New Book ‘Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way’ – Excerpt #6 

The leadership qualities that any sales executive must possess in order to produce exponentially profitable results are rooted in five powerful beliefs. Although, strictly speaking, it may not be necessary to build all five beliefs into your life, choosing to leave even one of these beliefs underdeveloped means missing out on opportunities and, ultimately, leaving money on the table. 

Because of publisher constraints on the size of excerpts allowed, we will only be covering the first 3 of the 5 beliefs covered in the book.  The other two beliefs will be covered in the next posting. 

Belief #1: You Have Everything You Need 

You already have all the tools you need to make leadership selling a central reality of your life. Your job is simply to build on the qualities and resources that you already possess. 

It doesn’t matter what happened to you as a child. You are not missing anything. You can begin with what you have, and who you are, right here and right now. The sooner you accept this, the better you will get to know the leader waiting within. 

Belief #2: You Can Improve Any Area of Your Life That You Choose 

Every great leader in human history has found a way to use the process of self-discovery to expand his or her personal capacity and sense of self. 

I realize that some part of what you will encounter in this book may not sound like you yet. One or more elements on the list of leadership traits may not feel like you yet. You may not believe that you are that kind of person yet. 

Here’s my question: Do you believe that you are capable of improving yourself in any area of your life that you choose? 

Great leaders are always more interested in what they don’t yet know than in what they do know. They realize that any hope for future success can only come from learning and implementing new strategies. They believe they can improve themselves in any area of their lives that they choose. For these leaders, knowledge truly is power, because they are searching constantly for new knowledge that they can apply in their lives, and applied knowledge is what leads to success. If you wish to follow in the footsteps of the great sales leaders, you will need to make a personal commitment to learn and improve yourself in all of the areas we’ll be discussing. 

Get a great discount on “Lead Sell or Get Out of The Way” from Amazon today http://tinyurl.com/cb8ufm  

Belief #3: Everything Is Possible 

I challenge you, from this point forward, to approach everything that may seem to you to be uncomfortable, unfamiliar, or difficult with the highest possible level of open-mindedness. Truly successful people find ways to abandon biases that hold them back. They believe great things are possible. They assume things CAN be done. 

There’s a catch, of course. To achieve results that exceed what you are currently experiencing, you must change your actions. To make great things possible, you must be willing to revise your strategies, your level of intensity, and your focus.  After all, if what you’re doing right now were generating the results you desired, you would already be where you wanted to be! 

You must grow as a person, and be prepared to do things differently, if you wish to sell more. 

I will also be challenging you to learn about some new selling strategies and to give them an honest try. You may well trip and fall while trying out these new strategies; in fact, you almost certainly will. It’s extremely rare to succeed at any given venture the first time that it’s attempted. But when you encounter difficulty, you will pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again — just as you did when you learned how to ride a bike. 

You may wonder why you need to go through any of the discomfort or pain of changing; actually, you don’t. You don’t have to believe that whatever you want next in your life is possible. You don’t have to grow. But you’ll be happier in the long run if you do. Happiness requires growth, and growth inevitably involves pain. I’ve found that there are really two types of pain that are strongly associated with growth. It’s important to be able to distinguish between the two. 

The first kind of pain is the type that people generally try to avoid at all costs — that of arriving at a given point in life (for instance, the end of the fiscal year) and realizing that they have fallen short of a specific goal that they had set for themselves. That really is painful, since failing to meet a personal financial goal means that they did not support the goals and lifestyle that they had in mind for themselves! 

The other kind of (more manageable) pain is one with which successful people deal regularly. It’s the pain of trying something new and not really knowing how — or even if — it’s going to work. 

This is the discomfort of unfamiliar effort, of figuring out what new steps you should be taking and then putting one foot in front of the other — even though it’s a little unnerving to do so at first. This discomfort is similar to the minor aches and pains you get when you use muscles that haven’t been used in a while; it’s the pain of expanding your comfort zone.  It’s what you should be feeling on a daily basis. 

The good news is that you get to decide which type of pain you will accept: the enduring pain of failure or the passing pain of change. 

Sometimes, salespeople remain close-minded simply because they are afraid of trying new things. Open up your mind and assume the best. Allow yourself to venture forth into a new mindset and a new way of selling. Start assuming that the best is possible! 

—— 

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (www.wiley.com) from Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way: The 7 Traits of Great Sellers by Ron Karr.  Copyright © 2009 by Ron Karr.  

