Posts for the ‘Personal Development Advice’ Category
How to be a superhero
My 5-year-old son, Jake, looked at the cover of Seth’s new book, Linchpin, which was sitting on my bedside table, and remarked, “Daddy, does that book teach you how to be a superhero?” I smiled and said, “Why, yes. Indeed it does.”
4 Comments »How do you like these apples?
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” – George Bernard Shaw
How to Overcome Objections
Don’t feel bad, uncertain or get tunnel vision working to overcome sales objections, just eliminate them entirely. I know, I know… very funny, wise guy. But, it’s no joke. Despite what the bulk of the nearly 250,000 sales books out there say, objections don’t always follow an easy 1-2-3 overcome-me formula. Sure facts, figs and pointing out the bennies (benefits) are often going to help you make the sale, but if a prospect fundamentally objects to what you are offering it’s doubtful a 3-step plan is going to secure the sale.
So, what’s bigger, better and far more fun than overcoming objections? Eliminating them entirely. Why change a prospect’s mind, when you can change your product. Yeah, you heard me. Improve your product or service so you don’t get the objections in the first place. Novel, I tell you!
Now, unfortunately, many sales people will have their hands tied because they’re not in on the design or re-design of the products they are selling. But if you are an entrepreneur, you’re not only designing your product, you’re in charge of it. You’re the boss. You are in the unique position of being able to give customers exactly what they want. Let’s take a look at your product from the clients’ perspective. I just had to go through this very assessment.
www.BookedSolidU.com was launched on January 1st. Booked Solid University is a business university and coaching program that offers everything you need to be a small business success. Based on my experience and certain tested (or so I thought) assumptions, I designed the program to give newer business owners exactly what they need:
- Long-term commitment to learning and business mastery (12 months).
- Content, answers, advice and all the information business owners need to succeed.
- Live, interactive coaching for accountability and commitment making fulfillment.
People did enroll the first month, my most ideal type of big thinking clients, but far more people inquired and never took action. The 3 primary objections I heard were:
Objection 1: The enrollment fees are reasonable, but I don’t know if I can commit to a full 12 months.
(Read: financial and time commitment too long, creating fear.)
Objection 2: Even though all of the content seems like it’s just what I need to succeed, what if I take on too much, choose the wrong learning path or don’t have time to handle the workload.
(Read: too many options and choice of own learning path too big and idea, creating overwhelm.)
Objection 3: I just don’t know if I’ll get the personal coaching I need.
(Read: even though the best Book Yourself Solid Certified Coaches are available to personally coach, they either didn’t feel it was extensive enough or they felt my personal presence was missing.)
Notice anything about these two lists? Yeah, you’re right. They’re the same. The features I thought would be most helpful to my ideal clients, turned out to be what was most objectionable.
I could have done my best Zig Zigler to demonstrate why:
Making a long-term commitment to learning in action is so important to entrepreneurial success.
Designing your own customized curriculum is the most efficient, time effective and elegant way to get exactly what you need, at the right time.
Working with experts, other than me, brings a more expansive and diverse set of viewpoints, solutions and success strategies.
And believe me, at first, I tried. But, clients repeated these same objections and I remembered that we don’t always want to buy what we need. A better solution, a more elegant solution, one that eliminates friction during the sales cycle, would be to redesign my offering to fit exactly what my clients both need and want. Seems obvious but often it’s not what is done. Here’s what changed. We…
Eliminated the long-term commitment objection with a “pay as you go” plan and a full 30-day money back guarantee.
Created short-term and specifically prescribed coaching modules, each designed to help the client achieve one specific result, at a time. Overwhelm objection—gone!
Kept the Michael Port brand in tact and made my personal coaching more available and visible. Uncertain business results objection—gone!
And that’s not all that’s changed. Even the way that I present the entire concept of Booked Solid U has shifted because of these simple, yet fundamental changes. Check out the site to see what I mean.
Now, these 3 fixes alone might seem obvious and simple to you. But, believe me, when in the middle of a major product launch, with 1000’s of moving pieces and people, the solution was not so obvious and the overcome objection tunnel was getting longer and longer. Clients want easy. They need a simple system that focuses their time and attention on the simplest and most elegant solution. And, that’s what the new, and better, BSU is—easy.
When I started assessing Booked Solid U, I used the same 3-step process I’ve always used to fix nearly every problem in my business. Try it yourself.
3 Steps To Eliminate Objections Or Solve Any Other Problem
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, ask yourself how you can reconfigure what you have and turn it into what you want (something that will create better results).
Don’t make big, sweeping changes. Instead, make the smallest possible changes to the design of the product that will produce the biggest possible results.
Don’t go it alone. Bring your clients, and every single member of your team into the redesign process at the earliest possible moment to produce the most elegant solution.
Of course, you and I both know it’s unlikely we will be able to eliminate all client objections. But ask yourself first, which objections can be eliminated with small product changes? Many times the biggest objections can be easily eliminated just by adjusting or reconfiguring your product. Now, you’ve got a conversation going without ever running into the big, pressing, unwieldy objections that throw clients into a stall pattern or, worse yet, entirely off track.
So, please, go to bookedsolidu.com and see if I’ve overcome your objections.
The Best In The World, But Do You Believe It?
Here’s a video from the NFL Fantasy Football “Pick Me” Campaign. The best athletes in the world showing off their “unbelievable” talents.
But there’s a problem. Most people, myself included, don’t know whether or not to believe it’s real. Because these are Reebok sponsored videos (read: ads), are they acts of draw-dropping athletic mastery or are they tricks created through special effects and clever editing? Either way, it’s fun to watch. But this is representative of what you’re dealing with as a salesperson or someone who sells something, anything. Most people think there’s a catch, a trick, something up your sleeve.
The public is afraid of being bamboozled, and rightly so.
Years ago, I offered seminars all over the country as “pay what you want or pay nothing” events; no strings attached. I promised no up-sells, pitches or offers of any kind, not even a table selling books. Just a motivating, content rich, memorable small business success seminar. Still, my office received hundreds of calls from people asking, “What’s the catch? There has to be a catch.” The theory was that nobody would go to the trouble of producing seminars all over the country without a sales angle. I do. Do you? Of course, we know why there is such general distrust in the marketplace. People have been burned over and over again. We live in the age of the bamboozle. (Oh, and, by the way, I would understand if people thought there was a catch if I offered the typical pitch-fest seminars in the past. But I don’t, never have, and never will.)
Just like these athletes are the best in the world at what they do, I know I’m the best in the world at what I do—teaching you how to be a successful entrepreneur and small business success. But, no matter how long I’ve been doing it, how many books I’ve sold, how “famous” I am, I know that I have to do everything in my power to counteract the fear of the bamboozle. How do I do it? Lots of ways. I start by simply giving so much value that you think I’ve gone too far and then I give more.
(Update: For the record, I’m not the only “best in the world” at what I do. There are a number, maybe even lots of “best in the world” in every service driven field. Each client defines what “best in the world” means to them and will hire the person that is the “best in the world” for them given a whole host of various criteria.)
2 Comments »How to Play a Big Game
I just sent this note out to my Book Yourself Solid Certified Coaches and I thought I’d share it with you.
Challenge and difficulty are part of the game. Not just this game but any game. No one ever won anything without working for it. Sure, a few people have won the lottery by buying a ticket or hit the jackpot by pulling a lever. But that’s just dumb luck. Usually the ones looking for luck loose to the house. So, let’s play big. No, bigger than that.
So, you tell me… what’s the big game that you’re playing right now, at this very moment.
3 Comments »
