Blog

The Daly News May 2006 Issue9

GATHERING OF TITANS 2006

Many of our newsletter readers are EO members, and several more have also attended Birthing of Giants (BOG). An alumni to BOG was launched last year as Gathering of Titans (GOT) and is conducted in a similar format to BOG. The GOT is open to any graduate of BOG and I have had the distinct pleasure of not only being there as a speaker but have attended and participated in the entire 4 day program of world-class learning. Without question, the GOT has been the greatest learning and life awakening experience I have participated in my career. I would strongly encourage any BOG graduate to learn more about GOT and make every attempt to join in this lifelong learning opportunity. Next years program will run from April 11-15 and be held at the Endicott House/MIT, just outside of Boston. The website is www.gatheringoftitans.com. Check it out! The following are just a sampling of my notes from this year of takeaways/thoughts/concepts:

• Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people that are fully alive.
• ”You cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created the problem.” Albert
• CHANGE: Change your thinking from “subjective” to “objective”. More awareness equals more choices. More choices equal better execution.
• MODEL THE MASTERS: “By three methods we may learn wisdom:
  First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; And third, by experience, which is the bitterest.” Confucious
• BE IN THE MOMENT: Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko’s, related the story of seeing a photo calendar in one of his stores, done at the local store level. He inquired as to the cost to the company-$3- and selling for $30, upon which he rolled it out throughout the store network. As leaders, we need to fight hard to not get trapped in the corporate office-be in the moment.
• ULTRA SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE= 5 consistent qualities:
  They know their future/their goals. Attitude of “bring it on”.
  People of action/always engaged. 100% responsible for the outcome. Passion-it’s the engine!
• Optimal place for company to be is where “criticism” equates to “caring”, by both giver and getter.-Core of relationships is intimacy and generosity. Every business relationship needs to be a personal relationship. Leverage the caring
• ”I don’t know a single successful person that isn’t driven by insecurity.” Donald Trump
• The only real measure of success is that when you get old your children want to be with you.
• People and companies tend to be less than they could be primarily because they “rush to the urgent, at the expense of the important”.

TURNING “POTENTIAL” 
INTO “REALITY”

Back in July, 2004, I had the opportunity to work 3 days with the Sales Call Center for 1-800-GOT JUNK? based in Vancouver, BC. The Company felt it had significant opportunity to grow and improve its sales and service at that time. The Call Center Director recently emailed me with an update on its successes over the past 20 months. I think this story underscores the importance of relooking one’s “day-to-day” operations, setting a plan for growth and improvement, then injecting effort and enthusiasm to bring home the desired results. Witness:

• July 2004: 1 director, 1 sales manager, 10 customer service reps, 30 sales reps.
• April 2006: 1 director, 7 sales managers, 1 sales training manager, 3 sales recruiters, 12 customer service reps, 103 sales reps.

There are many keys to growth like this, but here are a few: separate team dedicated to recruiting and hiring to the desired written profile, separate team for new hire training and scripting/role practicing, continuous coaching, rewards and recognition with plenty of fun contests, and extensive tracking and reporting throughout the center. Congrats to all at the 1-800-GOTJUNK? Team for their energy, openness and most of all for their steadfast implementation! We all can learn a lot from your example. Ps. I didn’t share the performance stats of the group, but suffice to say that things are getting done.Things that get measured, get done.

Jack’s 2006 Smart Selling Workshop Schedule

• Jun 09 – Minneapolis, MN June 13- Milwaukee, WI
• Jun 15 – Orange County, CA
• Oct 10 – Atlanta, GA
• Oct 26 – Montreal, QB
• Oct 27 – Lancaster, PA
• Dec 12- Toronto, ON

Register Today! Don’t Miss The Chance to Spend the Day With Jack.

Washington D.C.

Sales Management and Sales Summit November 2 & 3, 2006

We have had many requests from the East Coast for a Summit on their coast. Well, we have heard you loud and clear and are happy to announce that Jack will offer a second Summit November 2 & 3 in the Washington D.C. area.Please call Jennifer at 888-298-6868 for more information or email her at 
jennifer@jackdaly.net for a flyer full of details.

