Business plans are more than just words on an otherwise blank piece of paper; it is a statement of the company’s future. The business plan is meant to provide direction and inspire action among executives in the C-suite and employees on the shop floor. Subsequently, these plans are often elegant design and creative in their layout; being fully illustrated and capturing through pictures the essence of the workforce. Consequently, it takes time to develop this creative publication.
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I get a ton of emails from people seeking insight or asking me to solve sales dilemmas. Here are a few that may relate to your job, your life and, most important, your sales thought process right now:
Jeffrey, I’m interested in your insight and guidance. I think selling is the best job in the world, but there’s one aspect I’m struggle with. It’s the feeling of being out of control, and being the master of my own destiny. I tend to work on more complex deals that have large decision making groups, and therefore can be quite a long cycle. I used to sell smaller deals where I could track progress more meaningfully, but now I find myself doing 1 x $1M deals rather than 10 x $100k deals where the risk was spread. Any tips on how to stay sane while waiting for big decisions? How do I regain and maintain a feeling that I’m in control of my results? Best regards, Paul
Paul, Managing your time is not the answer. Prioritizing your accounts in the order that they are likely to close is a better way to view the process. But there are several elements involved, and several decisions you have to make:
1. Why would you give up your bread and butter and just shoot for the moon?
Instead, allocate half your time to sure money and half your time to the big prize. This will leave you in control of your short-term destiny, and allow you to mark a clearer path toward the bigger deal.
2. All committees have a daddy. The person that leads the committee, or even the person that he or she reports to, are the two people that you should be establishing relationships with because they control the outcome. If you simply go in and make a presentation to a committee, they’ll be forever lost in the shuffle of indecision, proposals, and fighting price with competitors (three of the worst, if not dumbest, elements in making a large sale).
3. Direct contact is not an option. Stop emailing people and waiting for replies. Phone numbers, cell phone numbers, early morning coffee, late afternoon casual conversations, gathering personal data, and sending important business information will help establish you as a resource, rather than being looked at as a vendor.
3.5 Your level of frustration is only a symptom. Your problem is you haven’t identified the real decision maker, how the decision will be made, and what the real motive is to purchase. Until you know those three things, your frustration will most likely fall into poverty. Not good. Best regards, Jeffrey
Jeffrey, My name is John and I am a house call veterinarian in Syracuse, NY. I have read several of your books and I love your iPhone app! I am having some difficulty growing my business and I KNOW you are the perfect person to help me!
I have been in business for just over four years. Things are steady and stable, but we are not growing the way I know we could and should be. In fact, SOMEHOW, it seems that regardless of our marketing efforts, referrals, etc. we ALWAYS come out JUST AHEAD of being behind in the financial department. It drives me crazy as everybody we meet tells us how great we are and what an unusual and helpful service we provide, yet we are STILL booking no more than one week ahead at a time. I have tried practically EVERY type of advertising (newspaper, TV, radio, billboards, handouts/fliers) with no great outcome. We are a luxury service (and prefer it that way). We have run out of great ideas to try that won’t cost a ton of money. Please help! John
John, Before you let your business go to the dogs, you might want to try less advertising and more promotion.
Begin with your Facebook business page. Post stories and videos of your existing customers and their experiences with you. Tag the customer and tag the photo. Your customer will begin to send that story to all of their friends. Also start a YouTube channel. Make sure all the videos are posted there as well – with all the appropriate tags. Without taking advantage of business social media, especially Facebook, your doomed to waiting for response.
The second thing you have to do is contact every existing customer and talk to them about why they use you. Capture all of those reasons and begin to use them in all of your messaging and promotions.
Third, start a weekly email magazine that features one of your customers every week.
Fourth, subscribe to Ace of Sales. Every time you have a customer, take a photo of their pet and using the Ace of Sales email program, include a photo of their pet along when you send them a thank you note for their business.
