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The instant my life changed forever (and yours can too)

The instant my life changed forever (and yours can too)

by | Blog, Sales Tips, Tricks and Trends

It was just days after my father, Chet Holmes’ funeral.

Though that time is mostly a blur for me, it’s as if a snapshot of that moment is burnt into my memory.

I was seated in front of my computer and every surface of my room was filled with flowers. Flowers from my father’s funeral that everyone had so lovingly sent us.

Little did I know it, but I was about to discover something profound that would change the course and trajectory of my life for the next decade.

It came in the form of a Profit and Loss statement.

 

Back then, I was just a father’s daughter. A singer/songwriter hustling to release my fourth record.

Trying to tour the west coast and make music that would move people.

Luckily, this Profit and Loss Statement wasn’t completely lost on me because the theoretical concept was covered in my finance class in college.

 

My “Oh sh*t” moment started to dawn on me as I opened the document and continued to scroll across the P&L.

 

Looking at all the different companies my father ran, I started to realize I didn’t even know what half of them were.

The more I scrolled the more overwhelmed I became until I literally broke down into sobbing tears.

How could I, a mere singer, be responsible for this?

Ask me to write a poetic sonnet about the utter dread filling my every being. That I could have done.

But this. This was more than just some words that would get me through this one.

 

It would be years before the numbers ever started to make sense to me.

I hired CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, auditors, you name it. I tried them all.

 

Scrambling to make sense of this company I’d inherited, with zero succession plan.

Don’t get me wrong, my father built a MACHINE, he hadn’t been in the day to day of the business in years. His executive leadership team meeting had roughly 30 staff in it who would report to the rest of the company.

 

And yet of everyone there, it seemed my father was rather close to his chest about his numbers and didn’t give much foresight to others.

 

Flash forward to today, eight years later…

You’d better believe after living in that black hole of misinformation for years, I learned from my mistakes.

Now, at the start of every week, my team delivers dashboards of where we stand.

 

How many website visits, opt-ins, email open rates, click-throughs, purchases at every step of my customer journey, appointments set, contracts signed.

My fingers are so close to the pulse that if we skip a beat, I know. And I know quickly.

 

I can remember back in the day, sitting in meetings with our radio ad buyer.

We’d just spent another hundred thousand dollars that week and we were only able to guess at the exact results of that ad budget.

 

Don’t get me wrong, my father was an absolute GENIUS in advertising. His analytics I’m sure were better than 95% of companies out there. It was just a lack of technology that wasn’t present like it is today.

So. After several years of assisting businesses of all shapes and sizes, I’ve recognized that dashboards and data are something every executive wants, but very few actually have.

 

POP QUIZ: ANSWER ME THESE TWO QUESTIONS

  • How many leads do you generate on average a week?

  • What percentage of your leads turn into a sale?

The majority of executives will make up a number… Guessing what the answer to these two very basic questions is.

A very rare executive, we do find them every once in a while, but it is rare… Do they have their fingers on the real data of their business?

 

If 88% of executives hate their CRM system, you know it’s probably also true that those marvelous dashboards we all want aren’t giving the proper data.

However, that is only a symptom of the main issue that 92% of businesses don’t even have a sales process. So how can you track something you lack a system for?

The moral of this story comes from years of anguish.

 

My battle scars are deep and they’ve been painful.

But they have taught me one thing and my father said it best,

“A way to achieve goals quickly is to measure effectiveness every step of the way. If you are constantly measuring, then you can adjust.” Chet Holmes

This last year was one for the record books. A pandemic that swept the world and left us all questioning what will be the future.

66% of CEOs still feel that the “new norm” won’t be for another 2 years. Of that, 30% say that we will never go back to “normal.”

In such an absolutely volatile market, with so many changes sweeping businesses across every industry, it is absolutely mission-critical to know EXACTLY where we stand.

 

Forbes research reveals the best thing executives can do right now is be agile, flexible. But how can positive decisions be made without a clear, objective, look at the business and its numbers.

 

That’s why I made a tough decision. Something that my company had never done in its 30 years of business.

 

My father developed a system working with 60 of the Fortune 500 as clients, and refined it over decades of consulting work.

A process that still to this day, our consulting clients pay $36,000 for, to diagnose every area of their business, find the places where money is left on the table and biggest room for growth…

 

That whole process centers around a self-administered Opportunity Assessment review that is part of our secret sauce that has led to hundreds of millions, and billions of dollars in sales generated for clients.

Against the advice of some of my top executives, I’ve decided to make this available to everyone at a nominal amount.

 

Why am I practically giving away our coveted intellectual property?