Day One, Thursday, November 2, 2006 will focus on Sales Management. The key ingredient to increasing sales is more effective Sales Management. Here’s how Jack captures it: “A Sales Manager’s job is NOT to grow sales, it’s to grow salespeople.” Improve your bottom-line results with profitable sales. This day is specifically designed for CEO’s and Sales Managers.

Day Two, Friday, November 3, 2006 will focus on the art of Sales.We encourage the Sales Management to join us on Day Two along with the members of their Sales teams. Here is where we key in on the actions that will build the individual sales professional into a more effective producer. We’re talking about money-making ideas centered about both new account and existing account development.

The April issue of BUSINESS 2.0 had a terrific take-away article entitled “Best Kept Secrets of the World’s Best Companies”. I encourage you to check the full article out (in fact, I suggest a full subscription!), and here’s a “tease” of some of the takeaways:

-Benchmarking: HP now tracks itself against rivals by every conceivable measure. Each business unit and each business function is measured against its rivals on more than a dozen variables, from real estate cost per square foot to operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin, etc.

-Take no stake until you earn it: How about a funding formula giving the founders zero equity until they doubled the company’s value? Since it’s launch in 1998, sales have climbed an average of 65% per year at HONEST TEA, and the founders have earned their way to a 25 percent stake, based on the formula.

-The job audition: You don’t just get interviewed when you apply for a job at SOUTHWEST AIRLINES. You get auditioned-and it starts the moment you call for an application.

-The pyramid game: SAIC has achieved 33 consecutive years of sales growth, and a key has been its creative system for recruiting and rewarding top executives. When certain managers land a new contract, they get a bonus. Then a cut gets passed up to their boss, and their boss’s boss. This encourages the recruitment of high earners as opposed to cronies.

-The 3 minute huddle: Every morning, and often several times per day, UPS managers gather workers for a mandatory meeting that lasts precisely 3 minutes. This ensures all are kept in the loop.

-The list goes on…I loved the WHOLE FOODS MARKET AND GUITAR CENTER ideas as well, but I figured I’d further tease you to go to the source. At the end of the day, it’s all about implementation!

CONTINUOUS SELF DEVELOPMENT

Here’s a great read that could be termed “David taking on Goliath”. It’s ALPHA DOGS, by Donna Fenn, about how your small business can become a leader of the pack. Continuing with the “tease theme” of this Daly News- here are a few takeaways:

• Every successful entrepreneur’s secret weapon: don’t compete, differentiate, thereby taking
• oneself out of the commodity game.
• Don’t think volume, think margin.
• Think like an outsider.
• Build a culture of innovation.
• Tap into your customers emotions.
• Don’t let past successes make you complacent.

Here are real life stories of 8 entrepreneurs and their companies, sharing their winning formulas, with lots of practical tips and advice, that is readily applicable to so many of our businesses.

OLDIES but GOODIES

For the past 6 years we have historically produced a newsletter from Professional Sales Coach, Inc. With this Daly News newsletter as replacement, we wanted to remind our readers of a feature each month pulled from the archives which continues to be content rich. Professionalism requires life long learning.

Are You A Sales Professional?

Relationship selling means different things to different people. However, on this we should all be able to agree: successful career development depends upon how well we strengthen continuing business relationships with our customers.

Some sales people have built numerous valuable business relationships over five years. Others have been in the business for one year five times -they do deals, but don’t establish strong professional relationships with their referral sources.

A very insightful measure into your success as a sales rep is how many “clients” you have developed. We define a client as someone who gives you, on a regular basis, 50 percent or more “if not all ” of his or her business. In essence, you are the partner of that business source.

Superstar sales people tell us that 80 percent of their business regularly comes from a few accounts. Others may envy their steady stream of referrals, but aren’t willing to discipline themselves to build strong business relationships.

