Are you the victim?

Are you a victor or victim? I’m against being a victim cause victims sound weak. Sales can make anyone turn into a victim easily because sales people to overcome a lot crap. Victims are avoided after a while. Victims are seldom listened to because the have lost their credibility. Victims are never respected. And in general, nobody wants to hang around with victims. Well, except for other victims, of course, because like attracts like.

Just think for a moment about what you say when something doesn’t go your way or rather the way you act it. Review the last experience when you a big sale. Think for a moment about how and what you said to yourself, the body language you used and your tonality. If any of those reactions or responses contain victim like attitude, like whining, put downs, – stop it or you’ll become a victim.

You see the your goal is for you to become a victorious sales person whether or not you close the sale. Victors don’t whine. Victors learn, they overcome, they master themselves. It’s easy to up beat when life is going your way, but guess what the BIG profits are in the problems.

Kicking Your Butt

Kicking you own Ass. It’s one of my favorite scenes from a Jim Carey movie call Liar, Liar. Here’s the lesson  If your harder on yourself, if you demand more from yourself than what is expected life becomes easier. Sales people are always asking me, “Bert, how do I motivate myself?  How do I stay positive Bert?”  Here’s the secret.  How you feel is more important than what you know. Put it simply, your emotions lead to your belief system, your belief system lead to actions and your actions lead to results – good or bad.  The better you manage your emotions, the more positive your results will be.  Good or bad day?  That’s  completely programmable.

Emotions are skills. Your emotions will drive your attitude and if you have the right emotional skills, you’ll act instead of think, develop a emotional skills.

The Single Most Important Rule of Business

This might possibly be the single most important rule of business or sales.  If they LIKE you, BELIEVE you, have CONFIDENCE in you and TRUST you, then they may be they will do business with you or buy from you.  Now of these four things LIKE, BELIEF, CONFIDENCE AND TRUST, which one do YOU think is the most influential?  Raise your hand if you thinking it BELIEF c’mon raise your hand?  Raise your hand if you thinking it’s CONFIDENCE?  Who thinks TRUST raise your hand? Raise your hand if you thinking it’s LIKE?

If you were thinking TRUST you’re almost right. If you were thinking LIKE you’re right.  Can I  give you guys and an example? Pretend you’re a single woman of the opposite sex, you go out on a date with some guy.  You come back and now you’re talking about the date with mom or girlfriend or whoever, “You know Betty, I really trusted this guy, but I didn’t like him!”  Oh Betty I like him a lot and I hope we go out – what? Again. I hope we go out again  Liking leads to trusting. Trusting leads to confidence and confidence leads belief. Are you with me on this?

See if you’re not likable the best thing for you to do is get out of people business.  Get a job on the bomb squad or as secret government assassin where not being likeable is ok.

Now everyone will tell you to do what? Become a trusted advisor.  However the only way that you can become a trusted advisor is to first become a friend. The only way that you can become a friend is to be liked – cool?

Seven Strategies for Sales Success

Two common questions that I hear all the time, what do I need to learn to succeed in sales and what do I need to do to succeed sales? Here are a few strategies of sale success.

Succeeding in sales is a learnable skill. Being poor in sales is a learnable skill. You may need some sales team training, but whatever you choose sales is a learnable skill.

Number one; grow your people skills – remember the customer buys you first. Sell yourself before you even try to sell your company or your product. The client looks to you for assurances and trust.

Number two; sell the benefits – make a list of your benefits that your competition does not have. Use questions that your competition does not ask is good strategy.

Number three; master the objections – there are no new objections so get rid of the existing ones. Make a list of the objections that you hear over and over again. Not interested. Happy with present provider. No budget. Better offer from your competition, etc. And role play the answers.

Number four; target your ideal customer – Make a list of your ideal customer’s traits, B credit, 5-10 employees, 5 plus years in business, 3 plus locations. Make a list of the prospects that match those traits, contact only those “ideal” prospects. It’s a smaller but better list.

