Building a World Class Sales Organization
Oct 19, 2023ANTARCTICA CONQUERED!
On Thursday, February 19, I knocked a big one off my Bucket List, completing a Marathon in Antarctica. That leaves Asia as my remaining continent to have completed a Marathon on all continents. This one was truly memorable, for so many reasons. I got to share the experience with long time great friend Mark Moses, who many of my readers know as a previous business partner of mine and a world-class CEO Coach. Additionally, his 14 year old son Mason joined us and completed his first ever Marathon on the great White Continent. Here we are just prior to race start! (Jen, photo here) The course was a beast in its own right with significant hill work, treacherous footing, ice, snow, and unending rocks, along with sub-freezing temps. That was bad enough, but the pre-race antics might have been even worse.
We were delayed 5 days and met as a race group every 4 hours for a weather update. More than once we arrived at the airport, fully dressed for the race, and told the weather was too bad to land the plane. In fact, one day we waited 12 hours at the airport, only to be sent back to the hotel for another “is this ever going to happen?” sentiment. We eventually arrived in the dark the night before the race, walking 2 miles to our tent camp, where we got prepared for sleep before our 4am awakening for a 5am race start. The generator that was supposed to deliver us hot meal for dinner (picture airline food) quickly broke and so we were given the choice of a cold meal or scavenging through food you might have brought (I went with Pringles and coconut cookies!).
We were witness to approximately 100 other runners going through a complete meltdown as the delays mounted. A few actually couldn’t take the anxiety and went home with the race not completed. Here are three lessons I thought of as the week rolled out: 1. Stay focused on the Mission/Vision. This trip for me and most of the others was all about getting a Marathon completed in this 7th continent. Regardless of delays and conditions, patience needed to prevail. The Mission never changed, regardless of the delays. To lose control of one’s emotions brings you no closer to accomplishing the Mission. The focus had to remain on the things we have control over, and stay positive of accomplishing the Mission. This mental toughness results in a better attitudinal experience, as well as a successful race once it gets underway. 2. Contingency plans can provide extra options, increasing the likelihood of mission accomplished. We were the second of two groups that were weather delayed to Antarctica, literally our flights one day apart. Since the first group had yet to leave, we inquired as to whether there was room on the first flight so we might be able to join them for their flight. We received the okay and were then more confident of getting to our race. As the daily delays continued, we were all informed that in another day, the second group would be flipped into priority position. We then secured our original group spots, in case that group were to go first. As it turned out, the group left that day, and we were with the first group to get to Antarctica. When confronted with disruption, seek out your options while “staying cool”. 3. Fifty percent of success is a head case. Keep calm/positive regardless of the environment and challenges. We always have control of the 6 inches between our ears, which results in clearer thinking and overall happiness!
HYPER SALES GROWTH
We continue to experience great sales of my Amazon Best Seller and thanks to all of you have bought the book (I do hope you have read it and are taking action- big payback there!). We now have many clients buying the book in quantity and using it with their sales teams as prospecting and client giveaways on their sales calls. Contact us if you have an interest here. The reviews on Amazon are all “5’s”, and if you can invest a few minutes to post a review on Amazon, we sure would appreciate it. Thanks for your consideration and support.
As part of the Advantage Family, I have seen the impact that a book can have on business growth. Advantage Media Group is The Business Growth Publisher. They help entrepreneurs, business leaders, and professionals, like yourself, who want to grow their business. This is your chance to begin your journey to becoming a published Author.
For the first time ever, Adam will pull back the curtain, and take you behind the scenes, into the book publishing and business building industry of becoming an Author. To view a full schedule and to register visit BookMarketingBluePrintDay.com.
Anyone who has heard me speak knows how much I believe in this concept. Find people successful, and learn from their experience and actions. Recently I had the privilege of personalized tours of both the Navy Seals training program in Coronado as well as the Army West Point program. In a word – WOW! Here are some observations and take-aways we can all benefit from.
Lessons to be learned from people operating from a place of excellence! Who are the “Masters” you are learning from?
LEVERAGE AN ASSISTANT
Regardless of your role in business, if you don’t have an assistant, you are one! There are things that need to be done, by not necessarily to be done by you. All of us should strive to stay focused on “high payoff activities”. Check out this quick video.
CULTURE RULES
Take it from Jack Welch: “If work is just going in every day and getting a check, it’s an ugly life. When you can make work a meaningful purpose, you’ve hit the jackpot for people. When you can make them love coming to work, proud of their work, think it has a purpose, that’s what it’s all about.” As a great example, check out what my book publisher, Adam Witty at Advantage Media Group is doing with his team.