Measure your activities against the standards and adjust your work efforts to build a more satisfying and profitable career.

THE RULES OF SELLING

• Self renewal required
• Personal and professional vision
• Total quality management
• Invest in yourself
• See fewer people
• Transfer of trust
• Value-added partnerships
• Recognize support staff
• Be your own sales leader
• Career growth

1.SELF-RENEWAL describes the constant search for ways to improve your productivity. Productivity means becoming better, smarter and faster – a true professional. What are you doing to sharpen your axe?

A professional sales person is someone who:

-Builds a continuing relationship with regular clients.
-Gets business from a customer who is already committed to someone else.
-Helps his or her business sources to reach their full potential.
-Constantly upgrades his or her clientele.

2.To become a superstar, or to reach the success level of your dreams, you must define your PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL VISION of your future.

Focus precedes success, so define your long-term goals, and then focus on them. Where we are now and where we want to be usually are two different places. To close that gap, we begin by creating – in writing – our vision of the future.

3.QUALITY MANAGEMENT for any company starts with the sales force. Our company can only work with the business which we, as sales reps, provide it. Therefore it is incumbent upon us to seek quality business from quality sources.

Top sellers have done their homework. They know their products, services, and their company’s standards for clients. After targeting qualified prospects, they use proven methods of removing indifference and uncovering needs. They practice “if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.”

If every salesperson could do his or her job correctly, order-processing delays would lessen considerably. We waste time and lose business because of poor quality management at the outset.

4.As a sales rep we are the CEO of our own business. The more our income comes from commissions, the more this is true. As the CEO of our company, we must perform a number of leadership activities.

One requirement for any chief executive is to invest capital in the business so profitable growth can occur. So if a palm pilot would increase your business, invest in it. If getting a new computer for preparing marketing material, storing your database, and updating status reports would help you – invest in the latest hardware and software.

If an educational training program would improve your professional skills, then invest in it. Don’t wait for your company to provide you with the success tools ?-MAKE THE INVESTMENT IN YOURSELF and reap the rewards!

5.Most sellers call on too many prospects. In our belief, the assignment of a geographic territory to a professional salesperson promotes this misguided practice.

We believe you should target a limited number of top-quality account prospects, and then focus all call activity on this target list. A list would have more prospects for a new salesperson and fewer for a high producer with a strong referral base.

The goal of every sales rep should be to build a limited clientele of high-producing business sources. Concentrating on your service  and ” helping these sources be successful ” will produce far better results than trying to cover a large territory.

In addition, focusing your efforts demands considerably less energy. You’re less likely to run yourself into both creative and physical exhaustion. Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket.

Since focus precedes success, every salesperson should have at his or her fingertips a written target list of those you intend to do business with in the next six months. This list needs to be researched in order to be assured that these are prospects who will improve your clientele.

Every seller -no matter how successful – should add at least one new client per quarter. Anyone who’s not is living off his own fat.

We must constantly upgrade and reduce the number of our business sources until we work only with the highest-producing sources available. Once we have a committed clientele, we have a sales career rather than a job, and the rewards will be outstanding.

Professional sales reps are confident. Part of this comes from knowing their existing clientele will provide enough orders each month for them to be successful. They are able to perform as valuable consultants then, rather than being product pushers.

If you want to do more business SEE FEWER PEOPLE. Don’t reduce your call activity, but focus on high producers.

All top resources of business are already committed to someone else. But we can out-professional and out-position our competition, because every business source is looking for a sales person who adds more value.

6.Selling is the TRANSFER OF TRUST. If we analyze why prospects do business with a sales person, the bottom line is trust. A trusting relationship has first been built between them.

So if you commit to initiate business from a new source you must first create a sense of trust. The primary reason customers do not use our services is their fear of making a bad decision.It is easier to continue using someone else- even if they are not completely satisfied with the relationship- than it is to risk making a mistake. Dealing with a known is always more comfortable than risking the unknown.

Despite this reluctance to change sales reps, it is our experience that every customer will consider a new business relationship with us if we prove our value.