Because I know what it’s like to feel like I’m running my business in the dark. Not knowing where to go, unsure where the profitable options are, unclear as to the next steps.

 

I don’t want you or anyone I’m associated with to have that feeling.

I want to make a difference for you, so you can be better armed to make this year the best in the history of your company.

 

Click here to get yours.

May it fuel you so that the latter half of this year you make one of the most memorable.

 

P.S. I have to say I did the diagnostic back in November and it completely shifted my strategic plan for this year and because of it we’ve had two record-breaking quarters.

Enjoy the Opportunity Assessment. May it bring light to those places of your business that are dark or in hiding.

 

With humbleness and gratitude,
Amanda Holmes
Henry Ford’s surprising motivation method

Henry Ford’s surprising motivation method

by | Blog, Sales Tips, Tricks and Trends

Most people know Henry Ford as the founder of Ford Motor Company and the originator of the assembly line.

 But Ford was also a master motivator. 

 One day he walked onto the factory floor carrying a can of paint.

 He marched to the middle of the room and proceeded to paint a large number 6 right on the floor. 

 When the night workers came in, they asked what it meant.

Ford told them that it was the number of cars the day crew built. 

 The next morning he came in and learned the night crew had built seven cars. 

 He then painted a 7 over the 6 that had been there. 

 When the day crew asked about it, he told them that that was how many cars the night crew had built. 

 By playing the day crew off against the night crew, he was able to substantially increase productivity for his factory.

 Gamifications like this are a great way to inspire and increase effectiveness in sales or any other areas of your business.

 This works in any industry. 

 Yet few companies take advantage of this natural human tendency that plays such a large role in today’s culture.  

 How do you come up with out-of-the-box ideas like this?

 The best way I know is CHI’s proprietary Business Opportunity Assessment, a powerful diagnostic tool that examines every system in your business.

 Until now, it was only available as part of our $36,000 consulting package.

 However, as a special promotion, we’re now making it available separately in a self-guided format for just $49. 

 CEOs who have gone through the Opportunity Assessment tell us that it truly opened their eyes to what is really happening in their business.

 The diagnostic tool contains sets of incisive questions to draw out information you probably haven’t considered. 

 But be warned. You might find some of the questions challenging or uncomfortable. 

 This is by design.

 Breakthroughs come when you’re out of your comfort zone. 

 But you won’t be alone.

 If you need help, you can schedule a no-obligation complimentary consultation to ask questions.

 You’re guaranteed to uncover untapped profit opportunities hidden in plain sight within your business. 

 You are also sure to unmask problem areas you need to shore up.

 Honestly, at $49 this is a no-brainer.

 If you go through the CHI Opportunity Assessment and don’t feel you received 100x the value, I INSIST you reach out to us for an immediate refund.

 That’s how sure I am this will help you. 

 Best regards,
Amanda Holmes

 P.S. Henry Ford once received a letter from notorious bank robber Clyde Barrow (of Bonnie & Clyde fame) praising Ford vehicles as great getaway cars. 

 Honestly, it might feel a bit like stealing when you receive so much value for just $49, but go ahead. I urge you to try the CHI Opportunity Assessment and see for yourself.

 

4 Questions You Need to Ask to Grow Your Company to the Next Level in the Second Half of 2021

4 Questions You Need to Ask to Grow Your Company to the Next Level in the Second Half of 2021

by | Blog, Sales Tips, Tricks and Trends

4 Questions You Need to Ask to Grow Your Company to the Next Level in the Second Half of 2021

4 Questions You Need to Ask to Grow Your Company to the Next Level in the Second Half of 2021

Chet Holmes International has been assisting companies for three decades on how to grow -regardless of what’s going on in their company or industry.

Our Ultimate Sales Machine methodology has done it all. Our methodology has been able to:

  • Double the sales of a paint manufacturer even when all the competitors were half the price.
  • Sell television advertising in an industry where TV ads are becoming obsolete -doubling sales after a mere 8 months.
  • Increase leads 5,400% when the market was in a blackout and nobody was buying.

These times we find ourselves in are unprecedented, but it isn’t the first time companies have come to us looking to gain revenue fast. As Chet Holmes says in the NYT Best Seller The Ultimate Sales Machine:

“When I go in to help a company that’s in trouble, the most powerful thing I do is to get them focused on solutions and setting goals for improving the situation. This shift in focus shows up in the results the company is getting.”

The Obstacle

Just like after a car accident has happened on the side of the road. Do you find yourself slowing down to look? Have you ever tried to resist the urge to look at it and just tried to focus on the road? It’s hard right?

