Blueprint For Prosperity
Blueprint For Prosperity
Table of Contents
Five ESSENTIAL Strategies
Aggressive Diversity....page 5 Profit Margin Protection......page 6 Focus on Quality, not (just) Quantity....page 7 Return to Salesmanship.....page 8 Truly Earning Your Success..page 8
Appendix
Managing the Sales Process...page 27
Dateline: Early 2010 Introduction There is some general lifting of anxiety and malaise, isnt there? An idea that we have seen the economic abyss but backed away, and that there are better times ahead. And its good to feel some of that optimism. But lets not get carried away. There is a NEW ECONOMY with new demands on business slowly developing, which I write about in-depth in my newest books*, but theres a very, very bumpy road leading there. Most of the most critical fundamentals remain poor. Unemployment plus significant under-employment ie. reduced hours, movement to lesser paying jobs, etc. tops 17% nationwide, is as high as 25% in some areas, and will top 20% nationwide this year. This is a stiff wind to be building businesses or selling against, and its negative strength should not be under-estimated. The death by starvation of the weak and wimpy business owners is far from over. This Report is for those determined to do whatever it takes, to step over their rotting corpses, and prosper, no matter what. That requires a particularly tough-minded approach. It has nothing to do with positive (or negative) thinking or optimism (or pessimism), only with doing what is needed.
*My newest books are No B.S. Business Success For The New Economy and No B.S. Sales Success For The New Economy, available at all booksellers or via www.NoBSBooks.com
most reliable media) to having it responsible for nearly 20% of all new customer acquisition. (They now mail 10-million pieces a year). This transformation was prudent, as their original means of acquiring customers stalled, went flat, and has been delivering diminishing returns throughout 2009. They were ahead of the problem instead of having to chase it. The intelligent, responsible entrepreneur, then, will be actively, aggressively engaged with this strategy in three ways: 1: Educating himself, through voracious reading, seeking and processing information, networking, etc. on marketing methods and media that go beyond the one to several he presently relies on, and that he is unfamiliar with. 2: Aggressively diversifying the ways he obtains customers this diversification, his number one priority of this moment, not a back-burnered, well-get-around-to-it C-list item. 3: Escaping single-category dependence. If your marketing is all online, further diversification online does nothing to mitigate your overall vulnerability and weakness; if your marketing is all offline, further diversification offline does nothing to mitigate your overall vulnerability and weakness.
deterioration, to attempt rescue via radical changes in their positioning, advertising and marketing. Both were once healthy, thriving leaders in their fields, destroyed from within by yielding to the temptation of quick n easy fix of slumping sales via simplistic discount price/offer advertising. The problem with this path is it leads downhill. It requires better and better and better offers (thus trading away more and more and more profit). Soon, the business is at cliffs edge, needing to give away all the profit to make a sale. Along the way, they abandon one media and means of getting customers after another as too expensive, until they have only one or two means left for their use. They are like the Three Stooges as painters, painting themselves into a smaller and smaller and smaller corner until paralyzed. This, you must not do. And if on this path, you must reverse direction, no matter the short-term pain. And you must take personal responsibility for this. If you blame it on competitors discounting, on the economy, on your clientele, on your geography, on anything but your own lack of creativity, determination, and acquisition and use of superior marketing, you give up all control over your fortunes. Among my No B.S. principles, these: control equals responsibility and responsibility equals control; and anybody adept at making excuses is usually inept at making money.
some time. Now, prosperous businesses require and will revolve around solid salesmanship. That means different things in different businesses. But it is a new reality for every business. You have to decide how it applies to yours. Chapter 30, from my book No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits is reprinted in Appendix A of this Report, as a courtesy. It directly addresses the managing of the sales process within a business. My new book No B.S. Sales Success For The New Economy discusses the actual strategies, tactics and skills of selling.
jettisoning of vendors and providers, and narrowing spending from many in a category to few in a category, is a fast growing trend. If the concepts just mentioned here category of one; complex value; unique relevance are not familiar to you, thats reason to dedicate time, effort and money to acquiring information, direction and advice from bona-fide leaders in progressive marketing (like me!). Income improvement is nearly always preceded by and product of personal and professional development. If you attempt prospering in the present conditions with yesterdays methods and know-how, youre in trouble. The question: what do you know today that you didnt know yesterday? has never been more important.