In August, Witty asked each employee to write down all of their dreams. Next, his company’s
graphic design team worked with each person to create a “Dreamboard”, an over sized collage
of their biggest professional goals and personal dreams. On December 19, Witty gave each
employee two copies of their 2’ x 3’ full color dreamboard one for their office and one for
their home. These visual boards are a daily reminder for employees to reach for their dreams,
but he didn’t stop there. Now, Witty is setting out to make as many of those dreams come true
as he can and this isn’t charity? he is convinced team member happiness is the best way to
grow the top and bottom line. The “Dream On” program that Witty created for his company will
grant the dreams of his employees every year.
Training is an often overlooked part of growing a business. Many sales & management teams fail to train regularly, while this practice is a key to keeping your business on a path to consistent growth. If you are not practicing in-house then you are practicing on your customers, and this can be recipe for disaster while you build your brand.
Sending employees to workshops or hiring consultants to train your team are effective ways to train your team, but what if an employee leaves after you’ve invested in their training? There’s no way to transfer that knowledge to a new hire without spending more money on their training…
Until now! Jack Daly’s Sales University is an online interactive training program that allows you to train your entire sales & management teams throughout the year, as often as possible! The Sales U curriculum was designed to provide Entrepreneurs & CEOs, sales managers, and sales professionals the tools, knowledge, and application to successfully sell in today’s hyper-competitive business environment. Please check out my personal intro to Sales U.
The full program is 15 hours of fun, energetic, and powerful material that can be used to train your entire sales team, from entry level to seasoned veterans. Sales Managers will get relevant methods to implement with the whole team, and best of all, you can make the Sales U courses part of your new hire training or sales meetings… anytime, anyplace.
If you are interested in learning more about the courses offered, please go to: www.salesu.advantagelibrary.com. Here you can preview the courses, read about content, and purchase when ready. Also, please contact Gabriel Clift or (855) 733-7378 with any questions you may have about the program.
by Rich Karlgaard
Publisher of Forbes magazine Mr. Karlgaard underscores the importance of Culture in successful businesses. I love that he identified companies that were both happy places to work and super successful at the top and bottom line performance wise. As well, it wasn’t all about young tech companies, teaching us that this is about lasting success. From century old insurance company to bicycle company, Rich identifies the importance of creating a place of trust and values.
I particularly enjoyed the section on hiring people with “grit”. People who have been confronted with adversity, and fought on to success. Regarding trust, how about this? “No company can forcibly pull out of employees heads, and employees will not give their best ideas to leaders or colleagues they don’t trust.” BAM! Rich identifies the five pillars of a soft edge company: Trust. Smarts. Team. Taste. Story. The examples shared are real world. The tactics are street-proven. Get the book and reap the rewards.
PRODUCT FEATURE OF THE MONTH
Get both the CD/DVD combo of Jack’s presentation on Corporate Culture by Design. In this newsletter issue we’ve heard it from Jack Welch and Rich Karlgaard of the importance of a winning culture. This combo tool by Jack Daly will give you what you need to implement such a culture in your business. It retails regularly for $225, but call Jennifer at 888-298-6868 or email her at [email protected] by March 31 and receive yours for just $99.00!
Have you attended one of Jack Daly’s sales workshops or seen one of Jack’s keynotes? We’d love to hear from you! Let us know!
Your time with our team has them really fired up (Jack’d up) and it is a really exciting thing to see. In my wrap up on Friday following your presentation, I asked everyone to identify a minimum of 3 things that they will be doing differently based upon your time with us, things that they will be using to grow exponentially this year, and that can be discussed openly on coaching calls that I have with them. I set a timeline of today to have them over to me, yet almost the entire team had them to me Saturday and Sunday. I even had one of our newest reps work backwards to his goal- he defined his success, and charted backwards to the present- and he did this while flying on his flight home early Saturday morning! I am really excited Jack.
Your time with us was all that we could hope for and more, which is the understatement of the year.
Our conversion rate went through the roof after seeing you. We went from around $900 million funds under management at the time to $3.2 billion today and that occurred in the aftermath of the great financial crisis when many of our competitors were struggling. I feel a sincere thank you is in order for all that you have done to help us
Before we began working with you we lacked a coherent sales and marketing system to capture leads and convert them to clients. Since that time we have implemented a new CRM system, completely overhauled our website, identified our core prospects, and successfully increased our sales by over 50%. Since we began working with you we have far surpassed the original goals that we set from day one as a direct result of the collaboration between your team and ours. You have helped us focus on the most important aspects of our business which has allowed us to thrive during a period of turmoil for many of our peers. Thank you again for the superior communication, service, and coaching that has moved Fabian Wealth Strategies to the next level.