And that’s not even happening to YOU, that’s happening to someone else and you can’t take your eyes off of it. What happens when you have an issue or a problem, do you watch it like the car wreck it is, or do you keep your eyes on the road unwavering?

Here is an important distinction that every day we see business executives miss.

Let’s do an exercise.

Answer these following 4 questions about Information regarding transactions in your business:

 

Were you able to answer these four simple questions?

IMPORTANT: you would be shocked to know how many CEOs are unable to answer these 4 questions.

There’s three groups of executives.

  1. The ELITE top 5% of business executives that knows their numbers like clockwork.
  2. The top 20% of business executives that don’t know the answer but still are confident that they can find the answer.
  3. The remaining 80% of executives that don’t have the answers and won’t look for them.

How will you ever make an accurate goal if you don’t know where you are today?

As Chet Holmes says in The Ultimate Sales Machine, “People respect what you inspect.”

Especially if times are tough, you must have your hand on the pulse. If you’re repeating to yourself, “times are tough I just have to get through this Covid thing and we’ll be ok.” That statement is reactive, it’s based in fear, and has no definitive outcome.

 ULTIMATE SALES MACHINE EXCERPT:

“A Shortcut

Keeping your mind focused on your success may be difficult at first, but here’s a shortcut to help you make the transition. Your mind is more receptive when it is less busy. Right before you go to bed and right when you wake up, you are at your most receptive. That’s the best time to really focus your RAS on all the positive things you want in your life. If you picture yourself succeeding or overcoming something at those times, your brain will grab hold of that much easier. If you’re about to have a big meeting, picture it exactly as you want it to go. This visualization will stick with you as you enter that meeting and help create the results you want.”

If you find out that you actually generate 25 sales a month and to get to the next level all you need is one more sale a week. The goal is tangible, it’s definitive. And something you can track daily and weekly to get to your desired outcome.

Your focus can then shift from confusion, overwhelm, depression, into clarity, determination, and creativity to get the desired outcome.

So the first step to rapid sales growth is -knowing where you are.

We highly recommend taking the time, especially at the end of quarters and year end to look back at the last 12 months to see where your true metrics. To understand where you’ve been, and where you stand. Spending that additional 2 to 4 hours looking at your data will only make you work smarter and ensure success.

 Action Step

For several decades now we have refined the process of collecting data and analyzing the Opportunity within an organization. You’re welcome to spend hours searching through your reports to try to find this information to then develop your plan for the next 12 months.

Or. You can short cut 30 years of practice and use a process we’ve proven to work.

We know that business is really weird right now, so to give you a heads start we have made our Opportunity Assessment available to you. Our consulting clients pay a minimum of $36,000 initial fee to go through our diagnostic process. We’ve always kept this proprietary information close to our chest. However, we’re in unprecedented times, so we’ve made a condensed version available to you for a 99.9% discount. Please consider it our gift to you to get a clear picture of where your business is, what it’s strengths are, where it’s weaknesses are, so you can have more certainty and clarity for your plans in the next 12 months.

Please share it with anyone else you think needs a reboot, a refresh. A clear look at their business to start fresh. This Opportunity Assessment is yours for the taking.

Get The Opportunity Assessment Here
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The instant my life changed forever (and yours can too)

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It was just days after my father, Chet Holmes’ funeral. Though that time is mostly a blur for me, it’s as if a snapshot of that moment is burnt into my memory. I was seated in front of my computer and every surface of my room was filled with flowers. Flowers from my...

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How To Triple Your Sales Productivity -Sales Team Management Tips

by | Blog, Sales Tips, Tricks and Trends

How To Triple Your Sales Productivity -Sales Team Management Tips

How To Triple Your Sales Productivity -Sales Team Management Tips

There’s a hidden weight dragging down the bottom line of every business.

We see it every day. Studies reveal 92% of companies have ineffective, incomplete, or non-existent sales process. Or worse, sales processes that their salespeople don’t follow. The need for understanding your sales process is more important when years are tough because it forces us to become smarter and more efficient about how we market and sell our products and services.

Follow these important steps to improve your sales productivity:

1. Know Where You Are.

“People respect what you inspect.” Chet Holmes cleverly said. This is a very simple concept and yet you’d be shocked at how many companies have little understanding of their true numbers. Here’s a case study to show you the power of understanding your data:

We had a client with a sales floor full of salespeople. We built a tracker that would post how many cold calls each person had made every two hours. In one week this simple act of posting the number of calls for each salesperson tripled the amount of cold calls the team was making. It created a natural competitiveness that was also fun. 