BONUS Section
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stop building hospital wings and donating to research groups. Gee, if the top 10% just cut back on their charitable giving a little, how many jobs disappear from the non-profit sector, how many food banks and theaters and zoos and community centers and what-have-yous cut back services and programs? Shuttle buses for seniors stop, food deliveries to shut-ins stop, free medical clinics shutter? (4): Wealthy individuals are an important source of venture capital funds invested in start-up companies. Robust start-up of new businesses is essential just to replace the dying, antiquated industrial businesses, the outsourcing of jobs overseas. If we evil rich stop putting our money at risk, even for a little while, the total number of available jobs shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. Go count up the number of jobs now provided by businesses large and small that didnt even exist.their entire categories didnt exist 10 years ago. Stop that creation and watch the starvation. So it is the season of giving thanks, and Im a very, very thankful guy. Relative, specifically, to prosperity, there is my place of birth, arguably good luck. After that, discoveries Ive made and opportunities that I have chosen; relationships I have fostered; my own initiative, ingenuity and persistence. Thus, my own wealth. But I am also thankful for the wealth of all those far, far richer than I, for were it not for their spending, much on obscenely over-priced indulgences and wretched excess, as well as their investments motivated by their desire to own boats and planes and multi-million dollar beach cottages, the opportunities Ive pursued would likely have dried up and disappeared long before I got to them. There are no publishers who might publish my books, companies who might pay me to speak, clients who might pay me to write owned by po folk. As an entrepreneur willing to risk money, invest years of burning-of-midnight-oil-while-others-sleep, learn high level skills, struggle, work, and ultimately achieve a far-above-par lifestyle, status and security, you, of course, have much to be thankful for. But dont lose sight of the fact that the entire country and even the globe ought to give thanks that you exist and are willing to do all those things the overwhelming majority are not at all willing to do. Without You, Me and Us, They are in big, big, big trouble. And why is this so important to keep in your mind? Because pride is power. Self-respect precedes respect from any marketplace. A sense of worth based on your own exceptionally productive contributions (not a sense of entitlement based on nothing) is pre-requisite for prosperity. Renegade Millionaires are defiantly, unwaveringly proud of who they are, what they do, and what they mean to society. This is their license to go out and collect all that they can by their own creation. You need that license but there is no license bureau to go get it from. You must issue it to yourself.
(Above based in part on one of my political columns published online at BusinessAndMedia.org) REPRINTED FROM: NOV. 09 NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER Renegade Millionaire/Back Page
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So, not very long ago, I had to rather forcibly end a business relationship, a very profitable business relationship, for a reason that other person could not understand and probably never will: his expressed personal philosophy was compatible with mine but his true personal philosophy revealed by his behavior was not. Part of my personal philosophy is that you have to get away and stay away from people of incompatible and incorrect and harmful personal philosophies, and go out of your way to associate only with people of compatible, correct and constructive personal philosophies. In discussing this with someone recently, he rather contemptuously said, so you think youre right and everybody else is wrong, huh!?! and I said: not everybody. This is why you need a well thought out personal philosophy: because you need to be certain you are right. No, not right about every idea, strategy, tactic, not those sorts of things. That sort of arrogance is married to stupidity and breeds disaster. But right about the underlying foundation on which you build. Otherwise, how can you determine who or what is wrong for you? Ill tell you a little secret. When I listen to people be it a man who would be President of this country or partner in a company of my conception or client Ill have more than a passing relationship with or friend (not acquaintance) or model I might study I listen for clues to their personal philosophy. When I watch people, when I work with people, I watch for clues to their personal behavior. When I read what people write, I search for clues to their personal philosophy. This is the most important thing to discern. Better you could just ask, but you cant trust verbal answers. When I mis-judge this, I suffer, and I do mis-judge, so I work very hard at spotting those clues. I do not treat people equally. In the Ruthless Management book, I tell of coach Jimmy Johnson describing the profound inequality of his management style. Even Jesus did not treat people equally. A woman said: well, I believe in treating all people equally. Really? I asked: Do you sleep with and cook breakfast for your neighbors husband? I asked: When you buy a lottery ticket, do you pray for every one of the ten million ticket buyers to win an equal share of the pot, to each win one dollar? I dont believe in equality. Its not part of my personal philosophy. Nobody else really believes in it either if they are honest about it or think about it, and these days, if you think twice, youre a genius. I believe in equal opportunity to rise above unequal circumstances in order to make yourself a person of superior capabilities and earn extraordinary rewards. I acknowledge the need for a social safety net for those who cant, even to a minimal degree, for those who wont. But I certainly dont believe that our individual salvation will come from collective salvation; quite the opposite. Whats really great about personal philosophy is that you have equal opportunity to choose yours. Not so in every country, by the way. In the countries most committed to collectivism rather than individualism, those enforcing the collectivism and it is such a flawed and failed philosophy it must be enforced prohibit having and punish expressing personal philosophy. But probably where you live, if youre reading this blog, you do have freedom to choose, develop and act out your own personal philosophy. Be grateful you do, dont squander the opportunity, and be very reluctant to permit anyone to take it away from you, however incrementally.