 To order the book on line at one of your favorite retailers, go to http://LeadSellorGetOutofTheWay.com

‘Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way’ – Excerpt #5

Make relationships, not cost, a top priority!

“It All Sounds the Same!” 

One of my mentors, the late Bill Brooks, was a well-known sales expert and coach to thousands of salespeople throughout the world. Bill once told me that he and a colleague conducted research on thousands of buyers across all industries and asked them this question: “Why do you beat salespeople up on price?”

In essence, the answer they got from buyers was this: “Put yourself in my shoes. I sit here at a desk, meeting with several salespeople daily, and they all do the same thing. They brag about all the bells and whistles they have to offer. But at the end of the day, it all sounds the same! When you feel that the offerings are more or less the same, you move to the next step and qualify them on price.” For the sales leader, however, the discussion of price always comes at the end of the conversation — not the beginning! In fact, if the sales leader does the job right, pricing will be a secondary consideration when compared to other key factors in the buying decision. 

Ask yourself this: What is the number one reason a purchasing manager would get fired? You may want to answer, “Paying too much for a product.” Wrong! A purchasing agent’s first responsibility is to keep the enterprise running efficiently and make sure it has the materials and services necessary to continue to supply its customers. If that supply chain is interrupted, the purchasing agent is out of a job. That’s the top priority! 

Once purchasing agents feel that they have multiple sources and a low risk of interrupting the supply chain, however, they move on to their next core responsibility: to drive cost out of the system. If you appeal to that instinct, you will lose! Instead, you must build a coalition that is based on the purchasing agent’s primary responsibility, that which he or she shares with everyone else in the organization: keeping the enterprise running efficiently, so that it can satisfy customers. 

When purchasing agents have access to multiple reliable suppliers, they will — if left to their own devices — put the squeeze on terms and conditions. To help offset this squeeze, you must lead by leveraging other relationships in the organization, relationships with people who can win by working with you, people who have a vested interest in the outcomes of your products and services. You must connect with the people whose careers depend on the results they produce, things like ease of use and zero-defect quality levels. These people must be in your “coalition of the winning!” 

Your coalition might include the engineering manager, the production manager, the CIO, the CFO, the CEO — all of those players or someone else entirely. I don’t much care what each person’s title is. What I do care about is whether you are willing to do what leaders do — establish contacts at multiple levels in the organization. 

== If your coalition consists of a single person, you will lose. 

Establishing multiple alliances and multiple points of contact is your best strategy for minimizing competitive pressures and bringing issues other than price to the forefront. This is what sales leaders do. 

Order this Must Read Book Now  http://LeadSellorGetOutofTheWay.com  

You Must Lead the Team 

Traditionally, sales executives were the main point of contact with the customer. Years ago clients generally did not interact with other members of a selling organization. Today, however, customers will inevitably communicate with any number of people in our organization. The question is whether we as salespeople are going to be able to manage those points of contact. 

Customer service and technical support are interacting with your customers in an effort to support their needs. Members of shipping and billing departments are also talking to your customers and attempting to ensure that they receive their products in a timely and professional manner. Even prospects you have not yet closed business with are just an e-mail message or a phone call away from your support team. Face it: Other people are in this game with you! 

Sales executives today need to lead the efforts of their own internal support team, and must also coordinate support of the various contacts on the buyer’s side. The salesperson must be prepared to emerge as team leader in a flexible network that not only crosses departmental lines, but also crosses the line between the selling and buying organizations! You must master not only the art of winning the deal, but also the art of winning buy-in, internally, on behalf of your customer. 

Believe it: Your success as a salesperson depends on your ability to build and sustain coalitions both inside and outside your organization. You must create and lead the coalition, no matter what you are selling. 

Many salespeople try to push back against this leadership message, but the message remains relevant all the same to a broad range of today’s sales professionals. Even providers of professional services have to lead their internal support personnel. Your assistants and internal allies are all part of your team and, in a larger sense, your coalition. So, of course, are your prospects, customers, and clients. 

The centers of influence both inside and outside your organization that refer new clients to you are also part of your team, your support network, and your coalition.

All of these people will only choose to become truly active and engaged members of your coalition if you make a conscious choice to take on a leadership role. All of these people are your critical business allies, and, today, your critical business allies must believe not only in your product or service features, but also in your mission and your capacity to inspire action in support of that mission. 