With all the promotion that you do, you will begin to have positive word-of-mouth messages and positive internet messages sent out about you and ultimately sent back to you. Advertising alone will not get you the response that you need in today’s world. You have to dedicate the time and the resources to social media promotion and other forms of proactive outreach. You have all the assets you need to succeed in your business, you just haven’t utilized them in the proper way. Best regards, Jeffrey
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].
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Performance standards and expectations drive managerial decisions and personal actions within an organization and serve to align an organization’s members to its vision, mission, and values. Such requirements necessarily demand an exertion of resources to perform the mandated actions.
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It’s Saturday night around 6pm. Early dinner for Jessica, Gabrielle, and me.
We’re sitting in Carrabba’s Italian Grill in Charlotte. We’ve been customers at this location for as long as it has been there. Seen several managers come and go, seen hundreds of servers come and go.
This particular visit was pivotal because it may have been our last. Their 10-year consistency has been compromised at least three ways: 1. New bread – lower quality. 2. New croutons – lower quality. 3. New espresso – lower quality. They used to serve the best espresso in the city (Illy). But it seems corporate decided to remove all the machines and substitute with a lesser (cheaper) brand.
Same price. Lower quality. More profit. Not good for anyone but them.
And they’re not bragging about their new low quality. I guess they figured no one would notice. I was disappointed. Not angry or anything, I just had an expectation when we entered the restaurant that wasn’t met when we were served.
The manager happened by. I asked him about the sudden reduction in quality. He smiled, hemmed, hawed, and looked embarrassed that we “caught” them. He, of course, blamed it on ‘corporate.’ I asked him for an email address to voice my concern. He promised he would return with it. Never did.
As the manager walked by our table a second time, we heard him say, “Another aggravated customer.” He was referring to some people waiting to be seated. Did nothing about it. Sad.
REALITY: When a customer is aggravated, complaining, or angry, there’s a REASON. If you’re smart enough, empathetic enough, and willing enough, you can discover the reason, help the customer, resolve the issue, and prevent the same thing from happening again.
STOP READING AND START THINKING: I’m not just writing about Carrabba’s. I’m writing about YOU. You have customers that complain, don’t you? How do you receive the concern or the complaint? How is a complaint handled? What do you do about it? How do you turn it into a WOW?
Here’s what it is – and what it isn’t:
It’s an opportunity, NOT an aggravation.
It’s an opportunity, NOT a problem.
It’s an opportunity, NOT a complaint.
It’s a chance for WOW, NOT an angry customer.
It’s a chance for management to convert to leadership.
It’s a chance to get a positive post on Facebook.
It’s a chance for the customer to ‘tweet’ their pleasure.
It’s a chance to create a loyal customer.
It’s a chance to generate positive word-of-mouth advertising.
It’s an opportunity to prevent this situation from reoccurring.
GRIPE REALITY: Defensive response is the normal first reaction…
Blaming others.
Blaming circumstances.
Telling the customer how to talk. (“I’d appreciate if you’d calm down” rather than try to find the reason they’re angry.) Condescending comments by “customer service” people makes a mad customer more mad.
Don’t defend it. No one cares about the reason or the excuse.
If you really want aggravation, complaints, and anger to diminish, here are the elements you must possess and execute:
Attitude of acceptance.
Attitude of reception.
Attitude that’s willing to listen with the intent to understand.
Attitude of taking responsibility.
Resilience of manager or leader.
Ability to respond in a friendly, pleasant manner.
Challenge yourself not to make an excuse, blame someone, blame something, or make some snide remark.
Challenge yourself to promote positive internal communication.
Genuine gratefulness to help and serve.
LOYALTY REALITY: Every aggravation, complaint, concern, discussion, or question posed by a customer is a huge, FREE, opportunity to improve your business by a factor of WOW – and for little or no money.
And a bit more reality: when managers and employees turn over at a high rate, it’s not the ‘nature of the business,’ it’s the cheapness and policies of the home office. When you try to milk a nickel to save a penny,when you sacrifice quality just to increase profits, you lose employees, customers, goodwill and reputation.