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Appendix
For more information about this and Dans other No BS Book Titles, visit NoBSBooks.com
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In most businesses, sadly, selling is an act, not a process. The mistakes made here are many. Everything is separated and isolated. Advertising. Marketing. They deliver a prospect to Sales, where, typically, the entire outcome is placed in the hands of very fallible Salespeople permitted to freelance at will, committing random acts of Selling. Afterward, the customer is dumped off to Operations, where the promises made may or may not be fulfilled. Examine just about any business with more than one person doing the selling and youll find each salesperson doing things differently than the others. Over in accounting, everybodys using the very same bookkeeping ledgers and 2+2 = 4, period. But in sales, for some crazy rationale, everybodys allowed to wing it. If you want maximum profits, youll figure out what the best sales presentation is and everybody will use it. You need a Program for selling that all your salespeople comply with and use. Wrapped around the human salespersons adhering to your Program, you need a complete system for selling, for moving each prospect neatly along a path or, as the marketing wiz behind Blu-Blockers and author of a terrific sales and marketing book Triggers, Joe Sugarman calls it, a greased chute that connects advertising to marketing to selling, that qualifies and prepares prospects to buy before they consume the time and talent of your salespeople, and that both supports and helps control the efforts of the salespeople. One of the best quotes about all this is from a highly respected sales trainer, David Sandler, founder of the Sandler Selling System now with trainers and offices nationwide. David said: If you dont have a system for selling, you are at the mercy of the customers system for buying. I would add: for not buying. Such a system has to be built macro and micro. The macro parts link all your advertising, marketing, publicity, sales and operations pieces together with common themes, a clearly understood covenant with customers, and, as I said, a process for moving the customer smoothly along the path, from first expression of interest to completed purchase. Think of this as an exercise in control over the prospect and the process. The micro parts have to do with all of the human interaction between the prospect and receptionists, clerks and, most of all, sales people. Think of it as an exercise in control over the actual selling and the people doing the selling. Theres a lot of nonsense spewed about leaving salespeople to their own devices to preserve spontaneity, encourage creativity, and so on. Its all b.s. Selling is a scientific and mechanical process, not something you should make up as you go along. The person widely judged as Americas #1 Sales Trainer, Tom Hopkins, and I are both strong advocates of scripts. As a direct-response copywriter paid upwards from $50,000.00 plus royalties to write advertisements, sales letters and web sites, I can assure you that choices of words, language matters. What I do in writing is salesmanship in print. If it matters there, it matters in salesmanship live too. But live not only do words chosen, scripted and used matter, so does appearance, dress, physical movement and body language, the selling environment, the actual movement of the
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prospect from place to place, seating choices, props used and much more. My colleague Sydney Biddle Barrows and I call this Sales Choreography. We believe that everything should be choreographed, from the first step the prospect takes into the selling environment, moment by moment, movement by movement, sentence by sentence. Theres quite a bit of resistance to this idea, of course, because it requires a lot of thought, discipline and practice by the salespeople and other staff members and a lot of supervisory enforcement by management. I can assure you that, for the few who embrace it, the pay-off is enormous. Incidentally, I push my readers, newsletter subscribers, coaching members and clients toward a whole approach. Most of my work has to do with everything leading up to the sale. I devise the systems as well as write the copy and teach business owners how to do it for themselves that gets ideal prospects to raise their hands, step forward and step onto the path constructed to then move them through qualifying and preparation, so by the time they face a salesperson and/or a buying decision, they view the salesperson as an expert and trusted advisor, the company as unique, and are pre-disposed to do business with them. I have consultants and service providers I recommend if intense work on driving traffic online to web sites or renting mailing lists or the handling of inbound calls or software systems to manage lead flow (see next Chapter) is needed. At the point that the prospect begins engaging humans, and will be face to face with staff and salespeople, there are resources and a tele-coaching program on Sales Design that Ive developed with Sydney Biddle Barrows, and Sydney does go on-site as well. Sales Design is about mapping out step-by-step-by-step everything that is to occur with and be said to the prospect, every if-hesays-this, you-say-that movement forward toward purchase.