Next, I’ll show you what sales leaders believe about themselves, their mission, and the larger world  . . .  and how those beliefs support them as sellers. —— 

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (www.wiley.com) from Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way: The 7 Traits of Great Sellers by Ron Karr.  Copyright © 2009 by Ron Karr.   

To order the book on line at one of your favorite retailers, go to http://LeadSellorGetOutofTheWay.com

Win with your unique mix of services and features

‘Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way’ – Excerpt #4  Why Wouldn’t You Sell This Way? 

For the past 20 years, I have been speaking to, advising, and coaching sales organizations of all sizes all around the world. Our clients have added at least half a billion dollars in incremental revenues by implementing this concept of leading with the outcome. In all of these situations, we never once changed the features of a company’s product or service. We only changed the outcome. You work for a company that already has a respectable product or service. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be working there; the company would be out of business. The question, then, is a simple one: How do you communicate your value and differentiate yourself from the competition? The answer is just as simple: by selling like a leader does, by leading with the outcome. 

Top-producing sales reps know that there is little competitive differentiation to be found in one’s feature set. Those words may make marketing managers and technical departments cringe, but they nevertheless reflect the realities of the current market. Given today’s astonishingly efficient information technology, the truth is that once you present a new feature, it will only take a short amount of time for the competition to find out what you’re offering, reverse-engineer a competing offering, and start marketing their own version. How do you win that game? The Leadership MixTrue differentiation from your competition comes by providing what I call the leadership mix. This is the unique mix of your features, services, quality, delivery, and leadership. 

== The leadership mix is what wins the game. You need a different mix for each customer and each prospect. That means that no two sales you close as a leader are going to be alike, or even similar.  

People buy for different reasons because they’re seeking different outcomes. Our customers are looking to buy something that will support the unique outcomes that they are after.  Leaders focus on the outcomes, and then they concentrate on the unique combination of features, services, quality, delivery, and coalition-building skills — the leadership mix — that will deliver the greatest value in achieving those outcomes.  And that’s not all! Leaders get people to experience those outcomes ahead of time, internally, before they actually occur. They use the leadership mix that they bring to any given situation as a tool — not simply for creating a single deal, but for establishing something much more important: a shared vision of the future. == “The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible. For the fainthearted, it is unknown. For the thoughtful and valiant, it is the ideal.” — Victor Hugo 

The mix you offer must become an offering in itself. Your sale can no longer revolve purely around features that people believe they can get elsewhere, or pricing that they believe they can beat by a tenth of a cent by shopping your bid around. The magic is in the mix! Once you can do a better job of identifying a customer’s desired outcomes, you can do a better job of creating the mix that will be perceived as most valuable in creating those outcomes — regardless of the dollar price that is connected to your offer. You can do a better job of persuading decision makers that even though they can get similar features from other sources, there is no other source that provides the same mix — the same comprehensive, multi-faceted plan for the future — that you do. 

To create this kind of plan, you have to engage your prospects or customers in conversations about what is or could be possible — even when there is no short-term need for what you are selling. That’s actually the best possible time to start making the sale! You’ll discover why later on. . . . Your job is to align your purpose (outcomes) with the vision (outcomes) of the customer. Outcomes revolve around needs, fears, concerns, and desires. So that’s what leaders talk about — not price or features! 

Order Your Copy at a Great Discount Now http://tinyurl.com/cb8ufm  Don’t Waste Time! Most salespeople usually don’t sell from a position of leadership, and, as a result, end up wasting not only the customer’s time, but their own precious time as well. 

For instance, asking people what product or service they’re using in a way that does not connect to any possible customer benefit is a waste of everyone’s time. So is calling a potential customer and telling him that you will save him 10 percent, without even bothering to take the few minutes necessary to find out what’s important to him. Reciting a particular product’s list of features that your company drilled into you during product training — without having found any common ground with the prospect or customer — is a waste of everyone’s time. You can’t expect to lead with any of these strategies because they don’t connect to anything that’s important in the customer’s or prospect’s world. 

