Leading Sales Training Company

Having High Expectations and Hitting Them!

By: Gary Michels

I want to discuss having high expectations and high goals. You know I always set my goals high and I’m never afraid to fail – I really am not. I mean, probably deep down inside, there’s a little bit of that fear there but I really tell myself, “Go for it! Go for it! Don’t be afraid to fail! Don’t be afraid to fail! It’s no big deal; even if you fail, your mom will still love you, your friends will still hang out with you, your peers will still respect you!” I think about all the successful famous people in our lives like Babe Ruth who used to be the home run king before Barry Bonds who struck out more than he hit home runs. Abe Lincoln, who lost the Illinois state legislature and lost his first wife who passed away before they ever got married. He lost limitless run-offs and different elections. Lost his first bid for presidency but became a president. I think of Thomas Edison who failed hundreds of times before he ever created the incandescent light bulb. You know, it’s okay to fail. The only part is that, and I love this quote. It says, if you want the rainbow, you must be willing to put up with the rain. You know I think of high expectations, I also think about thinking big and working hard because they come hand in hand. Do you not only think big but do you work hard? Do you really work hard? Or are you just lucky? I like to think that I work how – as often as possible – how I would work a couple of days before I go on vacation. Recently my wife and I had a baby; actually, a week ago tomorrow. It was interesting how the last few days before we went to the hospital, we were really cleaning up the house and getting work things done and doing errands and, it was like, man, I was so efficient! And what if I was that efficient all the time! So, working hard and having big, hairy audacious goals – we call it B-HAG – it’s something that I always like to focus on.

One other thing that I want to hit on on this topic is not only thinking that you’re working hard but I always try to make my goal to spend 20% of my time going after the whale accounts. In fundraising, which I did for years, I was going out to the big school Y’s and large departments. And I spent about 20% of my time going after the big ones and then the other ones would fall in place. In real estate, the very first week on the job focusing on the big, million dollar homes 20% of the time and we were able to land one. If you go too much after the big ones, you might find yourself falling on your face but 20% of your time always going after the big whales would be cool.

The third thing is to invest in your business and invest in your mind. Invest in your business and invest in your mind. Keep those high expectations. I recently had a lady that we were speaking about prospecting in telemarketing. She hadn’t been doing too much of it over the last year but I challenged her. She’s in real estate and she really was not prospecting at all. I said, “Well how much do you think you need to prospect?”     & nbsp;   &n bsp;   She said, “I need to prospect at least 10 hours a week.” I said, “what if we were to guarantee you were prospecting 10 hours a week by hiring someone to do it and whatever you do on top of that is a bonus?” She goes, “Okay! We can do that!” Anyway, what she did is she found a telemarketer at $15 per hour and she had that person prospect for her over the course of a year. It’s just been two months and she’s planning on 500 hours from this telemarketer, which will cost her $7,500. So far, what we’re seeing with the results is that we’re able to set – about every three days, this telemarketer is on the phone, about every 25 hours – set a good, solid appointment. And she’s been able to close about one out of four. So, on this track, she’s going to close five, new deals next year because of this investment and earn about $40,000 for a $7,500 investment. So I ask everybody on this call is can you invest in your business? Can you invest in a telemarketer or a prospector or someone to generate more business for you. There are several ways you can do it; I just like the phone approach because, the bottom line is, the more people you get in front of, the more business you’re going to close.

A good rule of thumb also in investing in your business is to also invest in your mind. You know, I like to invest 10% of what my annual income is every year in my mind; either getting coached – I’ve got a sales coach, a speaking coach, I’ve got a physical fitness trainer coach… I’ve got books and tapes and classes… I’m always growing because I want my mind to grow. 10% is a good rule of thumb. Brian Tracy says, and I like his rule of thumb here too, is that you should invest as much on your mind every year as you do servicing your car.

