I jut finished reading Brian Mennis’ book; Average To Awesome: The 8 Keys To Make A Quantum Leap. The book is a great read. Here are the keys he outlined in the book:
Getting Focused on the Right Activities
Making Time
Lead Don’t Follow
Acquiring and Keeping Customers
Closing the Deal
Leadership
The Most Precious Resource
He added a bonus 8 1/2 key; Action. In the next few days I will discuss a key and how it applies to business and more specifically how I manage my business.
| Leads, all businesses rely on leads. Whether the leads are collected by the business or a third party, they are an integral part to all sales. More often than not I have come to realize that a large portion of leads initially showed interest in my services, but for some reason failed to complete the sales process and become a client.
Once you have developed a sizeable leads database it is very important to re-approach these people on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s only about timing, is this the right time for your product or service? In many cases a lead that shows strong interest in your product or services may fall out of the sales process prematurely. The reasons are often very simple and easy to overcome by just a little effort on your part. Many times people may miss a phone appointment with you and then feel embarrassed about contacting you because of it. You can remove the embarrassment factor by simply placing a phone call to them and by showing them two things; a genuine concern for them and a willingness to move forward with the process regardless of any past issues. Reconnecting with this lead can most definitely lead to a sale. Another aspect that often hinders leads from moving forward in a process is the sudden onset of a major life issue. Sometimes they will communicate this with you and sometimes they won’t. These leads may need time to settle their issues. By placing a phone call or sending an email a month later to check on their progress is a great way to reconnect. Often I have been told by people that they were too busy to think about it at that time, but they are still very interested and glad that I contacted them, timing is everything. New leads are also a very important part of any sales process, but many business people over look the potential of the leads they have already collected. In my experience I have found that by reconnecting with leads from the past, I have had a .2% recovery rate, a better rate than with most direct mail campaigns. Here are five key steps to reconnecting with past leads in order to make the sale.
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As you approach your 90 day mark since you made your New Year’s resolutions, this is a good time to reassess your goals and make some adjustments. For many of you, it may seem as though your resolutions have failed and are not salvageable. I would like to take this opportunity to tell you otherwise. Like any goal, resolutions have to be carefully managed. This requires reexamining your goals, studying your plan, implementing changes and assessing your plan weekly. Outlined below are four steps to resurrecting your resolutions.
Reexamine Your Resolutions
When you first made your resolutions, it is possible you were a little over zealous (the old “eyes are bigger than the stomach” theory). You may have taken on more than you could handle or possibly even set your sites too high. Taking a second look at your initial resolutions and being aware of your success and failures thus far will help you to identify areas that need change. Also, it is important to indentify the why of your goal. It is often the “what” that people concentrate on, “what is my resolution?”- “to make more money,” but why do you want to make more money? So you can put your children through college? There is a “why” that you can resonate with. It creates an emotional link to your resolution.
Study Your Plan
Studying your plan will help you to evaluate if you were specific enough with your plan. The implementation of a plan can easily get off track if the details of the plan weren’t specific enough. What action are you taking to achieve your goal? For example if your goal is to sign on 3 new clients each month, what specific actions will you take to make that happening. If your action was to go to networking events, you need to get more specific. A better plan would be; I will attend two networking events every week. Even better would be to find these networking events and actually schedule the time and date of the events in your planner. The more specific you are the more likely you are to stick to your commitment. Also scheduling the actions for yourself in advance will help to hold you accountable to actually following through with them.
Keep in mind that your plan needs to be realistic. Do you have time for five networking events a week? If not you may need to reduce the amount of events in order to realistically attend them. Actually attending two events a week is better than scheduling five and not attending any.
Implement Changes
Once you have examined your goals and studied your plan, you should have identified what changes need to be made in order to be successful. Now is the time to implement these changes. At this point it is most beneficial to take a “start from scratch” approach to your goals. Adjust your goals according to what you found in reexamining your goals and write them out. Writing these down is an important step to actually achieving them. This step helps with visualizing your goal and believing in your success, which is directly related to successfully achieving your goal. Once you have your new goals written down, make all necessary adjustments to your plan. Write out your plan, including all the commitments you are making in order to achieve your goal. Also schedule the actions that you will be taking in your planner.
Assess Your Progress Weekly
For some people a daily assessment is necessary in the beginning. But if you feel a daily assessment is not necessary then implement a weekly assessment. Something that you should do daily is read/write down your why. This will help to keep you motivated, because of the emotional connection to your why. If you read every day, “I want to put my children through college,” do you think it would help to motivate you?
Pick a time each week to look at your goals, your plan, and your progress. Are you achieving what it is you need to achieve? Have you made any progress? Evaluating on a weekly basis will assist you in maintaining your commitment as well as identifying any pieces that aren’t working. It will also allow you to implement any necessary adjustments quickly, in order to produce the results you are looking for.
Finally a weekly evaluation will help you to keep your goals at the front of your thinking. The more familiar you are with your goals and the more you think about your goals and your plan the more likely you are to stick with it and follow through. This is a commitment to yourself and your success.