Posts Tagged ‘CBS’
The secret to you closing more business lies in your energy and thoughts!
Last week I had to call back a senior executive of a client who hired me to speak to his team last September. The speaking engagement went very well and he wanted to talk to me about a bigger project.
On the phone, he immediately started to tell me he could not go forward at this moment due to a re-organization. Immediately I felt my energy tanking and the negative thoughts of not getting a deal starting to cloud my mind. Realizing this, I immediately changed wavelengths and thought about how it would feel when we agree to extend the relationship.
Just this shift in thinking and energy led to a critical question where I asked him to tell me about the re-organization. He started to share the goals, challenges and status of where things stood. I shared with him a critical mistake that many organizations make regarding the issues he was dealing with.
That suggestion caught him off guard and he asked me for a proposal. Imagine that; a legitimate opportunity that would never have occurred if I let my energy control my thoughts at the time I thought there was no business.
The mind is very powerful. If our mind is filled with negative thoughts and emotions, our actions will in turn attract negative results. Life is about energy. What we project is what we get in turn.
No matter your situation, don’t think about what you don’t want to have happen. If I ask you not to think about pink elephants, what are you thinking about? Pink elephants! The mind cannot process negative thoughts.
Whatever you are thinking about what you don’t want to have happen will happen! Conversely, whatever you are thinking about what you want to have happen will happen!
What should you be thinking about? Your answer will dictate whether or not you will close the deal!
Want to know about other beliefs and traits Top Producing Sales Executives, Professional Service Providers and other People of Influence use on a daily basis? Download for free the first three chapters of my bestselling book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way!
Tags: Business Development, CBS, Closing, Closing sales, cold calling techniques, Customer Loyalty, customers, employees, Increase Profits, Leadership, leadership speaker, leadersship expert, motivation, Motivational Speaker, Negotiation, negotiation speaker, Outcomes Based Selling, Public Sales Seminar, Sales, Sales Boot Camp, sales coaching, sales leader, sales motivation, sales process, sales speaker, sales trainer, sales training, Sales Training Program, sell effectively, Success, teamwork, Telemarketing, Telemarketing sales, value added sales
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If companies are to survive today, they must convince customers and prospects that their products/services are not just nice to have, but are a “must have.”
That’s the position Karen Cone found herself in at the beginning of the Great Recession when she was President and CEO of TowerGroup, the leading research and advisory services firm focused exclusively on the financial services industry. Having to cut expenses in all areas, her clients were wondering if they truly needed those services. Her competitors were losing clients as well so Cone started working with me.
“We needed to change the sales strategy and find a way to deal with clients in crisis. And we needed to communicate and sell our value proposition in a way that was different and more compelling than what had worked before,” she said. “In other words, we needed to move from being considered a “nice to have” to a “must have.”
We both agreed that if her sales force was going to succeed, it had to move from selling a product to selling an end result. That way they could raise the importance of the service in the minds of the buyers.
The results were extraordinary.
“Many of our competitors were being cut out all together,” she said. “We actually retained the vast majority of our clients. And we retained them at a level of spend that was extremely respectable.”
“As budgets loosened up, TowerGroup was really well positioned to take advantage of that,” she said. “These methodologies and approaches made a big difference in helping that happen.”
To learn more about this subject, please join me on Monday, October 3rd at 2pm ET for a free webinar where we will show you how to engage alliances as well as other strategies to immediately grow your sales. Click here to reserve your free seat now!
Check Out the November Sales Success Summit ’11 in Orlando Florida, an event destined to dramatically increase your sales success. Spend two days with me and I will personally customize ideas that have generated millions of dollars for my clients to your selling environment. This is a small group. Two days of personalized attention. Reserve your seat today by clicking here!