Number five; be, do, have –BE a student of sales team training, never stop learning. This is how I mastered sales. After you learned a new technique, DO it – role play it with friends and associates, teaching is a great to role play it too. Then use it that day. Doing leads to HAVING and the more skills you HAVE the faster you be come a master of your craft. Remember to adapt what you’ve learn to your personality style.

Number six; how you feel is more important than what you know – you heard it before “ attitude is everything” learn how YOU keep a positive attitude, what triggers attitude changes in YOU. Study emotional strategies every morning. The secret to attaining sales success is how you feel about money, yourself, sales, and success. Rich sales people are rich because how the feel, broke sales people are broke because how the feel.

Number seven; save money – this was a big turning point for me, when I started to save just 10% of my income. The savings created peace and confidence that comes with knowing that you have thousands of dollars in the bank. I’ve met hundreds of good and broke sales people, they spend everything they make. Begin with saving 10% of your income and get to the point that you can save 20% or more.

Here’s a final thought. Succeeding in sales is a learnable skill. Losing at sales is a learnable skill. You may need some sales team training, but whatever you choose sales is a learnable skill. Getting ahead is a result of doing certain things over and over again. And you are in charge. You decide how much you want to succeed by remembering 6 words. “Repetition is the mother of skill.”

Let me ask you – if I blind-folded you and placed you in a dark room and asked you to tie your shoes could you do it? Why? Because you repeated the shoe-tying process a zillion times, right? Again mastering sales takes repetition to master the skills.

Sales Training Can Show You Ways to Increase Sales

There are many advantages to engaging in sales training. An experienced sales trainer can teach you techniques on how to prospect customers, sell the customer, and maintain fruitful relationships with customers, which will lead to additional sales. Just being in the presence of a sales coach can greatly improve your own awareness. What are some examples? Read on to alert yourself of five ways to increase sales this year.

- Study your competitors closely. How do your products and services look in comparison to what your competition offers? Look for ways to distinguish yourself from them as well as ways to angle your products and services in a better way.

- Good salespeople know their products and services very well. Beyond this, sales training will teach you to begin to learn how to read people well and how to predict their actions as well as general trends they partake in. Knowing your products and services is only the half of it; you must realize how your customers can relate and benefit from what you have to offer.

- Increase your reputation in your field. Focus on becoming a recognized ‘expert’ in your industry. This is part of building your name and your company’s brand name. Customers will learn to keep your name and that of your company in mind next time they are in need of services.

- Make your business a presence on the Web. Many shoppers now rely on the internet to find desired goods and services. Maintain a company Web site and look for ways to promote it within search engine results. Purchasing ad space on the search engines such as Google and Yahoo as well as devoting time to SEO (search engine optimization) strategies are two ways to increase your company’s online visibility.

- A sales coach will help you understand the potential of word-of-mouth marketing. Many companies devote large sums of money each month towards advertising and marketing. You can decrease the amount of money needed to spend on such things by searching for ways to spread the word about your company. Asking current clients to refer you to others in compensation of some kind of reward is just one way to facilitate the process.

Boosting Holiday Sales – 5 Mistakes to Avoid

The new holiday season has arrived, and you still don’t have a marketing plan to reach out to new or existing customers. Wondering why the same holidays seem to sneak up on us every single year? As we try to prepare ourselves for own family, shopping, gift giving and travel, it’s no wonder we often forget about our businesses marketing during all the holiday chaos.

It’s quite common for business owners to freeze their marketing efforts over the holiday season with the notion that they’re going to start strong in the new year; little do they know, however, just how many opportunities have passed them by.

The holidays can be the best time to bring in new business and reconnect with current clients and customers. The holidays are not just for brick-and-mortar stores; it can also help your business by boosting revenue and customer loyalty before the end of the year.

