Revenue Client

Tactics and guidelines
Do client business reveiws no less than annually, but ask your best clients if they would like them more often; make it a scheduled meeting or call, not part of a file update or routine visit
Seek to understand their business and their goals, ask how you can help.

Service review - Ask and understand their perception of your company’s and your customer service (this information helps you sell to new clients)

Include 5 simple questions

1. What are your goals this year and how do see me helping you to achieve them?
2. What one thing can I improve or refine? (Probe for an answer if they decline; once you get one, makes sure to ask “is there anything else?”)
3. How much of your current directable business would you say you send my way? Is there a way for me to earn a larger percent this year?
4. Would you be willing to help me grow my business this year? (When they say yes, and they will, tell them that you would like at least 1 referral per month; someone who is either experienced in the business or a seriously promising newcomer. Tell them exactly what you want.)
5. Can I count on you to talk to me first, if you ever consider taking your business somewhere else?

Business reviews have been extremely powerful rention and sales tools in my sales and marketing career and would love to hear how you're using them to deepen your relationships with your clients.

Happy Selling!

Prioritizing your accounts...

As a sales person I’m always waging the classic war against time. Since there are only 24 hours in a day, and I’m only willing to work during my waking hours, I have to be smart about where I allocate that time. This is especially important for those of us who are paid on performance – if where we spend our time doesn’t pay, we don’t get paid.

Sound familiar? In another context we need to look at how we prioritize our account to make sure we’re maximizing our return on our time invested (ROTI)

Take a look at your entire client list and rank them into the following catagories
A - Low maintenance/high revenue (Coddle and protect, leverage for referrals)
B - Low maintenance/low revenue (Grow share)
C - Low or high maintenance/low revenue (low producer) - Dump them or resist any time investment whatsoever
D - High maintenance/high revenue (Selectively dump/recruit layers from leadership)
E - High maintenance/low revenue - Dump them


Don’t forget to assessing “aggravation” factor...is it worth it (think of all the mental and physical energy exerted, how can you better spend that time) In some cases it’s worth “firing” a client that is not yielding a return. Get focused and spend "appropriate" amounts of time with each client segement. Work with A's, B's, and D's and dump your C's and E's.

Happy Selling!

War against time...

As a sales person I’m always waging the classic war against time. Since there are only 24 hours in a day, and I’m only willing to work during my waking hours, I have to be smart about where I allocate that time. This is especially important for those of us who are paid on performance – if where we spend our time doesn’t pay, we don’t get paid.

I know that I spend my time in essentially three different areas:

1. Administrative work (expense reports, tracking results, planning, attending meetings – I never let this take more that 15% of my time)
2. Maintaining my current clients (where I spend a majority of my time - 60%)
3. Prospecting (purposefully going after new business – the rest, 35% or so)
   

Administrative work I must do or I’d get fired eventually for not doing it.
Client Maintenance I will never forget since those are the people I like (usually) and they pay my bills.
Prospecting… Ah there’s the trick, it’s the most elusive time of all, spending it purposefully focused on getting new business. It’s the first time that goes out the window in lieu of a client need or at the drop of a hat. It’s talking to people that I don’t currently do business with – let’s be honest, I’d much rather talk to my favorite clients over someone whom I don’t know and may tell me to got lost.

If I don’t focus my time on prospecting I’m lost, I’m beholden to where-ever the market takes my current clients – oh and by the way, it’s a fact that current clients are always a dwindling species (they move, they cheat, they get unsatisfied with service, they don’t forget mistakes, etc…).

Take control of your business, take control of your time by guarding your prospecting time with your life… you’re future paychecks certainly depend on it.

Next I’ll talk about how to effectively work with your clients and how to prioritize accounts and how to do business reviews to check in and leverage your best relationships.

The Key to Sales Success - Listening

The Key to Sales Success
By Brian Tracy

A vital key to sales success is listening

Learn to Listen Well
A vital key to sales success is listening. The ability to listen well is absolutely indispensable for success in all human relationships. The ability to be a good listener in a sales conversation is the foundation of the new model of selling. It leads to easier sales, higher earnings and greater enjoyment from the sales profession.

Being A Good Talker is Not Enough
Many salespeople have been brought up with the idea that, in order to be good at your profession, you must be a glad-hander and a good talker. You have even heard people say, "You have the 'gift of the gab'; you should be in sales!"

Focus On the Other Person
Nothing could be further from the truth. As many as seventy five percent of all top salespeople are defined as introverts on psychological tests. They are very easy going and other-centered. They would much rather listen than talk. They are very interested in the thoughts and feelings of other people and they are quite comfortable sitting and listening to their prospects. They would much rather listen than talk in a sales situation. Poor salespeople dominate the talking, but top salespeople dominate the listening.