Leaders Don’t Get Sidetracked by PricePeople often don’t buy the cheapest service or product available. Have you always purchased the cheapest alternative? No! You know you paid more for some items, based on certain issues and benefits that were more important to you — for whatever reason than finding the item with the lowest price. When traveling by plane, some people pay extra for the benefits of first class; others don’t. While some frequent flyers know they will have a good shot at upgrading to first class on a lower-fare ticket just before the scheduled flight time, others may pay the significantly higher fare simply to guarantee the first-class seat. It’s that important to them. If you stop and think about it, you’ll realize that there are lots of things in your own life that are far more important to you than getting the lowest possible price. For instance, buying name-brand products instead of generic brands, renting a high-priced apartment so you can have just the right view from your living room window, or buying expensive, front-row tickets to an NBA game. 

——  Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (www.wiley.com) from Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way: The 7 Traits of Great Sellers by Ron Karr.  Copyright © 2009 by Ron Karr.   To order the book on line at one of your favorite retailers, go to http://LeadSellorGetOutofTheWay.com

‘Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way’ Excerpt # 3

Decide on the ‘what’ before the ‘how’    

You Sell Ideas Like all effective leaders, top-producing salespeople sell ideas. They look for ways to find and improve the outcomes that their customers are seeking, and they start by talking about the “what.”  What are customers looking for?  As a leader, you must determine the “what” before the “how”—the “how” comes second. Your products and services represent the “how,” which means that they are not what you should be starting the conversation with. Read that again: You should not start the conversation on your products and services—even though you may have received vast amounts of technical training and even though you may know the “how” of your product and service like the back of your hand. If you start the conversation with the “how,” you will leave out the most important part of the conversation, namely, the outcomes you are going to produce together. These may sound like obvious points, but the sad truth is that salespeople ignore them routinely. Beginning with the “how” guarantees that your conversation will be short and will produce little to no forward movement in the sales process. You may not even be given the opportunity to discuss the prospect’s goals or the outcomes you hope to produce with him or her. Imagine how many sales meetings initiated by that fashion designer ended abruptly because of some sudden emergency that came up while she was soliloquizing about her many designs.  People tend to have very short attention spans these days. They have a lot on their mind, and the higher up they are on the food chain the less time they have for things that don’t demonstrate immediate value to them. That’s why we must prove in the first few seconds of a conversation that there is a reason someone should give us their undivided attention and their time. Initiating a conversation by discussing the outcomes—as a leader does—makes all the difference when it comes to winning attention, winning time, closing more deals, expanding the size of the deal, and increasing margins. Launching the conversation in a different way allows you to lay the foundation for a value proposition that is second to none. To order the book on line, go to http://tinyurl.com/cgw2gg Lead with the Outcome! Immediately focusing on the “how” limits your conversation with a potential customer strictly to features—features that most customers will think—correctly or incorrectly—that they have heard and seen elsewhere. There is little or no room there for differentiation! By leading with the outcome—as a true sales leader would—you can expand the conversation to other issues, issues that involve a larger piece of the pie. As the conversation expands, more and more opportunities will become available. These opportunities can lead to the sale of other goods and services. For example, let’s say that you are selling pool products to a homeowner who wants a new pump. You might be tempted to start talking about the features of your very best pool pump. Suppose you were to ask the homeowner what he or she would want from the new pump that the old pump didn’t provide. The homeowner might think for a moment, then answer, “No downtime, better energy efficiency, and lower operating costs.”  When you ask the potential customer to explain their reasons for wanting these features, you might hear a story of how the existing pump used to break down — typically on a hot summer da
y — and how the whole family would have to wait for the service rep to come and repair it. The use of the pool would be interrupted for days, and there would be a hefty repair bill to deal with. Armed with this information, you can now talk about the ideas and outcomes that are most likely to make a difference to this buyer: Fewer breakdowns and lower bills! You could offer proof of your pump’s energy efficiency and reliability, in the form of awards and articles praising its performance in these areas. You could then explain that your company offers a special extended warranty on the pump. This extended warranty is designed to reduce the risk of having downtime in the future, and it will also give the customer automatic top priority on service calls without costing a cent more on the repair bill. You have just engaged your customer and secured his full, undivided attention; every point you make is now landing with impact. You have just dramatically increased your chances of getting the deal, and you’ve done so by talking about the outcomes first. You may even have added to the size of the deal by introducing other products that support the outcomes that the customer is trying to attain. At the end of the day, the customer is not buying a pump at all. The customer is actually buying uninterrupted pool time, reduced energy costs, and a lower cost of operation. Those are outcomes! This is exactly what Hayward Pool Products, the number one manufacturer of residential pool pumps, trains its dealers to do. And that, along with a great product, is why they are one of the leaders in their industry. —— Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (www.wiley.com) from Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way: The 7 Traits of Great Sellers by Ron Karr.  Copyright © 2009 by Ron Karr.   To order the book on line, go to http://tinyurl.com/cgw2gg