Here are the top five holiday marketing mistakes businesses make:

1. No Plans. Your holiday marketing plan should have been planned at the beginning of the year, but now it’s the holiday season, so what do you do? Take some time today to decide what you are going to do and offer for the rest of the holiday season. If it’s just too late, then start planning now for the next holiday. Also establish the habit in 2010 to set a marketing calendar at the beginning of the year that can serve as a blueprint for your marketing plans year round.

2. No Communications. Although the Christmas holiday season is frantic for most, for some businesses it’s actually the slowest and the best time to pick up the phone and make a call for their business. Many business owners mistakenly think that offices are closed or people are too distracted or busy to be bothered. If you choose not to follow up with leads or customers because it’s a busy time of year, you’re making excuses. If it’s not this holiday, it’ll be the New Year, or Valentine’s Day or Spring break, then summer. Now is the best time to market precisely because so many of your competitors don’t.

3. Zero Holiday Offers. Remember any product or service can be repackaged with a holiday offer or theme. Search online to see what other companies are offering; it might spark an idea or two for your business. People, for the most part, love the holiday season; they like to focus on gift giving, vacations and family time. So if you don’t provide a holiday special or offer that helps them with their needs, you are missing a great opportunity.

4. Not Sending Holiday Greetings. Take a few hours out of your day and hand write a holiday greeting card. There are automated systems such as SendOutCards.com where you can design your own card (to add a personal touch) and you can even send a gift with the card, this service will put the postage on the card and send it for you, saving you a trip to the post office. AT the very least send out an email card. Your customers have been loyal, bought from you and supported your business year round; you need to let them know that you are not only thinking about them over the holidays but that you are grateful for their business.

5. Customer Surveys. How are you going to know what worked and didn’t if you don’t ask? Find out what worked and what didn’t, look at your systems and your marketing, and then make improvements and enhance your current offerings. Aweber.com has great online survey templates. Offer a free gifts or discounts to customers who take the time to complete your survey. If you keep doing what you have always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.

Bert Martinez is an International Sales and Business trainer. Martinez specializes in building businesses worldwide using the power of proven marketing and business strategies.

10.5 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Starting A Business

The following list is derived from my experience. Based on my actions and results I retired from corporate America at the age of 28. Filed bankruptcy at 30. I’ve been involved in several successful businesses and many unsuccessful ones too.

#1 – Never let your expenses exceed your sales. Yeah, I know that’s easy to say, because you say “Jeez, that makes perfect sense, if my expenses never exceed my sales then quite honestly I’m always going to have positive revenue. I’m always going to be in the profit. Wow. That’s fundamentally smart. But c’mon Bert, it doesn’t work that way in the world. Why? When we start out we don’t have any sales yet, and so our expenses have to exceed our sales on day one.” And you’re correct. That’s true, so I want you to have a concept, a goal or even a burning desire. That you will make those days the fewest number of days absolutely possible that your expenses are exceeding your sales.

#2 – Failing to collect the money or the receivables. Question – Should you really be extending credit to people? I don’t care what business your in retail, wholesale, hospitality, legal, or whatever. Selling is what you about not carrying receivables. Don’t extend credit, get paid now! Look fewer customers that have paid you 100% are way better than having more customers when some of them didn’t pay you at all. More cash, less stress – you don’t have to be real smart to do the math.

# 3 – Failing to take care of your employees. People have say that the customer is number 1 – right? Maybe not. Well who is taking care of your customers? Your employees handle quality and service and delivery? Well if you haven’t taken care of your employees, they’re probably not going to take care of your customers very well. It’s just that simple. It’s goes without saying that if you do take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.

#4- Failing to take care of your customers. Real simple the easiest customer to get are existing customers. There is usually more profit in repeat customers than in new customers. A happy customer is a good customer a good customer refers more customers. Take care of your customers and they will take care of you.

#5 – Underestimating your competition. We can, no matter what business we’re in, we think of our competitor as dim-witted, we think of our competitor as incompetent. Remember this -our battle isn’t against them. It’s for the customer, not against our competitor. We don’t win by doing damage to the competitor. We’re not in a battle with him really. We’re in a battle for someone else. So quit thinking about the competitor and start thinking about your competitor’s customers.