Keep in mind that it’s important that your organization’s performance be monitored. Tracking metrics, setting benchmarks for improvement and evaluating them regularly makes it easier to boost moral and adjust to reach your goals.

If you’d like some assistance from our 30 year learning curve of diagnosing businesses we’ve put together a gift for you to identify where you are and find hidden pockets of money. Take advantage of our Ultimate Sales Machine Opportunity Assessment here.

2. Have a well-defined sales process.

Every sales trainer on the planet will give you steps to the sale. We at Chet Holmes International train companies on the 7 Steps to the Sale as taught in our flagship New York Times Best Seller “The Ultimate Sales Machine” which explains these 7 steps:

  1. Establish rapport (trust and respect)
  2. Find need
  3. Build value
  4. Create desire
  5. Overcome objections
  6. Close sale
  7. Follow up

Do you have each step to the sales process thought through with scripts? Ebooks? Memes? Infographics? PLEASE NOTE: Most companies put all their time and energy focused on the back end, the last two steps of the sale.

HOWEVER, studies of the best sales people indicated they actually flip the pyramid upside down and spend majority of their time establishing rapport. Once they do that, the close of the sale becomes much easier.

If you haven’t looked at your steps to the sale in a while, we recommend going back to the basics to get your foundation as strong as possible for the next 12 months to take flight.

3. Choose a Superstar Team

Research reports 3 out of 4 salespeople are ineffective. Twenty percent barely make the grade meaning only 6% of sales reps could be considered sales superstars. Do you have sales superstars? Watch this video to see if you’ve hired the right team and how to attract more top producers. Typically in a group of 10 sales people its very common to have just two superstars producing 80% of the revenue while the other 8 produce 20%. What if you had only superstars? Imagine how quickly you could double your sales. 

In Summary

Building a highly productive sales machine isn’t about doing 4,000 things. It’s more about doing 12 things 4,000 times. Use these 3 important tips to guide you in your approach to running your own highly efficient sales team.

Take Action

When was the last time you did an opportunity assessment of your business? Are you clear on how many sales appointments you have a day on average? What percentage turns into a sale? How many days it takes to do so? Majority of business owners miss the critical fundamentals of their business and therefore leave money on the table.

For the last 30 years we have been using CHI’s proprietary Business Opportunity Assessment, as a powerful diagnostic tool that examines every system in your business to find gaps of hidden opportunity. Until now, it was only available as part of our $36,000 consulting package. However, as a special promotion, we’re now making it available separately in a self-guided format for just $49. CEOs who have gone through the Opportunity Assessment tell us that it truly opened their eyes to what is really happening in their business.

The diagnostic tool contains sets of incisive questions to draw out information you probably haven’t considered. But be warned. You might find some of the questions challenging or uncomfortable. This is by design. Breakthroughs come when you’re out of your comfort zone.

But you won’t be alone. If you need help, you can schedule a no-obligation complimentary consultation to ask questions. You’re guaranteed to uncover untapped profit opportunities hidden in plain sight within your business. You are also sure to unmask problem areas you need to shore up. Honestly, at $49 this is a no-brainer.

If you go through the CHI Opportunity Assessment and don’t feel you received 100x the value, I INSIST you reach out to us for an immediate refund. That’s how sure I am this will help you.

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Henry Ford’s surprising motivation method

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The Power of Storytelling In Marketing

The Power of Storytelling In Marketing

by | Blog, Sales Tips, Tricks and Trends

Stories create a lasting impression

I know you want to create a lasting impression on your potential customers.

But, with the clutter factor of millions of pieces of data bombarding them, how will they even remember or notice your efforts? Research suggests that out of the 11 million bits of information sent to our brain, only 50 bits are processed. So, our goal is to make sure our marketing is relevant enough to be included in that .00045% of information that the average human brain can remember.

 

This means that if something isn’t that important, our mind automatically deletes or distorts them from our memory. You’ve probably experienced how easy it is for us to forget even the most important of things. While we might have a hard time recalling what a colleague discussed during a recent company meeting, it’s interesting how we can still remember the plot of a movie we saw several years ago.

This is how powerful storytelling can be when utilized properly – it unconsciously leaves a lasting impression on our brain whether we like it or not!

 

There’s scientific proof for this – cognitive psychologist Joseph Brunner suggests that humans are 22 times more likely to store facts when they are incorporated in a story. 

Ads perform 2x better when incorporated with a story

It’s always worth remembering that customers have something in common – they are all humans and they have a wide range of emotions. Research also suggests that out of 1,400 advertising campaigns, those with purely emotional content performed twice as well as others with only rational content.

