Eli Manning yesterday showed the nation the real warrior he is with his performance in leading the NY Giants to the Super Bowl!
He got pushed, pounded and slammed to the ground 20 times in the game! Several times he got up a little shaken. One picture showed him completely disheveled with his shoulder pads hanging out and grass hanging from all sides of his helmet.
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Are you trying to make a sale because you need to?
Are you trying to get a job because you need to?
Are you trying to get your boss, friends, colleagues, students or anyone to do something because you need them to?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions you are trying to influence others from a mindset of “lack”. In this mindset, you are trying to influence others from a position of weakness.
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1. Not every sale is a good sale. Make sure it is profitable and that you have cross-sold as many products and services as possible. It costs less to sell more to an existing client than to get a new client.
2. Stop creating unqualified proposals. Too much time is spent on creating proposals when deals are unqualified. Prospects like to ask for proposals to get people off the phone. Your time is too valuable. Only create proposals when the deal and prospect are properly qualified.
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What if you could instantly get back a year of your life? That’s right. By making one little change in the way you operate you can literally get back a year of your life. Watch this video to see how:
Let’s start a conversation. What are the common assumptions you make in life that prevent you from achieving more?
Want to learn how to avoid assumptions to increase your sales? Check this out.
Learn how to dramatically grow your market share and sales through powerful alliances. This video blog will show you the alliances you need to cultivate and how to do so. Ron Karr shares a real life case story on how he was able to rally the troops, both internal and external, in order to save a deal and eventually close a blockbuster deal. Powerful video for any sales executive, provider of professional services, entrepreneur, small business owner and any executive looking to marshall the support of others.
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Getting people to accept your point of view or proposals depends on how well you portray confidence to the person that you are trying to influence. To close more deals and get people to do what you are asking, learn the mindsets from which you need to operate!
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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!
Tim Seale, president of Timber Trading had built a successful wholesale lumber business. However, he realized there was going to be a limited premium that customers would be willing to pay to a middleman to facilitate deals between lumber yards and mills. The only way he would remain profitable was to add value to the process.
Tim decided to buy lumber and bring it to a warehouse where he could regrade it and create a product that exceeded industry acceptable standards. His company created a whole new packaging and labeling system that actually drove down inventory costs. He added a few more innovative products and services, until one day, his competitors realized Tim had created a new way of doing business.
Tim Seale is a visionary. He realized that a new vision was needed and that a whole new set of actions were required if he was to succeed in turning that vision into reality. It wasn’t easy, but he succeeded.
In these difficult times, what steps do you need to turn your vision into a reality?
How to Plan for the Future in Difficult Times
Timber Trading survived the housing downturn that crippled the building industry and the lumber industry. They understood the importance of visualizing the future and building a plan based on that future.
Here are questions to consider:
1. What changes do you see in your industry?
2. What ways can you improve your business and its way of doing business?
3. What can you do to set your company apart from competitors?
If you think the problem through, you’ll see the hidden opportunities that will help you reach your goals.
The key to your success is the ability to influence others to accept your ideas, requests, etc. The good news is everyone has the capacity to influence others. All you have to do to harness the capacity is remove three self imposed obstacles that usually get in your way.
First obstacle is your belief that you cannot influence others. Anytime you think about what you cannot do, most often you will create that dreaded result as a self fulfilling prophecy. The mind cannot process the negative. If you think you cannot get that person to say yes, the mind is only thinking about that person saying no. Everything you do will be centered on that result and that’s how you produce a self fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, if you think about how this person is going to agree with you, then your mind is now thinking about a different end result and your actions will be different. Influence starts and ends with your mindset. Click here to read more on the beliefs that will enhance your success in life.
Second obstacle is your need to put your self-interests ahead of others. People act on things and ideas for their own reasons, not yours. Find out what people are trying to accomplish. Then show how your ideas/requests are going to help them achieve their goals. Do this often and your level of influence will increase significantly. Your ability to influence others does not lie in the words you use, but in the context in which you say them.
Third obstacle is the propensity to take rejection personally. When someone does not accept your ideas, they are not rejecting you. They simply do not feel it is in their best interests and that the risk vs. reward is too high. Stop allowing the stories in your mind to take over. Simply find out what’s missing for the person you are trying to influence and fill in that gap. Remember, people do things for their own reasons, not yours.
Bottom Line: Many times ideas are rejected not because they are bad, but because their value has not been properly communicated. Influence is about meeting the needs of others and helping them achieve their desired results. Concentrate on eliminating the three self imposed obstacles and watch your level of influence skyrocket. Click here to download three free chapters of a book that will help you increase your sphere of influence.
Please comment on this post and let us know what you have done to help incresae your sphere of influence.
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
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In today's sales world there's no room for followers. But there's plenty of room for leaders. In Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way, Ron Karr outlines a repeatable process based on the powerful idea that great sellers lead relationships in the same way that great leaders sell ideas.