Lead the Conversation: Help Your Customers Get to the ‘Promised Land’ Exerpt #2 from my new book, ‘Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way’ http://LeadSellorGetOutofTheWay.com

By Ron Karr My brother-in-law Dan resigned from his position as a junior partner at a well-established law firm. He had a choice: He could continue working really hard and take only a small portion of the fees he brought in, or he could start his own firm, hire lawyers under him, and increase his share of the profits. Dan knew one of the secrets of sales leadership.The Leader’s AdvantageYou will make much more money through the efforts of others than you ever could make solely through your own efforts. 

Beyond the Lone Ranger Whether you are selling an idea, professional service, or a product, you are probably hoping to sell more this quarter than you did last quarter, in less time, and at a higher profit. You cannot do this on your own, if indeed you ever could. To hit the targets you now face, you must build and sustain coalitions that will support you and act on your behalf. The “Lone Ranger” selling model may have worked in the past; in fact, many successful Lone Rangers were promoted to sales managers. Unfortunately, what made them successful as a Lone Ranger sometimes becomes their biggest obstacle to success as a sales manager—namely, their inability to get things done through other people. 

Leaders Don’t Puke 

Let’s start with something you probably already know: Customers today don’t want to be sold. In fact, the moment they feel they are being sold, they head for the hills—either by disengaging from the sales process or by simply ending the conversation, either audibly or silently. What customers do want is help in making the right choices. They don’t need you to puke up all the features that your products and services have to offer. You may wonder why I use the word “puke.”Well, for starters, it’s memorable. Members of my audiences tend to keep the “don’t puke” rule in mind for a long time after I share it with them. Second, the word perfectly describes the basic problem we’re looking at: When you puke up all the features you have to offer, you spray lots of junk around, you make a pretty big mess, and people try to avoid you afterwards. This idea of puking connects to one of the biggest mistakes that some salespeople make: They educate prospects, but don’t sell very many of them. 

PUKE stands for: People who Utter Knowledge about Everything.  About 10 years ago, a prominent fashion designer was seeking advice on how to sharpen her sales skills; she came to see me. She brought along her portfolio, and I asked her to role-play a little bit, to let me play the buyer and in this way walk me through her salesprocess. She agreed and immediately launched into a little memorized routine. Without bothering to connect with me in any meaningful way or get any sense of what my priorities were, she immediately opened up her portfolio and went into a long, boring, and extremely detailed description of each of the designs in her folder. I was being as patient as I possibly could—she was, after all, quite well known in her field. When she got to the eighth design, though, I said, “Stop.” Quizzically, she looked at me and asked what was wrong. 

“Well,” I said, “just suppose that the first seven designs you just described didn’t work for me. Do you really think you would have had my attention by the time you got to the eighth design?”  She thought about that for a moment and then smiled sheepishly. She had made the classic sales mistake of believing that she was at the highest level of influence when she was doing the talking. Actually, as sales leaders know, the opposite is actually true: The person speaking is generally at the lowest level of influence. Your level of influence rises only when the other person becomes engaged in the conversation and participates actively.The Leader’s AdvantageEven if customers are still looking at you as you speak, they are likely to shut down and stop listening when they decide you are trying to sell them. 

If we are to have influence as salespeople and as leaders, we need two things from our prospects: their time and their attention. When we start a one-on-one meeting with someone, the only thing we can be certain that we have is this person’s time. We have no idea whether we’ve got his or her undivided attention. If we’re doing all the talking, the other person could well be thinking about what else needs to be done today, what’s going to be on the menu for lunch, or when this salesperson is going to shut up. These days, thanks to the Internet, customers could read all about your features online if they wanted to. They don’t need you to puke on them! 