Please Comment on how you turned your products/services from a nice to have to a “must” have
Tags: Business Development, CBS, Closing, Closing sales, cold calling techniques, Customer Loyalty, customers, Increase Profits, Leadership, leadership speaker, leadersship expert, leadrship, Medical Sales, motivation, Motivational Speaker, Negotiation, negotiation speaker, Negotiations, Outcomes Based Selling, Real Estate Sales, Retail Sales, ronkarr.com Larry O'Donnell, Sales, sales coaching, sales leader, sales leadership, sales process, sales speaker, sales strategies, sales trainer, sales training, Sales Training Program, sell effectively, Success, Telemarketing, Telemarketing sales, Value add selling, value added sales
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In building your business, whether you are a sales person, CEO, VP Sales, Entrepreneur, Provider of Professional, etc, you have two options. A) Start from scratch and spend lots to time and money in achieving your results, or B) Acquire the knowledge you need by learning from the mistakes of others and using proven techniques to shorten your ramp up.
These two options are similar to what executives and CEO’s deal with in deciding on whether or not to bring in an outside expert to speak at their conferences or use internal experts. Experience shows that outside speakers generate different and sometimes better results than internal speakers.
Internal speakers gain instant credibility as the audience already feels they understand their environment and needs. They already have a relationship developed and can help fill the gaps. But that is as far as they can go.
The downside of using an internal speaker is limiting the viewpoints and strategies to a certain way of thinking. Outside speakers bring a new viewpoint and best practices from other organizations and industries that provide invaluable insight into new ways of thinking.
Some internal speakers are quite good in their ability to speak and move an audience. Yet, for them, it is a part time job as they only do it when asked. Professional speakers hone their craft on a daily basis with a variety of audiences. They know how to move an audience to action. They bring new ideas through personal stories complete with examples of implementation.
There are three phases to adult education: Awareness, transference of skills and measurement of results. External experts/speakers not only provide their audiences with awareness, but they also help them with implementation through powerful examples of how their ideas are transferred into action. The value of a professional speaker is the ability to tell these stories in a motivational and powerful manner to not only keep the audience’s attention but to move them to action.
The challenge for professional speakers today is that there is no patience on the part of audiences for generic presentations that do not take into account the clients environment. There are greater expectations on the part of clients for professional speakers/outside experts to tailor their content to the needs of the client. Professional speakers need to research the client’s environment, goals and obstacles. They need to prove to the audience from the first word that they do understand their world. When a professional speaker tailors her content to the needs and environment of the audience, there is no better presentation available to the client.
So when you plan your next conference, please don’t just look at the budget. While there may be an expense to hiring a professional speaker, you can easily see that by hiring the right professional speaker, the fee for their services is miniscule as compared to the time and money you save by acquiring the right content that will move your audience to action and achieve their goals. Plus, getting an outside perspective brings a sense of reality to the organization and breaks the cycle of limited thinking.
When it comes to building your organization, do you want an apprentice or a pro?
Tags: Business Development, CBS, Closing sales, cold calling techniques, Customer Loyalty, employees, Leadership, leadership speaker, leadersship expert, leadrship, motivation, Motivational Speaker, Negotiation, negotiation speaker, Negotiations, Public Sales Seminar, Retail Sales, ronkarr.com Larry O'Donnell, Sales, Sales Boot Camp, sales coaching, sales leader, sales leadership, sales motivation, sales speaker, sales strategies, sales trainer, sales training, Sales Training Program, sell effectively, Success, Telemarketing, value added sales
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Instead of concentrating on being more successful, work on increasing the velocity in your efforts on a daily basis. What is velocity? It is the ability to get more done in less time. It is about gaining speed, power and momentum in your actions to achieve your goals in less time than originally anticipated.
Granted this is what we all want. But how many times do we let the small things in life mess with our velocity. Things like false assumptions. Too often we take people’s words and create our own stories as to what we think they are saying. Then our actions are based on these stories we have created and often miss the mark. It happens in sales and leadership all the time. And we wonder why we don’t get the sales or move the organization forward in a timely manner. There goes your velocity!
How about when you don’t think things through clearly and you operate out of a task mentality vs. purpose mentality. Yes, you may be busy. But are you doing the necessary work that needs to be done so you can achieve your goals? If you are letting your tasks drive you vs. your purpose, there goes your velocity!
