Power to Prosperity

Power Play # 32 - Get 1000 Fans

Love this interview on Seth Godin. He is very grounded in his approach to using web technologies to fulfill ones life purpose. The market has changed, have you? Get real and be the best in the world at what you do. Do not be a "wondering generality" but be a "meaningful specific". Brilliant!

Power Play # 31 - Be yourSELF!

I just enjoyed watching a few videos of Victor Antonio, a Motivational Speaker. This guy is cool, what got me was his passion and love for what he does for a living.  That alone is electric and worthy of attention.  He is very energized and animate, but boy is is real.  This blog post is to shed light on that idea.  Victor has figured out what it takes to be Victor!!

On Youtube.com you will find many videos on him and one of them is a Documentary, check that one out too. You will get behind the scenes to a very real person speaking about himself, his family and the reality that is him.  Love his openness. 

Check it out - get moved to be more of who you really are.  That is the biggest give Victor gives us.

Check this out ... I like this technique, it has NLP written all over it, but very powerful and very useful for everyday living.

Power Play # 29 - Do YOUR Thing!!

I recently met Donna Browning of Sweaty Bands (www.sweatybands.com) and loved her story of doing her thing!  She is living her dream, doing what she loves to do and energizing a host of people along the way.

She started Sweaty Bands from a need she found herself.  Let me tell you, she is one tough mama!! and has a career doing exercise related activity, from Personal Training to Yoga, it was during these workouts, that she was getting so irritated with her hair falling on her face, that she decided to find a solution.  And a solution she did find.  Donna designed head bands with super utility and style.  She improved on a product that been around for decades, but took it to the next level and made them much more effective and totally cool and exciting. 

What makes her story additionally powerful is that she is not outsourcing her manufacturing to far away lands of cheap labor and other costs. Instead her business model leverages her friends and others locally in the Cincinnati area to manufacture these head bands for her.  She is keeping jobs here and is giving people an opportunity to be productive right here at home.   What she likes about this model is that it makes her feel connected with people in ways she did not expect, some of these women have come back and thanked her for the opportunity to save their home, with the recession we are in - every dollar earned is put to good use.

Congrats Donna and we wish you all the very best.  Here is a pic of Donna with my wife, Shino; that bought a few of them which she will be sending to Tokyo to our friends that do Yoga there.

Sweaty Bands make great gifts!!

Where is the harmony in your life?

Had the opportunity to spend most of the day with Uncle Jim and Aunt Katie in Kentucky today.  I always love chatting with them, they ground my thinking in so many ways.  One of the many conversations we had was around the subject of the market and our speculation of when things might come back ... which led to a conversation on "Come back to what?"

The good news is that we were in agreement, that the market should come back, be more robust and enable people to make money and have better lives, but in a way that was healthy.

They spoke of some one they know who was living the "New American Dream" that just got shattered.  A $800,000 home, boats, cars, two jobs and lots of bills.  Well both husband and wife lost their $100K+ jobs over a two year period and sort of lost most of it.

The story ends with the husband finding a job with Toyota and the wife get a job that pays 25% of what she was making before, they now live in a much smaller house ... BUT they are in a sense, glad that it all happened.  What they say is that they came out on the other side - living happier lives, feeling more in love with each other and overall in a much healthier place. With that wake up call they now focus on what is important; the joy, the harmony the love in the their lives.

All's I'm going to say to this is ... Amen!

Guidance from Neil Rackham - Author of SPIN Selling

I had the privilege of meeting with Neil Rackham at the University Sales Education Foundation (USEF) sales meetings in Chicago. He was tremendously insightful and it was a pleasure meeting him and being in his company. 

Oh, before I forget, let me convey his guidance to me.  He says I should start by reading two of his books and then do the others if I want.  His two picks were ...

• Rethinking the Sales Force
• Major Account Sales

So, there you have it; you know what my home work assignments are!

Anyway, I was going through his website and found this article, thought I would bring it to your attention.  It simply is How to Build a World Class Sales Force in 2009.

Here are the 5 main points, ...

1. Sales supervisors are the key to success
2. Fewer accounts means more sales 
3. Salespeople must become value creators 
4. Coaching brings results
5. Integrate sales and marketing
   

Check it out, read his work and join me in my home work if you want.  I will also be reading SPIN Selling right after that.

There is a lot going on in Cincinnati

I keep getting amazed at how much there is going on in Cincinnati, now that I have moved back.  I just spend the morning meeting the good folks at the Hamilton County Development Company (www.hcdc.com) which is like a center for small business development, they provide all sorts of services for small businesses and entrepreneurs. 

Was surprised to see them house about 48 or 50 start-up here and they represent a healthy mix of tech and non-tech companies.  Check out their list of tenants here.

While there, I met some very excited people from a new Apparel company called Know.  They  were off to deliver a shipment of t-shirts to a new client. Their excitement was infectious.  Congrats guy.

Check out their website at ....

Power Play # 25 - Accelerate the Velocity of your Deals

Welcome to reality -- from a sales and business development perspective; you know that everything has changed in the market today and so MUST OUR SALES PROCESS. 

Welcome to Business Intelligence, the art and the science of taking raw data that resides within your company and transforming it into useful information that can you can use to be more intelligent and effective in your sales process.  Who do you sell to? What do you sell? What business problems do you solve?  Which deals do you chase?