I shared this lesson with the aforementioned fashion designer; she took it to heart and stopped puking everywhere. She started to meet her prospects, build up a little rapport, and find out what they were trying to accomplish in the market. Then she would review the one, two, or three designs that seemed most likely to produce the person’s desired outcomes. She noticed a dramatic increase in interest for her designs, and she closed more business. She learned to do what sales leaders are supposed to do: help their customers get to the promised land — the place they want to go. That’s your job as a leader: connect with people and find ways to get them to the promised land. Your job is definitely not to puke all over potential customers; rather, it is to find out where the customer is trying to go. Identify the OUTCOME that makes the most sense for both of you, and then remove the obstacles in the way. Your job is to be creative and help customers find more efficient ways of doing things. Your job is to manage multiple constituencies and alliances, and to use those alliances to identify new and better ways of generating the desired results. Your job is to do what most salespeople don’t do: lead the conversation with your prospects and customers about the results they need, the problems they have, and the obstacles they face. Solving these issues will lead them to promotions, increased business, higher profitability, higher productivity, enhanced competitive advantage, and a better quality of life.  The Job of Being a Sales Leader Never Ends Leadership selling is not restricted to the selling process. You have to excel at getting people to the promised land throughout your entire relationship with them! Once you stop acting as a leader — once you stop trying to identify the interests of the customer and build alliances on behalf of those interests — you can rest assured that your base of business will start to evaporate.The Leader’s Advantage

——  Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (www.wiley.com) from Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way: The 7 Traits of Great Sellers by Ron Karr.  Copyright © 2009 by Ron Karr.   To order the book on line at one of your favorite retailers, go to http://LeadSellorGetOutofTheWay.com

New book from speaking pro and business development expert shows how great sellers provide outcomes, not just service – Excerpt # 1

By Ron Karr

The book — Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way — reflects the reality that, in today’s market, there is simply no room for followers, but there is plenty of room for leaders who are willing to create outcomes that others have not yet imagined.

The Leader’s Wisdom
The competition is intense. If you do not assume a leadership role when it comes to producing results for your clients and helping them succeed at a higher level, your competition will be happy to do it for you — and will eventually push you out of the way.

Whether you sell a product, a service, or an idea, you must be able to influence other people as leaders do. Sales leaders don’t just sell products, services, or ideas, and they don’t just beat the competition at the same offering. They don’t even sell against their competition. They raise the bar by identifying previously unidentified opportunities, and they create whole new levels of performance for their customers. In turn, they achieve significantly higher levels of success than others. They are the masters of influence.

Your ability to sell more products and services in less time and at higher profit depends more on your ability to connect with and influence others about the outcomes you can deliver for them than it does on the actual product or service you are selling. For 30 years, I have proven this principle over and over again to my clients: What you are really selling is not products, services, or ideas, but outcomes — the results that people can expect from implementing your ideas and using your products and services.

This book is all about what works; it is not about theory. Everything I have laid out for you has been successfully implemented by my clients and by yours truly. Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way is a summary of everything I have learned, executed, and shared with my clients about leadership selling over a period of three decades. My clients have achieved remarkable things with this kind of selling. So have I, and so can you.

Two Ways to Grow a Business

There are two ways to grow a business successfully. The first is to develop organically from within, and make the same mistakes that everyone else has made. Although many people have done well with this approach, many have failed as well. This manner of cultivating a business takes more time and is far more costly than the second way, which is to acquire the knowledge and experience gained by other people.

By taking this approach, you can avoid making the same mistakes that others did, and you can move forward at a quicker pace. This is what this book is meant to do: help you sell more in less time at higher profit by adopting the same principles that the most effective leaders use to sell, without having to make the same mistakes they made along the way.

Three Choices

In today’s market, you have three basic choices.

==You Can Lead. You can establish a leadership role in your own life by taking full responsibility for your own outcomes and establishing an attitude of complete accountability.

== You Can Sell. You can use that leadership role in your sales career to build alliances that establish zones of strategic mutual benefit for you and others.

== You Can Get Out of the Way. In other words, you can make room for a competitor who is willing to do both of the things listed above. Make no mistake — that’s what’s on the horizon if you choose not to sell as a leader.

Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way is designed to help you make the first two a reality and avoid the third altogether.

Leaders know that people don’t want to be sold. They simply want someone who’s responsible and accountable to help guide them through the buying process. They are not looking to buy products or services. They are looking for solutions to their problems. They are looking for positive OUTCOMES.

Over the years, I’ve been privileged to work with thousands of sales leaders — beginning with my mom — who established an integrated dialogue to share their vision, identify previously unimagined opportunities, build alliances, and guide people through the process of buying.

In Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way, I reveal everything I have learned from those leaders. I share their case studies with you and show you exactly how the concepts were put into action.

