Sick of working too many hours for too few results? In this podcast, business growth expert David Blaise discusses three specific ways you can make your working hours produce more.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Today I am conducting 4 live training sessions at the ASI Show in Chicago, so if you are at the show, be sure to stop by and say hello. Attend one or more of my live training sessions and then be sure to stop by our booth (number 1641 on the show floor) tomorrow, July 12th or Thursday July 13th. Mention this podcast and get a free copy of my audio program “How to Beat Websites, Local Competitors and Price-Cutters.” Again, that’s booth #1641 in Chicago.
A quick shout-out to long time Top Secrets clients Kirby Hasseman and Sam Kabert. Sam was interviewed recently on Kirby’s “Delivering Marketing Joy” podcast, and Sam has put out a podcast of his own, it’s called “What Up Silicon Valley.”
I would encourage you to check out both of these podcasts — Delivering Marketing Joy and What Up Silicon Valley — as they are both excellent examples of one of the things we’ll be touching on today and that is positioning. Coming up with ways you can reach out to your market, talk to prospects and position yourself as the expert rather than just making phone calls.
So with that said, I’d like to talk with you briefly today about three specific ways you can make your working hours produce more.
You know, some promotional products distributors spend eight hours a day to generate $20,000 in commissions for the year. Others spend eight hours a day to generate $200,000.00 in commissions.
Same Eight Hours, Same Products, Same Industry,
Ten Times the Result. So What’s the Difference?
Obviously, it’s not about the time, it’s about how the time is being used.
If you fail to optimize your time — every minute of every working day — don’t be surprised to find life and many business opportunities passing you by.
As a professional in our industry, it’s absolutely vital to make every moment, every action, every day and every sales and marketing effort, count.
So Don’t Fall into the “Busy” Trap!
Have you ever had days where you are “busy, busy, busy” but don’t seem to produce anything or accomplish much at all?
Days like that can turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years and years into lifetimes. Here are three suggestions for improving your results:
1. Develop alternatives to cold-calling. Yes, cold-calling is a viable way to generate new clients. But it’s NOT the only way and often it’s far from the best way. In my training materials, I have NEVER advocated cold-calling. Some distributors are able to do it well and make good money with it, and if that’s you, I won’t tell you NOT to do it, but in my mind, cold-calling is just terrible from a positioning standpoint and sets up all sorts of warnings and red flags in the mind of the prosepct that then need to be overcome somewhere else, later in the sales process.
And it’s often one of the least efficient ways to prospect from the standpoint of both time and money. How many alternatives to cold-calling do you have? What would position you as an expert better than calling total strangers on the phone? Think it through and develop as many alternatives as you can to cold-calling.
2. Streamline your presentations. Don’t blow valuable sales opportunities with the typical “data dump” presentation where you talk to prospects all about you and your company and your products and your service and your capabilities.
Many salespeople do it, but it’s the last thing a prospect wants to hear. Naturally, your prospects will need to get to know you before they’ll be comfortable enough to place an order with you. But the typical data-dump approach is not the way to accomplish it.
Flip those presentations around. Adjust them to discuss the things that motivate your prospects the most, the things that are most important to them — their needs, their desires, their goals, their objectives and their results.
3. Develop an unrivaled follow-up procedure. Most distributor’s follow-up procedures are haphazard at best, and most lost business is a direct result of sloppy, slip-shod or even non-existent follow-up procedures.
Many sales trainers talk about the importance of following up lots of times — six times, eight times, ten times, a hundred times — because it takes repetion of contact before a prospect is likely to be ready to buy. But as important, or in many cases more important than just the quantity of contact is the quality of contact. Unrivaled follow up is not just a numbers game. It’s smarter than that. And it’s far more strategic.
Following these three recommendations: Developing alternatives to cold-calling, streamlining your presentations and developing an unrivaled follow-up procedure will help most distributors to improve results quickly and dramatically. So resolve to take action and start doing those things now.
If you don’t have alternatives to cold-calling in place, if you need to streamline your presentations or develop an unrivaled and fully strategic follow up procedure, check out our Top Secrets of Customer Acquisition training at www.topsecrets.com/tsca. That’s www.topsecrets.com/tsca.
If you’re a smart, focused independent distributor doing a reasonable volume of sales and looking to take your business to the next level, visit www.smarteqp.com. That’s www.smarteqp.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you soon.