photo credit: jseattle

I was reading Patsi Krakoff’s blog and her post reminded me of a free tool that can save you a lot of money. The free tool is a survey tool.   You may be wondering how or why this free tool can save you a lot of money.

Do you know why many businesses fail?  This underlying problem causes cash flow shortages, undue stress and frustration, and it isn’t curable.  Many businesses fail because they try to sell the wrong thing to the wrong people.

Of course, no rational business owner would ever do this intentionally.  It happens because the owner fails to take the necessary steps required to know you’re on the right track before jumping in hook line and sinker, and sinking to the bottom of the abyss.  You think your service and products are exciting and that everyone would want them.

However, what you think isn’t important.  It’s what the people who will buy your product think that’s important.  But how do you find out?

That’s where this free tool comes in to play.  I’ve just created one myself.  Not only is the tool free, but it was easy to use and I think it will be fun for you to give it a try.

Follow this link and take the survey yourself.  Then you can decide if you might benefit from using it in your business.  Take the survey now

photo credit: Easternblot

Are you feeling invisible?  Does it seem like the only people who know you’re open for business are you, and the people who will never work with you?  What can you do to change that?

There is something you can do today to get the right people noticing you.  It doesn’t have to cost you a thing other than your time.  It will not only get you noticed, but it will get the right people taking action.

What is that something?  A simple press release properly placed in the right publications, radio stations, or TV stations.  A simple press release with relevant information and a means for the receiver to take an action.

Before I go into more details I want to comment that “yes” you can pay to have your press release submitted.  But you also can do the work yourself and get your press release placed at no cost to you other than your time.  The choice is yours.

There are 3 key elements to a successful press release.  The first element is proper placement.  You want your press release in publications or on stations where you know your qualified prospects read, listen, or watch.

The second key element is relevancy.  Face it the editor will only use your press release if it has perceived value to their audience.  Your press release must have topical relevance, but you also want to add timely or newsworthy elements making it more interesting to the editor and the editor’s audience.

The third key element is a trigger mechanism.  This is your call to action.  You must specifically communicate the action you want receivers to take.  You also want that action to move the audience at least one step closer to working with you.

What might an actual press release look like for someone in a service business?  Here’s a recent example from a press release I just issued about increasing sales in a struggling economy.  Review it and think about what’s newsworthy about your business and how you can use a press release to get the right attention for you and your business.

photo credit: scudsone

Join in Tuesday August 5 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time.

A one hour webinar that will help you beat the competition.  You may have gotten off to a good start.  Now it’s time to blow the competition out of the water.

Your success depends on your ability to keep your momentum going.  You don’t want the start and stop roller coaster you and others struggle with.  You want to build up steam like a freight train speeding down a mountain.

If you’ll set asidee one hour you’ll:

* Uncover the formula for success
* Discover how to change what you see
* Identify the underlying obstacles holding you back
* Get the scoop on a performance formula guaranteed to produce results
* Discover proven techniques to get results now

You’re a savvy business person who knows the success you enjoy today won’t get you where you want to go tomorrow.

Use this link to reserve your spot now…
How to Out Perform & Outlast the Competition

I encourage you to get registered now so you don’t get locked out.  Go now…

August 5 Webinar How to Out Perform & Outlast the Competition

photo credit: the_toe_stubber

Rising gas prices are dramatically impacting you.  That on top of a slowing economy combined with the fact that more businesses fail than succeed, and it’s down right SCARY!

Drastic times call for drastic changes in the way you do business.  No more do you have the luxury of plugging along doing the very things that are causing you to struggle.

You’re facing a literal sales tsunami and you can’t afford to make these 5 fatal sales mistakes anymore.  What are the five fatal sales mistakes?

1. The theory that you should always be closing
2. Focusing on or even using a presentation to pitch your prospect
3. Trying to pressure prospects into a “yes” decision
4. Telling lies to get in the door
5. Thinking if you just do more of the things that don’t work somehow they’ll produce different results

You’ve probably had these ideas crammed down your throat since day one, and are shocked at the heresy that I don’t buy into even one of them.  I don’t buy into them because they don’t work.  And they certainly won’t work now.

You won’t increase your sales simply by focusing on the sales process and your product.  That leaves you with a myopic view that will cause you to fall flat on your face.  But you already know that from hard earned personal experience.