Me? I’ll go away with a little bit of noise – others will just go away.
You? Document the issue, the resolve, the response, and the outcome.
These are the steps: Listen. Process. Think. Take responsibility. Question. Respond. Say something positive. Do something positive. WOW.
Train that.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].
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Humans make mistakes, whether the result of carelessness or unintended misfortune. And no set of performance standards can fully alleviate all errors and their associated adverse outcomes.
Hi there! This article is available to StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Remote Access and Dedicated Advisor clients and those who subscribe to one of the article's related categories.
If you're already a Remote Access or Dedicated Advisor client or a related category subscriber, please log in to read this article.
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Business Plan Development Best Practice 1 – Plan the Plan’s Development
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Salespeople have questions, Jeffrey has answers.
/in Marketing & Sales/by Jeffrey GitomerI get a ton of emails from people seeking insight or asking me to solve sales dilemmas. Here are a few that may relate to your job, your life and, most important, your sales thought process right now:
Jeffrey, I’m interested in your insight and guidance. I think selling is the best job in the world, but there’s one aspect I’m struggle with. It’s the feeling of being out of control, and being the master of my own destiny. I tend to work on more complex deals that have large decision making groups, and therefore can be quite a long cycle. I used to sell smaller deals where I could track progress more meaningfully, but now I find myself doing 1 x $1M deals rather than 10 x $100k deals where the risk was spread. Any tips on how to stay sane while waiting for big decisions? How do I regain and maintain a feeling that I’m in control of my results? Best regards, Paul
Paul, Managing your time is not the answer. Prioritizing your accounts in the order that they are likely to close is a better way to view the process. But there are several elements involved, and several decisions you have to make:
1. Why would you give up your bread and butter and just shoot for the moon?
Instead, allocate half your time to sure money and half your time to the big prize. This will leave you in control of your short-term destiny, and allow you to mark a clearer path toward the bigger deal.
2. All committees have a daddy. The person that leads the committee, or even the person that he or she reports to, are the two people that you should be establishing relationships with because they control the outcome. If you simply go in and make a presentation to a committee, they’ll be forever lost in the shuffle of indecision, proposals, and fighting price with competitors (three of the worst, if not dumbest, elements in making a large sale).
3. Direct contact is not an option. Stop emailing people and waiting for replies. Phone numbers, cell phone numbers, early morning coffee, late afternoon casual conversations, gathering personal data, and sending important business information will help establish you as a resource, rather than being looked at as a vendor.
3.5 Your level of frustration is only a symptom. Your problem is you haven’t identified the real decision maker, how the decision will be made, and what the real motive is to purchase. Until you know those three things, your frustration will most likely fall into poverty. Not good. Best regards, Jeffrey
Jeffrey, My name is John and I am a house call veterinarian in Syracuse, NY. I have read several of your books and I love your iPhone app! I am having some difficulty growing my business and I KNOW you are the perfect person to help me!
I have been in business for just over four years. Things are steady and stable, but we are not growing the way I know we could and should be. In fact, SOMEHOW, it seems that regardless of our marketing efforts, referrals, etc. we ALWAYS come out JUST AHEAD of being behind in the financial department. It drives me crazy as everybody we meet tells us how great we are and what an unusual and helpful service we provide, yet we are STILL booking no more than one week ahead at a time. I have tried practically EVERY type of advertising (newspaper, TV, radio, billboards, handouts/fliers) with no great outcome. We are a luxury service (and prefer it that way). We have run out of great ideas to try that won’t cost a ton of money. Please help! John
John, Before you let your business go to the dogs, you might want to try less advertising and more promotion.
Begin with your Facebook business page. Post stories and videos of your existing customers and their experiences with you. Tag the customer and tag the photo. Your customer will begin to send that story to all of their friends. Also start a YouTube channel. Make sure all the videos are posted there as well – with all the appropriate tags. Without taking advantage of business social media, especially Facebook, your doomed to waiting for response.
