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.

You can accomplish only so much through your own efforts. But you can accomplish a great deal more through the efforts of others.

In my CEO bestselling book “Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way”, I show you how today’s top sales leaders build alliances to attract more prospects and clients than they could by themselves.

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 share your examples of alliances that enabled you to increase your success.

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!

A customer-focused mindset is the key to my proven leadership selling process. Based on decades of research with companies of all sizes including Cognis Chemicals, UPS, Marriott and Hertz, I reveal what great sellers do inside my book “Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way”, and I show you how anyone can implement the same powerful tips.

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 forward this video link to your friends and colleagues. Please leave comments on how you get into the right mindset to close deals.

Want to Increase Your Level of Influence in All Areas of Your Life? Watch this video and avoid common catch phrases that will demotivate people from acting on your ideas. Please leave comments on the phrases you hear that just irritate you.

My CEO bestselling book “Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way”, will show you how to communicate persuasively and effectively what it is you offer your clients – no matter what you are selling. This highly effective messaging system will help you close more deals in less time.

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!

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 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.

Download for free the Five Beliefs and 7 Traits of Great Sellers. It will help supercharge your career.

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.

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

I asked the guy why he wouldn’t help. His reply: “I am not sticking around to save people. I am only concerned with getting my butt out.” How selfish can this guy be? I then told him “Dude, all you have to do is open the door and get your butt out. Everyone will be following you.” He then accepted his mission.

This self focused mindset is one that I often see occur with sales executives, managers and business owners at one time or another. It is often not meant to be self serving as it is in an attempt to protect one’s self interest and achieve one’s goals. It is also perceived as being arrogant and self absorbed and does get in the way of one getting rich and growing one’s business.

The key to growing sales and a business is to be dedicated to helping people achieve their goals. Help others get to where they want to go safely and you will in turn get more than you ever thought was possible. Customers do business with people who help them succeed. Not with people who are only interested in saving their butt at all costs.

You most probably do care about your customers. But please stay vigilant and do not let your actions position you as a self centered and arrogant individual like the guy sitting next to me in the exit row. It can be the difference between have a good year and having a great year.

Learn more how to be customer focused and double, triple and quadruple your sales by clicking here

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?