You have to learn how to effectively market yourself, or you’re not going to continue to enjoy any level of success.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there are three parts to increased sales:

• You have to effectively market yourself
• You have to effectively sell yourself
• And you have to effectively back up what you marketed and sold

Right now you’re trying to jump in on step two.  You aren’t doing step two all that well because you don’t understand how to do step one.  You don’t understand how to effectively market yourself because you don’t understand your prospect or the market.  If you want to be a top producer this is something you absolutely have to learn how to do for yourself.

When you get it you’ll succeed no matter how much gas costs, no matter how slow the economy gets, and no matter what you’re selling.

You might need a little help discovering how you can effectively market yourself.  If so read more about getting the help you need to become a Top Producer Increasing Your Sales

photo credit: peggydavis66

Feeling a little like this rooster scratching for worms?  It certainly isn’t getting any easier to find highly qualified prospects to talk to, is it?  It may even feel like they’ve all crawled under a rock somewhere.

In fact, the harder you pursue the quicker they run away.

Wouldn’t it be great if…you could change things?

Wouldn’t it be great if …you had highly qualified prospects contacting you?

Wouldn’t it be great if… you could pick and chose who you wanted to talk with first?

This DOES NOT have to be a dream.  It can be your reality.  You just have to make a few changes in the way you approach increasing sales

Have you noticed when someone talks to you about something you already have an interest in how you immediately pay attention?

Have you noticed how you want to know more?

Do you suppose your best prospects might feel the same way?

The problem is very few people want to buy a product or service.  But they certainly want to buy specific results, outcomes, and solutions.  They’re very interested in learning more about those outcomes, results, and solutions.

In our current economic condition most people are a little scared about their future.  They don’t feel like they have much control, and that scares them even more.  You don’t want to live in fear, and that means you’re motivated to do something to regain control and lessen your fears.

Do you know one of the things most people do to overcome their fears?  They search for information.  When you can be a resource or source for that information you have the means to trigger a response from highly qualified prospects, and get them to take actions that move them closer to you.

What do your best prospects want to know?  How could you give that information to them?

photo credit: ilya_ktsn

Elinor shared a story on her blog about a sales presentation ending with a sports car being offered as an incentive to Californians.  Yes, California where they take pride in being first when it comes to improving the environment, and where they’re embracing hybrid cars.

What an embarrassing mistake.  You would think the person giving the presentation would have known better.  But therein lies the reason for the big faux pas.

Far too often salespeople and the companies they represent think sales is all about the sales process.  They think the key to sales is the “perfect pitch”.  With rising gas prices and a slowing economy don’t let this misguided thinking make you yet another sales fatality.

Sales isn’t about the perfect pitch.  No matter how perfect you think your pitch is it won’t succeed unless you’ve considered two critical elements to your sales success.  Those elements are the prospect and the market.

There’s no doubt you understand your product.  You can talk forever about your product, and why the prospect should buy.  The problem is the prospect won’t listen because you aren’t talking with them you’re talking at them.  That’s a fatal mistake.

Before you make a sales call you need to make sure you understand both the prospect and the market.  Then you adapt what you say and how you say it to grab their attention and interest.  Once you have their attention and interest you have an opportunity to hold a sales conversation.

Ditch the pitch.  Understand the prospect and your market.  And then you’ll increase sales.

Read more and discover how to avoid these fatal sales mistakes and increase your sales

photo credit: forklift

No matter what business you’re in or what you’re selling one of your biggest challenges is getting people to sell to.   It doesn’t matter how great or how poor your sales skill are unless you have people to sell to you can’t succeed.  Even the worst sales person will someone something eventually if they simply hold enough appointments.

How to fill your appointment calendar is one of the questions that keeps you up at night.  All those empty appointment blocks is what drives you to do things that aren’t good for your long-term success.  That desperation is what causes you to call complete strangers, and push for an appointment even though you know few are likely to agree to an appointment, and fewer still are likely to do business with you ever.

But you have to do something?  You can’t just sit in your office staring at the phone hoping it will ring with a prospect on the other end.  What are you to do?  What can you do?

