Sales is transferring a belief. A belief translates into confidence. That confidence moves people. It is not about getting you to do something. It is about getting you to believe in something. If you believe in something you have more personal buy in, i.e. you are more passionate to move it forward. Those that transfer the belief better are the ones people gravitate towards.

The hardest part is getting them to listen so you can instill the belief. Why would you stop and listen to someone you do not know much less engage in a conversation? You must find a way to earn credibility and trust which opens the door more for them to listen. This is the space that true salesmen thrive in. But that is a whole other blog.

Back to where we started. Let me ask you, are you in sales? Everyone is in their own way. You have to sell your staff on what needs to be done. You have to sell your children on what not to do. The confidence I mentioned above goes both ways. If you have confidence that what you are saying to them is correct and benefits them, you are more likely to get them to move forward on your belief. The more people you have following your belief instills more confidence and makes it easier to move more people in your chosen direction.

By Richard Goering,Vice President of Sales and Operations, Bona

Are you held hostage by your “star” salesperson? Do they believe their way is the only way to sell even though their sales 

They do things their way if not they threaten to leave and take all their customers and sales with them. But these days is that even realistic? People buy from people. And they are served and fulfilled by their overall brand experience. From product and service delivery to billing and flexible programs that meet their unique needs.

In my experience in hiring very talented sales people from across North America, one of the attractions of bringing them on was to get their “book of business” and yet the average defector was only able to pull in 10% of what they said they could.

It is very easy for your top salesperson to take their foot off the gas when they are the front runner. Without the competition of others pushing them to drive harder, they lose their edge and ability to rise to the occasion. Unless you create a culture of learning and innovation to push the fold of what you can achieve. The crux is how do you teach an old dog new tricks? To adapt you must adopt.

Their way may have worked for a long time which is why there is always fear in trying something new. They feel out of place in unfamiliar territory. A good salesperson will find their way around any obstacle. So if you are looking to better your top sales staff, keep them focused on the evolving pains of their potential and current clients. Then involved them in creating the solutions of how to change their sales approach to be the one and only answer, above the competition, positioning themselves to a wider audience.

And as I always tell my teams, “sales is a numbers game.” When I can show them how to expand their funnel and then approach it in a way that speeds the flow to conversions, they become advocates of change.

But remember it is human nature to revert back to their comfort zone. The catch is how do you produce award winning growth through change management and at the same time keep your team comfortable? Comfort comes from what they know. What they have done over and over again.

To maintain change your team must practice their new skills until they become a natural part of their behavior. You do this by practicing, role-playing, hot seating, et cetera…. then during the process have them take ownership by empowering them to find issues and make incremental adjustments as they put these tools into play.

The great thing about your true all-star salespeople is they are resilient. Keep them engaged and energized by stretching them to achieve new heights. You’ll all be in a happier place as your sales continue to grow with you as you grow.

By Richard Goering, VP of Sales and Operations, Shingle Corp

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You’re in a common industry and you have tons of competitors; how can you capitalize on more opportunities that come your way? How can you attract more buyers than your competitors or win business even though competitors are undercutting you? How can you make sure you have clients who remain loyal to your company? How can you generate more referrals? How about attracting bigger deals?  The answer is quite simple.

In my time here at CHI, I’ve personally spoken with more than 7,000 business owners and executives who are looking for help in their business. There is one common denominator among those who are dominating their market—thriving in a down economy versus those struggling to stay in business or flat-lining in growth. That one commonality is training. Only 10 percent of the population has what’s called “the learning mindset” according to Harvard Business Review. If there is any one X factor that has significant impact on your business, it’s training. Harvard Business Press even published a book on the importance of training to be successful in today’s global economy. The bottom line is that consistent training has proven time and again to get bigger results.

We’re in football season right now, so I’ll use a sports analogy. Your favorite team makes its money on the field during game day. But where does the success really come from? How would you feel if you found out that your favorite team doesn’t practice during the week because they are extremely confident that they can perform when necessary? You wouldn’t be thrilled and you’d probably expect them to play poorly against a competitor who has been training relentlessly. This is why the best running backs train beyond what is expected of them during the off-season, i.e. Adrian Peterson or Matt Forte.

Most professions (like accountants, financial planners, attorneys, and healthcare professionals) are mandated through steadfast certifications to continue their education in their related field. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to use an accountant who is not up-to-date with their understanding of current tax laws or a physician who hasn’t kept up with medical advances and technology. The same is true of your own business. However, I’d like to focus on one of the most important growth and survival aspects of your business; sales and marketing.

Many of our sales and marketing concepts work with great success for the vast majority of our clients, yet some have said they just didn’t work for them. When I’ve asked them how much time they have spent dedicating themselves or their staff to becoming masters of their new resources, they come clean with me saying they trained on it once. When you train on a skill, you have some improvement in that skill that is retained and some that drops off. The more you train, the more you can expect to increase in skill level.

The majority of small business owners don’t consistently focus on training and improving the various impact areas of their business, such as marketing activities, customer service, sales teams, or partner relations. When you spend just one hour per week training on a few areas of your business and only make a 1% improvement, it actually translates to significant long-term gains.

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Take for instance a team of ten salespeople. If training improved their individual sales by 1%, or increased the amount of presentations they had by just 1%, that’s a 10% increase in performance overall.

The Chet Holmes Method™ teaches how small, incremental improvements can have a huge impact on your results. But you may never notice where the small improvements need to be made unless you’re consistently training on the impact areas of your business where constant improvements matter.