——

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (www.wiley.com) from Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way: The 7 Traits of Great Sellers by Ron Karr. Copyright © 2009 by Ron Karr.

To order the book on line at Amazon, go to http://tinyurl.com/db6w7h
 

Who says Opportunity knocks only once?  Opportunity knocks often.  Question is what knocks do you want to accept. 

Think about this. If you reduced your fees or prices by 20%, you would need to increase your sales volume by 400% to make the same profit you were making before the price cut. This is what Donald D. Juschartz, County Extension Director at Michigan State University, discovered in his study of how Price vs. Volume relationship may alter the retailer’s thinking.In declining markets, it is very tempting to lower one’s prices to hold on to business, especially if your customers are demanding it. Yet, some are probably lowering prices too fast too soon. And in some cases, it may not even be necessary. Realize that for every price reduction you agree to, you are going to have to sell more to make the same.

This is the time to hone your skills to avoid price reductions whenever possible. And in case you need to give in at some point, there are things you can do to limit your losses and in some cases wind up ahead of the game.

• Many customers are going to ask you for a price reduction and even threaten to take your business away. Do not give in. You need to restate your value proposition and ensure the value they are getting from you in the mix of services and products you offer far outweighs any price concession they are being offered by the competition.

• Do not get angry. It is very frustrating to constantly have to restate your value proposition and continue to make it stronger. Get over it! That is the job of a rain maker and sales professional. In tough times, you have to do it more and you have to be better at it.

• If you have tried everything and there is nothing more you can do, make a strategic decision if this business is for you. Will the precedent of discounting affect your overall market position? If not, do what you have to do. If it does, then you may want to take the risk of losing that customer. Anytime one raises a price, 20% of existing customers usually cannot come along for the ride. In a declining market with declining prices, you may want to view the act of staying firm with your current price structure as a form of a price increase.

• If you decide to reduce your price, never do so without getting anything in return. Here are some examples of what you can request in exchange for a reduction in price:
  - Longer term of agreement
  - Increased volume for existing product
  - Placement of additional products
  - Reduction in service
  - Improved terms
  - Referrals

And, there is another option:

RAISE YOUR PRICES!!!!

You may be asking yourself how you can possibly do this in a down economy. The answer is simple. Just ask for it! You need to remember a few points of power you have, especially when dealing with existing customers:

• You are the devil they know vs. the devil they don’t know. Things are going well. Why take the chance of screwing things up. There is a value for an insurance policy.

• Link your value proposition to how you can help them weather this storm and be ahead of their competition.

• Nobody will protect your value except for you. That is your job!

CASE IN POINT: Michele Litzky, Principle of a Hoboken-based PR firm was attending a meeting with a current client to discuss 2009 strategies. While waiting in the conference room, she noticed a piece of paper on the floor that had two lines: “Cancel firm Litzky”, and second line said “reduce fee”.

When the client walked in the room, Michele asked if this note was left on purpose. The President said no, it was left unintentionally from an internal meeting. Michele immediately changed the direction of the meeting and revisited the significant positive outcomes they had provided the firm with a recent publicity campaign. After restating her value proposition, the client, which wanted to either cancel her services or reduce her fee, wound up giving her two additional projects and agreed to a fee increase after 90 days.

This is a classic example of how one needs to operate in today’s environment.!!!

Whatever you do, please do not act with a bunker mentality. There are opportunities out there and there are people who are actually raising prices. If you don’t believe me, look at the new sports stadiums going up. Seats in those stadiums are much more expensive than in the old stadiums. And they are selling them. Maybe not as fast as they would like, but they are selling!

People want to save money. People need to reduce costs. But more importantly, people need to succeed. Is your conversation centered on reducing prices? Or it is centered on how you are going to help others succeed?

Again, you may need to reduce your prices. However, make sure you do not do it until you have tried everything else first. If you do reduce your prices, remember to get something in return. And then be accountable for making up the lost profitability with increased volume somewhere else. Every action creates a reaction. At the end of the day, you still need to meet or exceed your quota.

PLEASE LET US KNOW HOW YOU ARE DEALING WITH THIS ISSUE. WE MAY WANT TO SHARE YOUR SUCCESS STORY WITH OTHERS. Send your comments to ron@ronkarr.com.

 “It’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”

     Eric Roth
     From the Screenplay of
     The Curious Case of Benjamin Button