How about when we try to influence others based on what we need vs. what they want and need? Are your recommendations truly being heard and acted upon? Or are they being received as some pushy sales pitch or order that is less likely to be accepted? There are two types of actions in this world: The limited action necessary to keep one happy and pretend you are doing your job, and the action of being all-in; where you are doing whatever it takes to get the job done. If you want people to accept your ideas, support you and be all-in, make sure you’re positioning them in the context of how they are going to benefit. Not because you need it. If you don’t change your context, there goes your velocity!
Velocity is the key to success in sales, leadership, negotiations, customer service and just about anything else in life. Ask yourself, what can I do today in my conversations and actions that will add velocity to my life and help me achieve my goals quickly? Here’s the funny thing. Your answer, if you think this through clearly, has more to do with how you can help others succeed vs. your own success. This is what generates true velocity!
Velocity is the key theme woven throughout the entire book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way!
Tags: Business Development, CBS, Closing, Closing sales, cold calling, cold calling techniques, Customer Loyalty, employees, Increase Profits, leadership speaker, leadersship expert, Motivational Speaker, Retail Sales, ronkarr.com Larry O'Donnell, Sales, sales coaching, sales leader, sales leadership, sales motivation, sales process, sales speaker, sales strategies, sales trainer, sales training, sell effectively, Success, Telemarketing, Telemarketing sales, value added sales
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A new show, Undercover Boss, premieres tonight on CBS right after the Super Bowl. Larry O’Donnell, President and Chief Operating Officer of Waste Management Corp, goes undercover as a regular worker to better understand what his employees go through. From this experience, Larry has developed a better appreciation for all that his employees do. He understands that most workers really do want to succeed. He also now realizes that the two most important issues for an employee are appreciation and being listened to.
Buck Rogers, the famed Vice President of Sales for IBM in the early years, used to tell the story of how they would hold their annual sales meeting in Madison Square Garden and bring the top performers up on stage to get their bonuses which were paid in cash. Buck said the money was nice, but the real value of the exercise was the public display of appreciation for one’s efforts and success in front of their peers. Many surveys have been done over the years trying to figure out why top producing sales people would leave one job for another. Out of 10 variables, the number one reason was appreciation. The fifth reason was money.
Whether you are an employee, a salesperson, or even a customer, the same rules apply to everyone. If you want to succeed in leadership and increase your level of influence, you need to provide the two things people value most: being appreciated and being listened to. This was true 50 years ago and it is true today. Even truer in today’s tough economic conditions where people need to feel more “love” for their efforts. The moment a customer feels they are not being listened to and appreciated, they will go elsewhere. The moment an employee feels they are not being appreciated, they may stay in their jobs, but they will have lost their motivation and their productivity will go downhill.
This is why I titled my new book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way. Whether you are a CEO, a professional salesperson, a provider of professional services or even a teacher, your success depends on how well you can influence others. Are you listening to them? Are you giving and presenting ideas in ways that will motivate your constituents? Tonight, you will see some of the findings and the changes in actions as Larry presents his journey on Undercover Boss.
But how about creating your own journey and “reality” show as a leader in your organization? You can start with getting your constituents time and attention by doing a few simple things, such as: Asking better questions, listening better, creating more powerful value propositions and holding yourself accountable. Little changes in these areas can produce profound results. A retired professor e-mailed me and said if he had read Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way while he was still working, he would have been a better teacher!
Click here to see how you can supercharge your business. By showing your customers and others who depend on you appreciation for their efforts and by listening to understand their needs better you will become more valuable as you help them succeed.
Bottom line, you are the difference. Not your products or services. The difference lies in each and every person. Sales executives need to understand they are the difference in whether a customer stays or leaves. A leader needs to understand they are the difference as to whether or not an employee is motivated. If each person takes responsibility for their own actions, imagine how successful your organization would be. And it all starts at the top, as it did with Larry O’Donnell.
Tags: CBS, Closing sales, customers, employees, Leadership, motivation, ronkarr.com Larry O'Donnell, Sales, sales strategies, sales training, SuperBowl, teamwork, Waste Management
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