Practice "White Magic" With Everyone
Listening has even been called "white magic." It is too rarely engaged in by business people. When a salesperson develops a reputation for being an excellent listener, prospects and customers feel comfortable and secure in his or her presence. They buy more readily, and more often.

Practice the 70/30 Rule
You've heard it said that God gave man two ears and one mouth, and he is supposed to use them in that proportion.Top salespeople practice the "70/30 rule." They talk and ask questions 30 percent or less of the time while they listen intently to their customers 70 percent or more of the time. They use their ears and mouth in the right ratio.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

1. First, resolve today that, from now on, you are going to dominate the listening in every sales conversation. Become comfortable with silence.
2. Second, practice the 70/30 rule in every sales conversation. Listen 70% of the time and only talk and ask questions 30% of the time.

Wise words by Brian Tracy...

Why you can’t live without a 90 day sales plan…

Why you can’t live without a 90 day sales plan…

It’s true. Every top producing rep I talk to has in some way shape or form a 90 day plan that outlines a couple of very key things. We’ll get into those in a minute.

Sales Manager / Profit Center Manager:
“Why 90 days, when I have to do a budget for the whole year?”

Simple – creating a budget is a critically important for the health of a business and budgets are typically designed to hit an over all expense number subtracted from an over all revenue number to give you an over all profit number. We’re then asked as managers to come up with metrics of opened orders and closed orders to “figure out” the revenue on a monthly basis. This is absolutely reasonable if you just stick with the big picture and use it as a management tool to ENABLE your sales reps to plan for themselves quarterly while allowing them to adjust for seasonal and market conditions.

Sales Rep:
“Why do I have to plan if my boss has already done the budget?"

Budgets and 90 day sales plans are two entirely different things that sometimes get lumped together. In simplified terms; budgets for our business or sales team project where revenue and expenses will be and how we’re allocating each to hit a profitability number (basically why we’re in business). 90 day sales plans identify both business metrics that an individual wants to hit in the next 90 days AS WELL AS what that individual will do to get there.

Function:
The function of a 90 day sales plan is for a rep to clearly articulate what results they want (I work backwards from how much commission I want to make this year, break it down to quarters, then figure out how many open deals I need based on my book of business – see the post that more clearly explains how to do that…) AND to help that rep define the activities that he or she knows can bring them results.

Here are some examples for both results and activities:

Results

• Open Orders
• Closed Orders
• Revenue
• Market-share
• Commission

Activities

• Asking for referrals
• Face to face appointments with prospects
• Business review meetings with customers
• Asking for orders
• Conversations with prospects

As sales or marketing reps we should be diligent about creating a 90 day plan every quarter, and commit to tracking what’s working and what’s not working so we can focus on DOING the things we know and have directly experienced in getting us new customers or more revenue. Commit to a minimum activity for each week, because at the end of the day – it’s the ACTIVITY that gets you the results, not just saying I want the results to happen.

By being diligent in creating a 90 day plan and keeping track of your activities, you’ll emulate the top producers both inside and outside our industry. Visit our RightNow eStore for a free download of the template of the 90 day sales plan we use in the real estate services industry. It is provided as a free Excel download, with permission to modify and use.
http://www.rightnowconsulting.com/store/index.php?p=catalog&parent=4&pg=1

Happy Selling!

Do you have a Sales Process?

Ask yourself this question: "How would I describe the process I use to develop a prospect into a client in a step by step manner?". Most marketing and sales reps I ask this question of have vague answers to this question and in many cases - top sales reps do have a process that they haven't clearly defined for themselves.


My position is simple: If you have a sales process, the process alone will help you win more business. Having a process allows you as a rep, sales manager, or president of a company clearly define what activities are required to move a prospect through the sales cycle. Once that is done you just have to commit to doing those activities that you know yeild results.

Here is the sales process I use in our industry - although it relates outside our business as well.

We're creating a set of "Audio Boosts" in the next few months that will delve into each step of this process more indepth and will be available at our website - the link is also to your right.

Basically, imagine $$$ at the top of this pyramid and the foundation which it sits is your 90-day sales plan (see previous post to see what that means). You will work your prospects step by step hitting each milestone along the way until you've reached the top.

A sales process in itself is not rocket science. Sticking to one and holding yourself accountable to activities that help a majority of your prospects move through the process is where great sales people distiguish themselves. If you have a need get a coach, leverage your sales manager and above all, have fun doing this!

Happy selling...