The second thing you have to do is contact every existing customer and talk to them about why they use you. Capture all of those reasons and begin to use them in all of your messaging and promotions.
Third, start a weekly email magazine that features one of your customers every week.
Fourth, subscribe to Ace of Sales. Every time you have a customer, take a photo of their pet and using the Ace of Sales email program, include a photo of their pet along when you send them a thank you note for their business.
With all the promotion that you do, you will begin to have positive word-of-mouth messages and positive internet messages sent out about you and ultimately sent back to you. Advertising alone will not get you the response that you need in today’s world. You have to dedicate the time and the resources to social media promotion and other forms of proactive outreach. You have all the assets you need to succeed in your business, you just haven’t utilized them in the proper way. Best regards, Jeffrey
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Standards and Expectations Warning Flag 4 – Always an Exception
/in Premium, Standards & Expectations/by StrategyDrivenWho or what is the cause of aggravation? Not you, of course!
/in Customer Relationship Management/by Jeffrey GitomerIt’s Saturday night around 6pm. Early dinner for Jessica, Gabrielle, and me.
We’re sitting in Carrabba’s Italian Grill in Charlotte. We’ve been customers at this location for as long as it has been there. Seen several managers come and go, seen hundreds of servers come and go.
This particular visit was pivotal because it may have been our last. Their 10-year consistency has been compromised at least three ways: 1. New bread – lower quality. 2. New croutons – lower quality. 3. New espresso – lower quality. They used to serve the best espresso in the city (Illy). But it seems corporate decided to remove all the machines and substitute with a lesser (cheaper) brand.
Same price. Lower quality. More profit. Not good for anyone but them.
And they’re not bragging about their new low quality. I guess they figured no one would notice. I was disappointed. Not angry or anything, I just had an expectation when we entered the restaurant that wasn’t met when we were served.
The manager happened by. I asked him about the sudden reduction in quality. He smiled, hemmed, hawed, and looked embarrassed that we “caught” them. He, of course, blamed it on ‘corporate.’ I asked him for an email address to voice my concern. He promised he would return with it. Never did.
As the manager walked by our table a second time, we heard him say, “Another aggravated customer.” He was referring to some people waiting to be seated. Did nothing about it. Sad.
REALITY: When a customer is aggravated, complaining, or angry, there’s a REASON. If you’re smart enough, empathetic enough, and willing enough, you can discover the reason, help the customer, resolve the issue, and prevent the same thing from happening again.
STOP READING AND START THINKING: I’m not just writing about Carrabba’s. I’m writing about YOU. You have customers that complain, don’t you? How do you receive the concern or the complaint? How is a complaint handled? What do you do about it? How do you turn it into a WOW?
Here’s what it is – and what it isn’t:
GRIPE REALITY: Defensive response is the normal first reaction…
If you really want aggravation, complaints, and anger to diminish, here are the elements you must possess and execute:
LOYALTY REALITY: Every aggravation, complaint, concern, discussion, or question posed by a customer is a huge, FREE, opportunity to improve your business by a factor of WOW – and for little or no money.
And a bit more reality: when managers and employees turn over at a high rate, it’s not the ‘nature of the business,’ it’s the cheapness and policies of the home office. When you try to milk a nickel to save a penny,when you sacrifice quality just to increase profits, you lose employees, customers, goodwill and reputation.
Me? I’ll go away with a little bit of noise – others will just go away.
You? Document the issue, the resolve, the response, and the outcome.
These are the steps: Listen. Process. Think. Take responsibility. Question. Respond. Say something positive. Do something positive. WOW.
Train that.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Standards and Expectations Warning Flag 3 – Changing Standards Based on One-time Arbitrary Errors
/in Premium, Standards & Expectations/by StrategyDriven