The power of skills training was a basis of Chet Holmes’ winning methodologies because he knew that “becoming a master was not about doing four thousand things, but doing twelve things four thousand times.” If you’re a professional business owner or executive, train like one; train like you’re a professional athlete. Decide today to spend 30 minutes to an hour each week training in each of the impact areas of your business.

Can you do it? Yes, you can.

By Dennis Galiano, Director of Client Affairs at Chet Holmes International

 What does this have to do with your business?

More new businesses are starting up faster than any other time in history and your competition can come from down the street or the other side of the planet. With so many options available, now more than ever, you must differentiate yourself from your competition. Often business owners perceive that the marketplace is forcing them to compete on price alone if there’s nothing ‘unique’ about their business; this is where education-based marketing steps in to save the day.

The usual response is to spend more money on advertising to hammer your message into your consumers. But, if you’re limited on budget, resources, network and opportunities and you still need to get it done, what do you do? What would MacGyver do?

Brains beat budget. More important than having specialized knowledge is having the right mindset to deal with difficult situations and come up with creative solutions to complex problems.

1. Understand the Most Important Person in Your Business

Because MacGyver deeply understood the underlying principles behind what he was doing, he was able to use common items in extraordinary ways. Just like you need to understand your ideal client to connect with them on a deeper level. The purpose of your business should be to understand your client, solve their problems and provide so much value that you become their only logical option.

Businesses lose clients every day because they forget clients want to connect with another person, not a company. One of the best ways to do this is by developing an Ideal Client Profile.

As yourself these questions:

• What’s your client’s biggest fear or frustration?
• What’s your client embarrassed to admit, even to themselves?
• What words do they use when talking about their fear and frustration?
• What does the conversation going on in their head sound like?
• How does your perfect client use your product or service?

Find all the things your ideal clients have in common and then speak to those commonalities, because something magical happens when a person feels understood.

2. Embrace Systems Thinking

Whether you’re selling a product or a service, what you’re really selling is an experience. An experience moves in stages from discovery, purchasing, support assistance, eventual replacement and everything in between. Companies usually handle each stage as separate processes done by a different department, which can result in a terrible experience.

If you consider the different parts of your business as part of a system designed to put a prospect in one end and produce a loyal, satisfied client at the other end, what would you do differently? What processes would you put in place? What parts can be removed to streamline the process?

This is known as Systems Thinking. Systems Thinking views a system as a whole with properties, behaviors and their effects which can’t be understood by looking at the components alone and may only show up when interacting with other components in the system.

Here’s how to apply systems thinking to your business.

• Map out your system process
• What problem are you solving?
• Is it a problem people want solved and are willing to pay for?
• What is your exit strategy?
• How will the solution meet those strategic goals or long-term vision?
• What unintended consequences might it have?

This will determine what plans, policies and procedures you set up in your company. There are many companies that think of their business as a whole system and offer excellent services with great experience supported by smooth, efficient operations in order to deliver upon their promises; companies like Apple, Amazon, eBay, FedEx, Kayak, UPS, Nordstrom, Ikea, Virgin, Trader Joe’s, and Zappos, to name a few.

3. Learn From Outside Your Industry

Because MacGyver understood the underlying principles of technology and science across many disciplines, he knew how to combine common, unrelated objects to create exactly what he needed to get out of a nasty situation.

You can do the same thing for your business by not only staying current on what is happening inside your industry, but on others outside of your space as well. You will learn about strategies and tactics that might be as common as dirt in one industry, but can be like a nuclear explosion when applied in another.

When Hotmail first launched, they had a problem – how to grow their number of users. Their original idea was to use TV and billboard ads to promote their new web email service.  One of their investors, Tim Draper, recalled stories about Tupperware parties from the 1950s, where housewives would get together and show off the latest Tupperware products. Tim suggested each Hotmail email sent should have at the bottom, “P.S. Get your free email at Hotmail.com“.

Within hours of doing this, their user-base shot up. They started getting 3,000 users a day. Within 6 months they got 1 million users, and 5 weeks later they hit 2 million users. When they sold to Microsoft one and a half years after first launching, they had 12 million users.

They took a successful concept from a totally unrelated industry and applied it to their problem.

CLICK HERE for more examples of borrowed ideas from unrelated industries.

4. TEST

MacGyver wasn’t daunted by any situation, no matter how much the odds were stacked against him. He rationally thought through each situation and pieced together a solution bit by bit. He formulated a plan and worked with whatever he had on hand.

In your business many situations might seem impossible – you can’t get your team to execute. No one is contributing to the company blog. The executives won’t fund your marketing campaign. You might be really frustrated, but let’s think about it. Even if you got approval and the money you need, it doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. You may waste a lot of money during implementation. Maybe you’ve targeted the wrong market or you haven’t thought all the logistics through; it can be very risky. So instead, do small tests and experiment.

CLICK HERE to get more examples of how to apply the ‘Test’ principle.

Here are the takeaways you can apply to your business:

1. Connect deeply with the people
2. Apply Systems Thinking, a creative—MacGyver like—approach to business problems.
3. Step outside of your industry and see what others are doing and how you might implement it in your business to shake up the industry.
4. Test small and fail fast so you can focus on workable ideas and scale up.

By guest blogger Luis Arauz, Chet Holmes International Community Member, Entrepreneur, Business Owner and Account Manager at Brella Productions