The Biggest Improvement You Can Make As Manager And As Sales Manager: Stop Accepting Less Than You Should Get
If you get nothing else from this book, do nothing else as a result of this book, you ought to at least take a fresh, analytical, tough-minded look at what you are getting from your people as a whole and individually for the money you are spending. Most business owners accept shockingly poor sales results as if they make sense. In the hearing aid industry, the close rate people who come to the store, get a hearing test, and get a full sales presentation ranges from as poor as 25% to as good as 40%. 60 to 75 out of every 100 people who come in suffering from hearing difficulties and in need of a hearing aid do NOT buy! How can anyone managing this business accept such a thing? In the automobile business, roughly 20% of the people who come into a showroom buy a car there. 80 of the 100 left their homes, got in their cars, drove across town to the car dealership, braved the selling environment, looked at, asked questions about, even test drove cars that interested them but then were not sold a car. To me, incredible. Awful. Embarrassing. Yet car sales managers confronted about this shrug and tell me Thats about right. No. It isnt. In a dental practice, chiropractic practice or the like, patients coming in for consultation and exam are then, subsequently, given a sales presentation. Here I see wildly differing results. One doctor will close 70%, another a pathetic 30%. Why the difference? In the last comparable, completely controlled selling environment I managed myself, we brought doctors into a small meeting of several hours, to group-sell a product. We had one employee doing these meetings in about 25 cities a month and I did them in 5 a month. In three years, his close rate was never never below 85%. Mine hovered at 80%. Most of the time, he closed all but one person, called him the next day and closed him after the fact. I have been told by many others trying to replicate this model or with experience in this type of selling that such numbers are impossible and that he and I must be freaks of nature. Theyre wrong. Not only are such results possible, they should be expected, normal and customary. We achieved them for reasons anyone can replicate in any business: macro, we had a system delivering
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interested, qualified, prepared prospects to our selling environment; micro, we had a precision crafted presentation delivered perfectly. If people come to buy, they ALL should buy. If thats not happening, you should be wracking your brain to figure out what you are doing wrong.
The Human Factor: If You Are Going To Have Salespeople In Your Employ. Pick Carefully and Manage Tough
Its not just Can they sell? Its Will they sell?, and Will they sell here?. I learned this from a top sales management consultant, Bill Brooks, and it is profound. Its not just limited to salespeople either it really applies to every type of employee in every type of job. Reality is, somebody who might be a good employee at Company A may be a lousy employee in the same job at Company B. This is what makes hiring by resume so flawed. But how can this be? After all, auto sales is auto sales, so a guy who was successful at the Cadillac dealer in Chicago ought to succeed at the Cadillac dealership in Cleveland, or the guy who was successful at the Cadillac dealership in Chicago should thrive at the Lexus dealership in Chicago. Or the person who was a super receptionist at one financial planners office will surely be just as super at another financial planners office, right? Wrong. Different people flourish or flunk in different environments. Lets start back at the first question. Can he sell? If you are hiring experienced salespeople, then you can answer this question with their experience to date, checking their references, seeing proof of their commissions earned. If you are hiring inexperienced people and making them into salespeople, then you might rely on much more in-depth interviews including discussing what they think is the right thing to do in different selling situations. You might utilize an aptitude test purchased from one of the many companies that provide assessment tests. And youll be looking for non-sales experience that evidences the attitudes necessary for success in selling. For example, one client of mine with a very successful sales organization, who only hires people with no prior selling experience, asks Have you been successful in anything? and have you struggled and found something so difficult you almost quit but then stuck with it and succeeded?. The second question. Will he sell? Again, if recruiting experienced salespeople, you can look into their historical track record. If they had peaks and slumps and inconsistent results where they were, youd need a good reason to believe they arent going to import their inconsistency into your business. If they increased their sales and earnings year to year, you could hope for that same pattern in your employ. If they stagnated, youd need good reason to expect otherwise. Sometimes just the change of scenery will revitalize a bored or complacent experienced pro, but that will usually be brief. If he got complacent there, hell get complacent here. In will he sell?, youre trying to solve the mystery of motivation and thats not easy. But self-motivation leaves clues. The most recent sales book hes read, most recent sales seminar hes been to, most interesting technique hes introduced to his repertoire in the past year. What he can tell you about his goals. If hiring inexperienced people for sales, again, you have no specific history to consider, but you do have non-specific history, basically the persons whole story. Did they work two jobs to get through school or did mommy pay their way? Have they worked in any job dealing with the public, like waiting tables? Are they really interested in a sales career or settling for it because they cant find what they want? if interested, theyll already be reading books, listening to CDs, educating and preparing themselves.
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The third question is the trickiest. Just because he can and will sell does not mean hell excel at selling in your employ. Your company culture may be very different than ones hes previously experienced. You may require him to present things in a way he feels is deceptive, dishonest or unethical, or he may feel hamstrung and neutered by the ethical restraints you impose on the way he presents things. You may have a better defined Program you insist be complied with than his prior employers, and he may welcome the organization and discipline, or he may chafe at it. These matters need to be explored in lengthy, frank and detailed discussions once you get serious about a candidate. There is no point in hiring a sales professional without full disclosure of your Program and how tough you are about compliance with it.
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