Another thing about high expectations and high goals is you must be creative. You really must be creative and kind of mix it up a bit because people love your USP, what’s called your unique selling proposition. What makes you unique and different? Let me give you a couple of ideas that I’d like to share with you. Someone says to you on the phone all the time, “I just don’t have time.” Well, go ahead and deliver to them a box of instant oatmeal, instant coffee, instant pudding, instant mashed potatoes, instant glue, instant hair dye, minute maid orange juice and attach a note in this box or basket or whatever and say, “by using these products you should be able to find a few extra minutes in your crazy schedule to give me a call.” Another one I use is to send a tennis shoe with a note attached that says, “I just want to get my foot in the door.” You could go low-budget if you want and get little tennis shoes on a key chain and you can do the same thing. I’ll take a tennis ball, put it in a box and say, “I just want to bounce a few ideas off of you,” and you can do that with a basket ball if you know a person who’s big into basket ball. Here’s a really funny one that works: send a crumpled up brochure with a sticky note that says, “Don’t throw this away again.” There’s tons of these that you can do that just make you different and unique. I had a guy that sent a box with a beach ball, sand and seashells – I’d shared this idea with him – and included a note that says, “Life’s a beach but growing your sales income doesn’t have to be.” I had recommended this to one of my friends in the fundraising business and he was able to close a district-wide fundraiser because it was a beach town and this was just really appropriate to what they were doing.

The last thing I want to share with you guys about hitting these high expectations is to act excited and you’ll become excited. People in business, people say, I’m blessed to say that people love to be around people that are energetic and fun and exciting – they love it, it brings energy to a room! There are a couple of ways that you can do that.

1.    & nbsp; Walk 10% faster. Look like you’re on a mission. Don’t just kinda staunch around. Walk with a mission and move forward and you’ll actually start getting excited when you do that!

2.    & nbsp; Develop a smile habit. Always try to have a smile on your face. If you’re just kind of wandering around, try to smile a little bit. I like to say, “Smile as if you have a banana sideways in your mouth.” Kinda funny but it reminds you if you’re not smiling to just kinda get the energy again.

3.    & nbsp; When people ask how it’s going, I always say, “It’s going great! It’s going unbelievable! Things are great!” And I try to raise my voice a little bit and raise the energy and it just starts to make me feel good.

You might have heard the quote that success is determined by the altitude of your attitude. And when you walk a little bit faster, when you’re smiling, when you’re energetic, your attitude is just better.

So, there are some good tips today that I like to share with you and, hopefully, they’ll just kind of get you thinking a little bit about, “Yeah, I can have some higher expectations for myself. I can work a little bit harder. I can have a little bit more energy. I can do this – I can be creative!” I think everybody on this call, because you have been willing to invest in your mind a little bit and get on this weekly email, you’re the type of person that will take these things at heart and if you can just get one or two ideas out of this as a refresher, I really believe it’s going to help you have a great 2008.

 

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Escaping Voice-Jail

BY: RORY VADEN

 

Do you struggle every day with voice-jail? I sure do!

I want to talk to you a little bit about handling voice mail and prospecting over the phone. I think we can all agree that, no matter what business we’re in, being efficient and effective on the phone is a pretty big part of what we have to do every day. But there are some things that I hate about using the phone. One of the things I hate most is I hate leaving voice messages. I hate leaving them because it seems like it’s so hard to get a call back from people. Especially if they don’t recognize your voice, it’s not that likely that they are to call you back. Now, as Success Starts Now has grown as a company, I find myself in the position of the leadership of a company and it’s easier for me to relate to why people aren’t as proactive about returning phone calls. For example, for most executives, if they’re in a meeting for three or four hours, by the time they come out of a meeting, it’s not uncommon for them to have four, five or six voice mails, dozens of emails… so voice mail just has not been a real effective means of prospecting for me and for any of the sales people that I’ve ever followed.

 I’ve noticed is that average producers tend to be okay with voice mail. They tend to accept the fact that they have to leave voice messages and they will do so. There are some effective things that you can do on voice messages in order to warrant a call back, which we’ll talk about in upcoming weeks. What I want to talk about is the mentality of a top producer is altogether different. When you’re trying to get hold of somebody, an average producer will make a call that sounds something like this. They’ll say, “Hi, is John available?” The gatekeeper will respond, “I’m sorry, he’s in a meeting; can I transfer you to their voice mail?” and an average sales person would say, “Sure, I guess that’s fine,” and then they’ll either leave a message or just hang up.

Top producers, as I have been traveling around and following them around for the past couple of years and have watched them, I’ve seen that top producers have an altogether different mentality. They learn to, what we call, commit to the call. They don’t just dial for the sake of dialing. They’re not just trying to get 100 dials in a day because they know if they do 100 dials, they’ll get two or three solid leads or appointments. When they pick up the phone to make a prospecting call, they’re actually committed to getting their prospect on the line. They want to get them on the line right now.