I like this idea ... Focus on the deals that will close fast as opposed to trying to speed up the deals that might or might not close fast. You really should know which ones you can close quickly. Do you?

Gerhard of Selling Power interviews Paul Staelin of www.birst.com  Short and to the point.  Check it out.

Power Play # 19 – What Recession?

In the last two days, I have met four different people that have told me that they are doing great in today's market.  It maybe just Cincinnati, but listen up ... there is a message here.

Mark actually replied "What Recession"!  when I asked him how he was doing with his Wholesale Business in this bad market place. He sells gift items to gift and novelty stores like you would find in the front part of any Cracker Barrel restaurant.  To make it better - he says he has grown consistently every year over the last three years and the last three Trade shows he did in May of 2009 were better than they were last year.

Then there was Bill who services 450+ dentists offices, he has not seen any significant drop in activity.  He just moved and is looking for help.  He needs to hire an office manager and a few people that want to work part-time (10 -15 hours a week)

I was at a networking event with The Circuit yesterday and met a couple of people there.  One of them was Christine a recruiter in the Financial space - she too is doing well.  She says, she has had a great year so far.

And then I met Steve with a IT services company that has 90 clients just in Cincinnati alone and they do not seem to be hurting in any way.  I loved their story, will write about them soon, when I interview their outfit, stay tuned for that. They are 4 times bigger than their closest competition and not looking back.

My point is this - all these people are SOLVING A NEED their clients have.  I have been saying this over and over again - the more you do this the better off you will be.  There were more people I have met that are doing well in this market place and they are all in different types of industries.   So keep you spirits up and find your place in the sun!

Talking to Investors

Coming back to the subject of sales - I am constantly amazed at how important it is to understand one of the fundamental truths about the sales process.  At its core - you can ONLY sell something that someone wants to buy.  Hear me out - it might come across as an obvious point - almost silly to mention it ... again!  Yet - I am confident it is important for all of us to get - even an orthopedic surgeon.  You know they are constantly "selling" their services - if they do not, they starve.  But that is a whole different conversation - you will be amazed at how everyone is selling something at sometime.

So going back to this notion of talking to investors and other people you want to sell something to.   You can or rather will make a sale ONLY when you sell them something they are in the market for.  Let me simplify it for you.  Do you like the Ferrari car?  Most people answer ... yes!  ok, next question.  Would you like to drive one?  Again! most people say yes.  Now the relevant question ... Would you like to buy one today?  and as you would imagine...  most people say "No". 

So you see - your investors might like the concept or idea you are proposing - but they might have an "investment strategy" the suggests they look for opportunities that have a potential for growth and sustainability, you stand a chance of closing a deal, if your idea - creates an similar opportunity.  But if you say you want to create this web site that will ultimately be bought by Google or eBay in the next 18 months or so ... you might find that it could turn certain people off, because as an investment fund, they do not touch such high risk businesses.

Investors invest in companies that support their investment strategy.  So, please do not be too surprised when they turn you down.  I would encourage you to ask them a lot of qualifying questions, along the way - this will help you keep your conversations grounded and cost effective.  You love your product -  and they want to make money.  OR you might find that they want to make money and create a positive ROI in the area of research or services to a specific demographic.  Know your investor's investment strategy and then speak your truth and relate it to their strategy.  This will improve your chances ten fold.

Hope that helps ... and one more thing.  There is nothing like tenacity.  Stay the course you might just be the last man or woman standing and win.  But then again, please recognize when you have not made a sale a know that you might have to shift gears and go do something else.  All the best.

Power Play # 16 - Constantly Innovate

A few days ago, I wrote about increasing your capacity to Innovate.  Thought I would revisit this idea, with a more practical sense of urgency for businesses in the market place.  Let's face it - we have to in effect ... go sell something!  Here are somethings I did in the past.

This is me a few years ago:

I was working with Barker Blue a large format printing company in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I was brought in to break the trend of increasing revenue approximately 3% or so a year.  After I did my basic house keeping tasks of getting my team up to par, I began reaching out and assessing my customer base. First off, I stopped calling on high cost customers, I also researched my "Entire" customer data base and found that there were a lot of customer we had not called on, in years. So I started doing customer calls and asking customers how they consumed "large format prints"  the product and the service we offered.  I also asked them what they would like to see us do different.  I also asked them what was going on in their world and how we could help.

It was during these meetings and "sales calls" that we realized that they were not that interested in the quality of the print me made for them, but were more interested in the content on the paper, how fast they could get them, how they might market them up and get them re-printed as well.  One interesting idea we got back was them wanting to be able to get the content on-line in the nights and evenings, so they could plan their day and coordinate their crew for the next day's jobs.

Guess what - we innovated, we changed our story, we changed our offerings, we partnered with them and we closed more business.  We were not the cheapest, I believe we were the costliest service in that market place, but we managed to grow 20% in one year - this was something that never happened before.  Simply because we innovated, we changed our approach and we became a different company.

Find out how you can change and innovate in your world.  Partner with your customers and see where they might take you.  Heck, it might be worth your while to follow their lead.  Ya never know, how profitable that might be.

All the best.