Volume #8

Are you missing the obvious?

“The great discoveries are usually obvious.”
Phil Crosby

A few days ago I was collecting testimonials for a brand new marketing client who offers a personalised telephone answering service to a wide range of businesses.

One of their clients is a Hypnotherapist and he made a very interesting comment in his testimonial.

“Before I began using your services over 50% of people who contacted me put the phone down when my answer phone kicked in. My business grew by 30% as soon as I started using your personalised answer service. I now capture all enquiries. Your service is very affordable compared to the increase in new business I have gained by having my phone professionally answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I have increased the number of clients I have and improved the professional image of my business.”

What struck me about this comment is how obvious it is.

Most of us would rather speak to a real ‘live’ person when we phone any business and would prefer not to have to leave a message on a voice mail or answer phone.

And this comment also reminded me that you don’t have to be clever or complicated (or spend a huge amount of money) to quickly improve your sales.

All this Hypnotherapist had to do to improve his sales was to make sure that anyone who phoned his business could speak to a real live person. So instead of 50% of callers hanging up he now captured all enquiries and suddenly his sales went up by 30% in his first month.

How simple and how obvious when you think about it.

And this reminded me that there are dozens of simple and very obvious things that all of us can do to quickly improve our sales.

And that’s the purpose of this volume of Easy Business Success.

The main concept to think about this month is....

Use what already works

Boy is this obvious and yet most of us often overlook it.

The concept here is to take something that has been proven to work to make more sales in your type of business and then use it in your business.

Here’s a good example:

A number of years ago, I was selling training seminars to businesspeople. The company I was working for had distributors throughout the United States and Canada, and I was one of their first distributors in another country. (In my case I was selling in New Zealand.)

I had been in the business for around six months and I didn’t see how I could get my sales up quickly enough to reach my income targets.

This company held a two-day convention in Palm Springs that they invited all their top salespeople to. They also invited me and my partner, even though we were not doing very well. During this convention, I had a chance to chat personally with the company's top salesperson. Paul was a 26-year-old young man who was earning around $200,000 a year. I asked him for some help.

“Paul," I said, "what are you doing to sell so many of these training seminars?”

Paul explained that he had put together a 25-minute educational presentation that gave salespeople tips on how to increase their sales. He made this presentation at group sales meetings. At the end of each presentation, he then gave a brief commercial plug for one of the training seminars he was selling. And because his educational presentation had been so useful, a lot of the salespeople decided to buy his seminar.

Paul told me that it was not uncommon for him to sell 10-20 people on a training seminar at just one of these presentations. I was pretty impressed with these numbers, because I was only selling one or two seminars per week.

I had never before heard of group selling as a sales tool. However, inspired by Paul's success, I decided to give it a go. I used a small pocket tape recorder and taped Paul's presentation. I then practiced it several times. Finally, I had my first chance to use it with a group of salespeople back in New Zealand. I used Paul’s words and phrases - and at the end of my presentation, I had nine sales.

As the result of using Paul's very good advice, I had earned in one hour what I would normally have earned in a month.

And all I had done was use what already works.

Here’s another example:

A few weeks ago I was talking with an insurance broker who told me about an interesting four page letter that he had written to send to self employed trades people. He explained that this letter identified a common problem many of these people had and gave them an interesting reason to meet with him.

This insurance broker told me that he had mailed this letter to 96 trades people over a four week period and then made a follow up phone call to each person. He would mail the letters on a Friday and phone the people he had sent them to the following Wednesday and Thursday.

Out the 96 letters he sent he created 26 appointments with his follow up phone call. And this resulted in five sales producing commissions of $19,800.

I realised immediately that this insurance broker had a system that had been proven to work to get appointments and make sales. So I suggested he make it available to a small number of other insurance brokers in non competing areas. I then emailed six insurance brokers I knew and told them about the success this insurance broker was enjoying with his proven marketing system to trades people. Three of these insurance brokers agreed to pay $297 to have a copy of his letter and phone script so they could use it in their own insurance business as well. And they will have made an excellent investment because they now have something that has been proven to work to get appointments and make sales.

Action Exercise:

Time to apply this simple concept in your own business.

Step One:

Who are 3-5 other businesses in your field that might have some proven selling or marketing systems that you could use in your business?

(Pick businesses in non competing areas when answering this question.)

Step Two:

Contact some of these businesses and offer to share a couple of things that work well in your business to increase sales in exchange for them giving you a couple of things in their business that work well to increase sales.

I can tell you that you will be amazed at the simple and obvious ideas you get by doing this very simple exercise.

Sometimes all you need is one good idea that is very obvious and simple and you can transform your sales and profits in a very positive way.

Helpful Resource:

One of the best ways to get obvious yet simple ways to improve your sales quickly is to read helpful books that have dozens of useful ideas that have already been proven to work in a wide range of industries.

There are three outstanding books on sales and marketing that I highly recommend you read to get literally hundreds of great ideas to quickly improve your sales and profits. And best of all, these ideas have already been proven to work.

Just email me with the words ‘three books’ in the subject line and I’ll tell you exactly what these three books are and why they are so helpful for you to read.

My email address is

Have a wonderful month and I’ll be in touch again soon with the next volume of Easy Business Success.

To subscribe to Easy Business Success just go to
www.easybusinesssuccess.com

(This is completely free and won’t cost you a single penny).

You can contact Graham at www.twomac.co.nz

You can read back issues of Easy Business Success at

www.easybusinesssuccess.com/back-issues.asp