What you have to do, what you must do, is you have to learn how to market yourself in a way that gets highly qualified prospects contacting you.  Yes, CONTACTING YOU.  You need to create your own starving crowd hungry for what you have.

Sound impossible, well it’s not.  You just have to know how.  It’s far simpler than you probably think it is.  You just need someone to show you how to do it.  Discover how to get all the highly qualified leads you want and start filling your appointment calendar with people who WANT TO KNOW HOW YOU CAN HELP THEM.

No more trying to strong-arm people into buying.  No more feast and famine roller coaster.  No more empty bank account.

This eBook will get you on the path to all the leads you want  And you’ll discover how to get them without paying for useless mailing lists, internet leads, and any of the other things you’ve wasted precious dollars on that didn’t work.

7 Secrets to All the Highly Qualified Leads You Want

Today could be the first day of the rest of your business future where you no longer hunt for leads you filter through them selecting the best prospects and helping them first.  Today could be the first day of having people ask you for an appointment rather than you trying to push them into an appointment.  Today could be the first day of honest and open conversations where the prospect is open with you because they know you have the knowledge they need to make the best decision for them.

Check out how to get your copy of 7 Secrets to All the Highly Qualified Leads You Want 

photo credit: Don Nunn

Gas prices are sky rocketing.  We’re in an economic slow down.  Everyone is cutting expenses because everything is costing more not just gas.

So how are you supposed to sell more insurance?

It would be so easy to get in the trap of excusing your way out of increased sales.  It would be so easy to say you’ll just have to tough it out until the economy turns around.  It would be so easy to watch what happens rather than making things happen.

But none of those things put money in YOUR bank account.

Now more than ever you need a proactive plan to increase your insurance sales.  But what do you do?  Let’s talk about what you don’t do first.

The very things you’re told to do are unproductive, de-motivating, demoralizing, and above all don’t produce the desired results.  You’re told to:

• make more phone calls to complete strangers
• get in front of more people…any people
• get your name out there
• work harder, drive further, and bend over backwards for more people
• pay your dues now you won’t have to cold call hardly ever eventually
• keep doing the things that aren’t working because winners never quit and quitters never win
• run your ads at least 12 times because it takes that long before people will remember it
• invite people to a dinner seminar where you pick up the tab
• compete on price and quote, quote, quote

These and a lot of other things that are all ABSOLUTE BUNK.  The sales manager telling you this bunch of lies doesn’t know any better, and doesn’t know what to do any more than you do.

If you want to sell more insurance today, tomorrow, all your future tomorrows there are 7 things you must do.

1. identify a market you can dominate
2. attract highly qualified prospects TO YOU
3. channel those highly qualified prospects into your sales funnel
4. align the way you sell with the way people buy
5. help your potential new clients make the best decision for them
6. focus on the top 20% of your clients
7. earn referrals

When you can do those 7 things you’ll not only increase your insurance sales you’ll have a sustainable and profitable business allowing you to live the life you want to live.  Instead of being a desperate beggar you’ll become a respected professional a trusted advisor.  Get your free report the 7 Steps to Turning Your Business into a Top Producer by clicking on this link or visiting the  Coaching Mega Agents website

Stop the insanity of doing the things that don’t work, have never worked, and certainly won’t today, and start doing the things that do work.  7 Steps to Turning Your Business into a Top Producer  

photo credit: ol slambert

Here’s an interview I had with Lee Salz where I share sales success secrets.  Listen in to this interview and be ready to take notes because you’re going to hear immediately actionable ways to increase your sales.

There’s no reason your sales can’t take off like a fourth of July rocket and this no cost nothing to register for audio will provide several tools to make this happen for you.

Sales Success Secrets revealed join now.

photo credit: Jason McHuff

Happy fourth of July everyone!  In just a couple days you’ll be enjoying the fireworks.  Do you need a spark to get your business back on track?

Even though I like the 4th of July it always makes me a little sad too because for some reason I always think about it marking off half the summer.  It also means over half the year is over too.  But that also means you have half the year to turn things around and inject a power boost into your business.

Have you already registered for the “How to Double Your Business in 90 Days” webinar?  What are you waiting for?  You only have until Tuesday July 8.  It might be too late, but just in case there are still a couple spots left hurry over and get registered for this business doubling webinar.

I look forward to having you join in:-)