Thank you Jack and thank you for a great job! Since 1998 we have run 27 conferences of this type. Ours is a tough crowd so your evaluation score is all that much more meaningful-a 4.96 out of 5! In fact only Jim Collins has scored over a 4.95 at one of our gigs.
Jack spoke at the Belfast Open Day yesterday to a capacity audience of 200. His passion, enthusiasm, relevant experiences and stories lit up the room and everyone went away feeling they had achieved excellent value and plenty of very valuable take away action points. Overall ratings by the members were 99% for value and presentation.
Jack has trained thousands of our nation’s heroes, military recruiters from all branches including the Canadian Armed Forces on multiple occasions. Jack always knocks it out of the park and leaves my clients begging for more. Jack is a win-win for my clients, as they gain so much insight on how to become a better recruiter and they also get to apply Jacks tips and techniques in their personal life.
We at Oakworth Capital have implement Jack’s techniques and methods over the course of our relationship with him, and it has made us a higher performing financial institution. Our annual client retention rate is 99.5%. Earnings increased over 32% last year. The average annual shareholder return for the past six years is 16.7%. Oakworth Capital Bank is performing at a higher level thanks to Jack Daly.
I had the opportunity to see Jack in action during his visit to an event put on by EO Calgary in January 2014. He is easily the best speaker that I’ve seen to date and he packs a ton of energy to the stage! We left the event feeling not only rejuvenated about connecting with our prospects, customers and clients but also full of new exciting ideas that I can’t wait to implement right away.
Jack greatly helped our organization gain clarity around our strategic vision and direction. His background from being an entrepreneur to running large organizations provides him with a unique perspective as CEO of Professional Sales Coach. Whether it is tackling the toughest sales problems or the toughest triathlon you can count on “IronMan” Jack to take you across the finish line.
Thanks again for the outstanding workshop. Of the many I’ve attended over 30 plus years, I walked away from yours with the most concrete ideas and value for money – by far. Please note that your workbook will not sit on our shelves. I don’t think you had even left when the room when our team had pulled together to go through it. We start implementing Monday morning.
Your session today was incredibly insightful and your fundamentals are great reminders to focus on what matters to build trust with clients and prospects. As a business owner, there were plenty of moments in which I took a hard look at how our companies operate, and I recognized the need for some real change. This evening, I have generated three goals for each of our companies, and I intend to personally track each one with metrics and honest feedback within our team.
When I first heard Jack Daly speak at the national conference earlier this year, I just knew we had to bring him to Milwaukee. He takes powerful material, adds his personal street smarts and actual experience, and delivers a wallop of words that every CEO needs to hear once in a while. And I want my top sales person to hear the same message with me.
On behalf of Inc. Magazine, I would like to thank you for your participation in our annual Growing the Company Conference. Your session was evaluated by attendees based on a scale of 4 (excellent) to 1 (poor). Your average score was 3.96…the highest scoring session!.
What rave reviews you received for your presentation at the RPMA conference. The comments I got were that everyone wanted more. This is the 12th year for the conference, and I think yours was the best review I’ve received in all 12 years.
I didn’t need to tell you what it takes to hold the attention of an “All-CEO” group such as mine, because you did it. All too often, speakers come from theory without practice. Your background indicated “you’ve been there” and your presentation showed it. The most frequent comment heard was the amount of immediately implementable action ideas delivered.
The “Best in his industry” Guaranteed.
I have had the pleasure of having Jack address groups of CEO’s and he always gets rave reviews for his delivery, content, and applicability of the information he dispenses.
I have known and worked with Jack in a variety of situations including as a speaker and a consultant. Jack’s openness, passion, energy, skills and expertise in unmatched. I consider Jack one of my “gurus” in life and in business.
Jack is an incredible and dynamic speaker on sales and corporate culture. His process is actionable and his energy is unparalleled. I’m pleased to know Jack and am comfortable recommending him to anyone.
Outstanding Sales Coach and Key Note Speaker!! Jack has been the most talked about speaker at our industry annual conference (NACCB) for the last few years. Very high energy and packs a ton of great ideas into his presentations regarding increasing sales, increasing organizational efficiencies, and improving company culture! I highly recommend Jack!!
If you think Jack Daly is just another motivational speaker… then You Don’t Know Jack!