"Make your faults from last year be your strengths for next year."  Anonymous 

Goal setting - Here is a good rule to remember

"One must know enough about one's disposition to be able to assess which plans are feasible.  Pure self-commitment does not work; one simply cannot carry out a plan that one will find boring to complete."  Marvin Minsky author  of Music Mind and Brain

The Organic Business

First a word on selling – Selling is hard.  If you make quota it will be raised, if you missed it, you will be in trouble and it will be raised just so you have a bigger headache.  Second selling is fun great sales people make rules and a lifestyle that few people understand.

If you own a business, very few people think you are poor.  Your employees KNOW that you are making a killing while they make a living. The rules and the markets will change and your best vendors will watch to see if they need to step in and sell some of your customers – of course they will give you some credit. You best customers are going to look for ways to shave costs.  The government will make new rules. 

If you run a business you will never have time for all the surprise projects, repairs, employee discussions (read disagreements and disappointments) and runs to the office supply that don’t fit on a business plan at the beginning of the year. That business plan called for 9 hour days if you are lucky – the surprises add a little to each day. Get ready for all of these events, have fun and sell more to the right people.  (Read More)  

If you knew the answer – you would already be doing what is missing.  That is why a coach is valuable in your life…to show you what you don’t know you don’t know.

Emulate the best 

One reason why people use fertilizer is they want their lawn or flowers to look like a neighbors or like a picture they saw in a magazine...they want to emulate the best. This metaphor about gardens is not restricted to this single concept. Growing a company or your sales territory is like working in a garden or caring for your yard. (Read More) 

Two kinds of selling concepts 

What is the difference between a discount store and a specialty store?  One wants to move large quantities of every product they put in inventory and they carry only the fast moving products, while the other is focused on a niche market of people seeking value or recognition from buying in their store.  This is true in a garden center like at Home Depot vs. Smith and Hawken or clothing at WalMart vs. Benneton.  Each has a system and a price each has a client and a marketing campaign to fit their plan. What is the major difference in them?  The big mover companies are Box Movers. They sell at a price to move boxes.  They let the customer do the work and they sell boxes filled with what the customer wants.  The second company designs or seeks a product and encourages the customer to find value in their offer. These niche people are Value Sellers. Too many people think they are in the second category but sell like the first.  Without a clear plan, values sellers drift and allow their sales people to sell on price.   (Read More)   

Every salesperson makes mistakes early in their careers. The successful ones identify their most critical mistakes and eliminate them from their sales interviews. Unfortunately, some never do. Although their approaches may vary widely, among the ten most common salesperson pitfalls are: (Read More) 

Where are the links to (Read More)?  I have decided that our newsletter will be available to anyone that would like it, but you must ask...it's free.

The proof is in the marketing  

Every company in the past 6 or 60 years has been trying to find ways to become the next company with Buzz in their product. I want to be Ipod or Google. The problem is that buzz, word of mouth advertising, customer centered selling, referral marketing or any of hundreds of new or old advertising models have always been about the same concept…how do I get people to tell others about my product, so I can sell more?  

Take a look at some other word of mouth products that had Buzz – pet rock, GTO, Swatch; how many are brands that lasted?  How did Subway pass McDonalds in the number of stores? This is how marketing is what takes an idea and turns it into a brand. In regards to Subway and McDonalds think Jared and the nature of eating in America. If you can see what made Subway unique then you can see the organic concept of business development.  (Read More) 

Everyone wants to be organized…very few want to get organized 

40 years ago Montgomery Wards was one of the top 5 retail stores in America and the Chevrolet was the number one car here as well. What happened to them?  Wards is out of business and no Chevy is in the top five cars sold today.  Some people operate on the same principles as these two former giants, if ideas once worked never throw them away. Thus, they accumulate thousands of ideas and never clean out the dead stuff and replace it with something new. Now we have TV shows about cleaning up homes that operate on the same principle. People look at the homeowner and wonder how could they live like that, but nobody is saying the same thing about businesses – at least not on TV.  What would be the TV show about your life or business?  (Read More)

If you knew the answer – you would already be doing what is missing.  That is why a coach is valuable in your life…to show you what you don’t know you don’t know.

In an Inc. magazine interview Scott Cook, the founder of Quick Books, was asked if he has rules in business.  He named three - here is #2 "Get a coach. Because people aren't going to tell the boss what you need to know about yourself. Bad news never travels all the way up. So get a coach who helps you, and criticizes, and makes demands, and holds you accountable. Don't you think there's a reason that even superhuman athletes, the best in the world, always have coaches? Yet how many CEOs do? I occasionally had a coach [Peter Wendell, head of Sierra Ventures] and made some of my best decisions when using him."

You don't have to sell if you ask good questions