How to gain the attention of an attractive new business source is the art of selling. The most difficult objection that we face each day is indifference.

Remember that we don’t really sell our products or services to a prospect. Prospects buy our services because they trust that doing business with us is in their best interest.

It may be a subtle difference in concept, but the difference in results is very substantial, if practiced in field call activity. We want to develop direct relationships, not emphasize individual transactions. By doing so, our chances of handling all of our client’s orders increases.

7.A VALUE-ADDED PARTNERSHIP is a business relationship in which each partner receives more than expected.

The dictionary describes synergism as an action of two or more which achieves an effect of which each is individually incapable. To achieve this relationship each partner must think like the other and strive to find ways to assist his partner in being more successful.

Help your partners be more successful and no competition will ever take them away from you. In fact, we would be more successful if we would spend more time thinking of how to help our clients, and less time pushing product.

You can invest time to do this when you are serving only a limited number of business sources. As a sales person we can contribute to our client partners:

• Promotional handouts which will help them resell your product.
• Product information.
• Leads which have contacted you directly.
• Financing options.
• Follow-up material to insure your clients and their customers are satisfied and understand how to use and care for the product, and to ask for referrals.
• Co-op advertising.
• Encouragement.
• Friendship.

As clients they can contribute to us as our business partner:

• All their business that we can do.
• Prompt payment of accounts.
• Less demands for service.-Regular customer feedback.
• Encouragement.
• Friendship.
• Presenting our product or service enthusiastically to the end user, or to decision makers in their firm.

Most superstars report that working with their client partner is both easier and more mutually supportive than is dealing with someone they don’t know as well. Building lasting relationships is worth the initial time investment.

8.No discussion of value-added partnerships would be complete without consideration of our partnership with our INSIDE SUPPORT STAFF. Frequently they are the unsung, unrecognized heroes of the day-to-day sales process.

As sales people we bring in the business but our order processing, shipping, technical support, and billing departments make it happen. Without our team we are held back at best, and ineffective at the worst.

Nothing will do more to promote this teamwork than our recognition of their contributions and understanding of their problems.

We cause many of their problems by being overly demanding ” by dropping it on them and telephoning them at all times ” and by presenting a superior attitude. These things we can resolve by being courteous, building trust, and saying “thank you!”

9.Frequently we ride shotgun with sales reps for part of a day or visit with them about their work operations. In almost every case the salesperson knows what he or she should be doing differently.

“Nothing is impossible unless you have to do it yourself.” But self discipline can be defined as: Doing what we should be doing, when we should be doing it, when we don?t want to do it!

At the beginning of each year we must step outside our daily activities to examine the past year. We should know how we spent our time and the results of each time investment. We should determine what went right and what went wrong. We should find out what changes would be helpful.

Success is achieved one step at a time. Success is evaluating past performance. Success is accepting personal responsibility. Success is remembering that – “if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.”

In summary, we should BE OUR OWN SALES LEADER, as well as CEO of our business. And then act on our own advice.

10.Maximize CAREER GROWTH starts with what we believe. Belief is the guiding factor, principle, passion, and faith that provides direction in life.

We act in accordance with our beliefs. Commitment and a passion for what we do comes from a strong belief in our personal self worth, our value to others, and a clear vision of our future.

We are all capable of so much more. None of us know our true potential, yet we all know that we haven’t approached it. Our basic problems are lack of focus and an unwillingness to take on risk.

To help our growth, our business must have a written action plan. Progress on our plan must be reported to a mentor at least quarterly. But we also must analyze our results, knowing that we alone are responsible for whatever is achieved or not achieved.

Our Success Model suggests that the more we achieve, the stronger our beliefs will become. Powerful beliefs increase our potential. The greater our potential, the better we define our vision of the future. And the more complete our plan, the more successful are our results. Since focus precedes success, may we wish you- GREAT TARGETING!

If any article in this newsletter would be of interest to your co-workers, customers or clients we would 

appreciate having you forward it along. Thank you!