 Case study: How Kari Used Her Research Backed Story to Win Free Marketing on Fox 7 News

 

Notice how Kari didn’t have to pay for these FOUR spots on Fox 9 News. Instead, she used the power of market research to tell a very relevant story about what Minneapolis home owners were experiencing right now. It helped to sell out the stock of her product and she didn’t even pitch! All she did was educate and tell a story about the effects of having rats in your house and how they can cause things as serious as house fires!

She took a story from her Core Story and made it relevant for the newscaster so that she gave Kari all four TV spots!

Turning stories into sales 

Storytelling can be displayed in many different mediums. It can be through the form of an article, blog posts, a 2-minute animation, podcasts, Instagram stories, LinkedIn Posts, and even through VR! Whatever medium you choose, what’s important is how you can deliver high-quality messages that are relatable for your ideal prospects.

While storytelling is proven to be effective in marketing, it isn’t always easy to come up with content capable of connecting you to the audience on a deeper level and relevant enough to be shared across different platforms. This is where Empire Research Group has been highly trained over the last 30 years to create the most compelling stories to overcome some of companies’ biggest problems like objections to price, lack of appointments generated, and closing more sales.

Learn more about how Empire Research Group is utilizing the power of story, backed by market data to build your next automated sales funnel to help you create your Ultimate Sales Machine!

Click Here To Learn More
How to Win Your Best Buyers with Creativity and Laughter Starring Tom Schaff

How to Win Your Best Buyers with Creativity and Laughter Starring Tom Schaff

by | Blog, Sales Tips, Tricks and Trends

Learn the easier, least expensive way to double sales with your own Dream Buyer Strategy here!

GET MY DREAM BUYER COURSE!

Here’s some big takeaways to learn from Tom Schaff on choosing your Dream Buyers:

  • When looking for your Dream Buyers, if you’re looking for the ones that have the problem that you solve, you’ll be too late. Ask yourself: what’s the problem we solve, what’s the situation that creates that problem? Therefore, you must look at your Dream Buyers thinking of the antecedent events that cause the need. When you can find the sign that says someone’s going to buy they just don’t know it yet, then you’re being smart.
  • Most companies ask the wrong question, they ask:
    • Who do I want to work with, instead of who can I create the most value for?
    • Who’s harmed the most because I’m not here?
  • When you can get your list of who you can make the most difference for, weirdly enough, they’ll be waiting for you to show up. That tends to be your best dream clients, when they need you more than you need them. Then you can have even greater success.
  • Don’t just look at raw numbers and say here’s a hundred for my Dream Buyers. That’s a list. If you’re going to do that, call the Z’s nobody ever gets to them.
  • Dream Buyer Strategy is not a prize to be won, it’s a fit to be made. It’s a marriage to be made.
  • Why go after a hundred equally when there’s ten you can make a difference for.

Last but not least, some golden nuggets to keep in mind as you continue your journey:

  • Once you’ve hunted whales and like it, you’ll never hunt anything but whales again.
  • You can get in front of anyone if you have a reason.
  • The word salesperson is an interesting one, we often leave the “person” out of the sale.
  • Other people go to work, I go to play.

Highlights:

3:51 How to choose your Dream Buyers.
6:24 How Covid crashed his business and had to start a whole new company overnight. Went from zero to seven figures within 45 days using this Dream Buyer Strategy.
13:23 How to find your Dream job.
18:33 Field of Dreams – Deploying his Celebrity Dream Buyers right now which includes a six foot cardboard cutout of Dwayne Johnson.
25:54 Clever direct mail piece you’ve NEVER thought of, and work like a DREAM.
30:15 Tom’s realization that business can be fun and funny and where it came from.
32:32 Tom’s failed comic career turned into his best kept secret for cold calling technique that landed the biggest executives in the Fortune 500.
39:17 Picking your Dream Buyers isn’t about what you want, it’s about who wants you. Story about college when Tom didn’t know how to sell and yet became a top producer anticipating the pain of his clientele before they had their problem.
46:50 Don’t just pick a list based on a name, what works better is to think. Here’s an example of the Inuit tribe that tracked Whales.
49:09 Stop calling the VP of Sales that doesn’t have ability to buy pencils, time to call the decision maker who has authority to purchase.
54:54 a story of a client that had 960 clients, Tom suggested they fire all of them and only go after 4…
58:45 The word salesperson is an interesting one, we often leave the “person” out of the sale.”
59:34 The best thing you can be is YOU.

 If you’ve watched this interview and been inspired to know step by step how to win your best buyers, click here to get our newly adapted Dream Buyer Strategy course!