One of the techniques that I’ve taken away from my time in the last couple of years is I learned from a guy named Jeff Heath. And Jeff worked for a company called Unfair Advantage which is another southwestern company but he was formerly one of the directors of sales for Nextel Corporation. I will forever be thankful to Jeff because he is the guy who showed me how to commit to a phone call; how to not accept this idea of “they’re out of the office, they’re in a meeting, they’re busy” and leaving a voice mail. It has made a significant difference in my production.

If I could show you a way that you would never have to leave a voice mail for one of your prospects again, would that be valuable to you? I believe that it would. It’s been an incredible value for me. So I’m going to share with you the technique now which we call riding the bull. Riding the bull serves as a metaphor, obviously, for somebody in the rodeo who’s committed to staying on and being jerked around but making that commitment just like the commitment you would make to riding out a bull for 8 seconds is the kind of commitment that we need to make as sales people when we are embarking on a prospecting call. So here are the steps for how to ride the bull. Just write this down on your paper.

1.    & nbsp;  Ask if there’s a paging system.

2.    & nbsp;  Ask if they can transfer you to somebody who sits next to or nearby your prospect.

3.    & nbsp;  Ask if they have a business cell phone number that you can have.

4.    & nbsp;  Ask them do they have the capability to connect you to the cell phone of the person you’re trying to reach.

5.    & nbsp;  Do they have an assistant that I can speak with?

6.    & nbsp;  EBS – which stands for Equal Business Stature

These are the steps when you’re riding the bull that you can go through – the checklist that you can go through to raise somebody more effectively on the phone. Here’s how it works:

I would call up and say, “Hi is John available?” and they would say, “No, I’m sorry, John is not available right now,” and I would say, “Great, can we page him?” The secretary might respond, “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have that capability,” and I’d say, “Okay, is he in today?” and if they say, “Yes,” I’ll say, “Good then can you transfer me to somebody who sits next to him or sits nearby him?” And they might say, “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that.” “Okay, I can appreciate that. Well, I’ll tell you what; does he have a business cell phone that I can try him on?” “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give out that number, “ “Sure, I can understand that. I’ll tell you what; I’ll hold. You can call him on his cell phone and when you reach him, you can connect us.” “Sorry sir, but once again, we do not have that capability. Is there something I can help you with?” to which I might respond, “You know, does he have an assistant that I can speak to?” and he may or may not. And, at this point, you can choose to ride the bull again, which would be to say, “Yes, he has an assistant but he or she is not available.” “Okay great, can you page her? Can you transfer me to someone who sits next to her? Does she have a business cell that I can call her on? Can you connect us?” or you can choose to ask for somebody of equal business stature. If you’re not able to reach John on the phone, you could still ask to speak, “Okay, is there somebody else who is of a comparable position to John’s that I can speak with?”

There are a couple of things that are happening here. First of all, this is obviously most effective in the business to business environment. If you’re calling into an organization and it’s a large organization and you have no idea who the decision makers are, or if you have no such warm reference, it is especially effective to ride the bull. However, in our business at Success Starts Now, we call on managers of real estate offices, of mortgage offices and we don’t typically call as often on large sales organizations or on large corporate type companies and riding the bull still works. You can just play with the different steps in the riding the bull process to help you get hold of people. For example, many times, I will just jump directly to “Does he have a business cell phone?” In this day and age, people typically have a business cell phone. It’s not uncommon for someone to have a separate phone for business use and to publicize that information and to get it out there. It just depends on what type of client you’re calling on. Either way, whether you’re calling on major corporations with large, thousands, hundreds of thousands of employees or, if you are calling on somebody on their home number or that works for a small business, learning to ride the bull is incredibly important. It’s learning to commit to actually getting the person on the phone. You can think of other creative things that you can say to raise someone on the phone and that way you don’t spend as much of your day just wasting as much of your day leaving voice mails for people and never hearing back.

The message that you’re communicating to whoever the gatekeeper is, is that this is really important that I catch them. You have to ask yourself if that’s true. When you’re a sales person and you’re making a prospecting call, is it important that you catch them. I would argue that it is. If it’s not important then maybe you shouldn’t be making the call but, for you as a sales person, the most valuable asset that you have is your time.