#6 Inadequate capital – Now I’ve started business with no money because I had to but then you quickly come to realize that you do need money to operate. You do need capital to grow the company and get to the next level. And here are 2 rules you should remember about capital. And, just in case your not clear, capital is the money we need to fund the organization, to buy the inventory, to hire employees, to do all those things that we’re going to need to do. Well here’s are 2 rules you need to appreciate. Is that your expenses are going to be hirer than you anticipated and your revenue is going to be slower than you anticipated. Those two statements are true in 99.99% of every single business that has ever started. Well that’s what happens. It happens almost all the time. Because we are optimistic, if we weren’t optimist we wouldn’t have started a business. We over-projected what our revenues are. What I’m telling you as a practical, experienced businessman lower that number. Now if you beat, if you excel… wonderful! Find a place to spend it. But if you have shrunk it down, conservative in your projection then you might be safe.

#7 Underestimate the length of time to break even. The break even is a magic moment in the making of a business and if you don’t understand let me try to explain the concept to you. Break even is that magic point when you quit putting money into a company and the company is finally sufficient enough that it starts to pay for itself or is finally starts to pay you for having been there first.

# 8 Focusing on profits instead of on cash flow. Business people, when they first start out, they focus on profits instead of on cash flow. And I know this is going to sound like sacrilege to some people saying well,” aren’t we supposed to be all about profits? absolutely, and yes! And we want to get there as fast as we possibly can! But before we get there we have to make sure something else happens first, and that is that we always have positive cash flow. We always have enough money to pay the rent. We always have enough money to pay out employees. We always have enough money to buy more supplies, to do more marketing, that’s really crucial. That’s called cash flow. Profits will follow the cash flow I guarantee it. Now there’s a different in being profitable and having positive cash flow, you can be unprofitable where you’re actually losing a little bit of money but still have positive cash flow. I’m telling you when your first starting a business, if you have to pick between the two, now if you could have both of them, great go get both of them and that would be wonderful, but I also will tell you from experience getting both of them when your first starting out is really going to be complicated. You’re going to have to make a decision between the two. Pick cash flow when you’re first starting your business.

#9 Over estimating size of your market. Entrepreneurs are optimists and we tend to have this attitude that everyone is going to want to buy what we have – that just doesn’t sell. Get over it. Just come to understand that it’s not going to happen. So what you need to be able to do is think about Bottom Up Marketing. It isn’t how many potential, how many people are out there, it’s about what you can you really do. Bottom Up Marketing looks at your capacity. So if you’ve got 1 employee, 3 employees, 7 employees, that’s all you can handle. It doesn’t matter how many people might want your widget. You can’t handle it! So think coolly about the real size of your market and don’t ever estimate it because you can’t handle it right now. You only need enough market to handle the capacity you presently have, and if you can do that efficiently you will be profitable, and if your profitable you’ll be successful and if your successful you can grow the company again, and again, and again. Do a little research on “Bottom Up Marketing” and you have a better understanding of the concept

#10 No Advertising/Marketing plan. So how are you going to drive your sales through advertising or through sales people. You need to develop your marketing plan, you need to have enough capital to drive sales. I’ve seen to many times were entrepreneurs will invest all this money in equipment or to get the doors open only to discover they have no way to adequately drive sales.

#10.5 – Exit strategy. At one point, P.T. Barnum noticed that people were lingering too long at his exhibits. He posted signs indicating ” “This Way to the Egress”. Not knowing that “Egress” was another word for “Exit”, people followed the signs to what they assumed was a fascinating exhibit…and ended up outside. So what am I talking about? We should start a business that we can create and build something that we can sell, transfer, dispose of, or hand off to someone else. That should be a goal maybe the first goal as you begin to vision your successful business.

Remember . . . You Were Created to Succeed!