What I’ve Learned About

FEARLESS Selling!

Speak up for what you want. If you don’t spell it out, no one will ever know where you want to go. Solicit feedback.

When you state a feeling, opinion or belief, SAY that it’s your feeling, opinion, or belief…instead of implying that you’re stating “facts.” Imagine standing in your listener’s shoes.

STOP saying “all” and “every” and “ever” and “never” because you’ll start to believe yourself…and others will start to doubt you..

When others tell you your idea won’t work, don’t believe them. Instead, give it a goal and a strategy. It’s easier to move forward with a map.

STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN isn’t just for railroad crossings. Ask questions, observe and listen hard. But as Einstein said, “all we ever have is limited knowledge”…so when it’s time to move on, go with what you know!

Turn off the news. Bombardments of negative, tragic events will invade, disrupt, corrode and corrupt positive attitudes. INSTEAD: Sing. Dance. Read. Laugh. Play. Walk. Take pictures.

Positive attitudes are preserved when you respond instead of react. If you don’t react, you can’t over-react. Learn to blame less and forgive more.

Stop worrying about how you look and pay attention to how you behave. Entrepreneurial leaders instill confidence and inspire action no matter what they wear. Contrary to popular myth: Clothes do not “make the man.”

Look everyone and every thing in the eye. Good contact, not staring. Looking at your feet or over someone’s shoulder broadcasts ambivalence and fear…feelings that fail to: sell, instill confidence, inspire trust, communicate authenticity, show interest.

When the competition gets tough, get tougher by being better informed, by delighting (not just “servicing”) your customers, and by being honest.

Keep your eyes and ears alert, and your mind open. Take more deep breaths to keep your SELF in the “here-and-now” as much as possible . . . because success is the journey, and expectations breed disappointment.

Remember your family, your friends and how to laugh. Above all: Trust your SELF!

Live. Love. Make it easy.

 Some concepts inspired by www.FEARLESStheMusical.com

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Hal@Businessworks.US          931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and Make today a GREAT day for someone!

FAKE Entrepreneurs

Listen to all the politicians toss the “E” word around, and it will be transparently clear that they haven’t the foggiest idea of what Entrepreneurship is all about. How do YOU stack up? Here are some solid clues and checkpoints:

FAKE Entrepreneurs indulge in constant chatter about how great their business ventures have been, and will be, instead of being focused on the present “here and now” moment, as real entrepreneurs tend to be most of the time.

FAKE Entrepreneurs waste time, energy, and opportunities by whining and complaining about what didn’t “go right.” They instead need to follow real entrepreneurial thinking which calls for learning from the process and adjusting it, then moving on to make their ideas work.

[We’ve all heard the famous comment from Thomas Edison in response to questions about his 10,00 attempts to invent the light bulb, and how he felt at having failed 10,000 times, that he said he instead learned 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb!]

FAKE Entrepreneurs talk nonstop in convoluted terms about big money deals they have made and will soon be negotiating, instead of real entrepreneurs who pay tenacious attention to their current cash flow.

FAKE Entrepreneurs react instead of respond and blame others (predecessors, parents, partners, competition, the economy, climate change, and childhood) for costly business errors and decisions, instead of accepting—as real entrepreneurs—that the upsets are the result of a conscious or unconscious choice that they made now or in the past, and getting on with life.

FAKE Entrepreneurs consistently “take entrepreneurial risks” without remembering to put the word “REASONABLE” in front of “risks.” Real entrepreneurs don’t bet the farm. Real entrepreneurs take more risks than corporate and government managers, but the risks they take are always reasonable and realistic.

FAKE Entrepreneurs refuse to set goals because they fear failure, and refuse to learn proven goal-setting criteria which include “flexibility” as a key determinant. Real entrepreneurs set goals and routinely change them as they go forward because A) Nothing is in concrete, and B) times, people, and circumstances often change at the proverbial drop of a hat.

[Reality dictates moving or adjusting the goalpost or the terms initially determined for getting into the end-zone. Real entrepreneurs know they don’t need to stay on someone else’s measured field or inside someone else’s stadium in order to score a touchdown!]

FAKE Entrepreneurs mask what they’re doing behind closed doors or armies of hungry lawyers, out of fear someone will steal their idea and beat them to the punch (and that, by the way, can happen easily while ego-feeding with those few, well-disguised, bad-news investor and business lawyer vulture-types!).

Real entrepreneurs understand that seeking trustworthiness in associates is paramount among desirable qualifications, and that proprietary rights, copyrights, patents, trademarks are important, but that the time and energy of appropriate types of attorneys must be carefully shopped for and firmly (and appropriately) channeled.

[With cautious judgment, real entrepreneurs will usually embrace competitive overtures (and sometimes offer some). Many businesses maximize success for themselves by clustering, or joining forces with, or bartering with other like-minded entities… often a mainstay of retailing to stimulate consumer shopping and even realize cost savings with co-op advertising and promotion events.]

 How do YOU stack up?

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Hal@BusinessWorks.US      or 931.854.0474

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

Birthing Healthcare Business

Until you’ve worked on the front lines of a medical or therapeutic group practice, a private healthcare facility, or on a pharmaceutical or medical device core management team, you’re not likely to ever appreciate that healthcare entrepreneurship is a radically different beast.

Non-healthcare business entrepreneurs—minus the excessive regulatory compliance baggage—can afford to be more freewheeling than their healthcare provider-based counterparts.

Healthcare entrepreneurial ventures can carry astronomical price-tags for R&D. The accompanying array of complicated startup legalities, convoluted tax restrictions, partner negotiations, branding and marketing (Healthcare is NOT about smiling doctor billboards!), recruiting and interviewing, position statements, community relations, and building a referral base is enough to confound many dedicated providers who lack even basic business training or experience.

So what? Who cares? You might ask.

This is not to trivialize the amount of hard work and suffering that accompanies the launch of non-healthcare entrepreneurial enterprises—particularly those ventures giving birth to non-healthcare-related hi-tech products and services. It is simply that healthcare has it harder!

Initial non-healthcare-related business investments are often from friends and family who are happy to just get their initial money back.

But healthcare investors are often professional investor outsiders with no knowledge of your business, who want unrealistic return on investment, who are not interested in your sweat equity, and who want to own controlling interest in exchange for the funding they provide.

These wealthy individuals often seek to be “part of the action” and are willing to pay for it, but who will not let business founders off the hook if things fail — and, curiously, many who fit this description seem always to appear at the moment when you most need it.

The #1 underlying message here is DON’T NEED IT! When you most need money, you can be sure you’ll be communicating it without even a word, and that’s like blowing a game-starting whistle to send in the circling sharks. You think TVs “Shark Tank” name has no basis?

Underlying message #2 is STAY FOCUSED ON MAKING YOUR CORE BUSINESS WORK INSTEAD OF LOOKING FOR A QUICK FIX BY EXPANDING OR EXTENDING IT TOO PREMATURELY . . . TRUST YOURSELF AND BE REALISTIC.

So, if you have a choice between starting up a decorator windshield wiper blades company and establishing a business that aims to produce anti-bacterial clamps for micro-surgical openings, or starting up an orthopedic group practice, avoid healthcare pros money woes and go for the wiper blades! (But don’t think a year of that qualifies you to be in the windshield business, the windshield washer fluid business, and the rearview mirror business—or to think a 500-unit order means you need to break ground for a monster manufacturing plant!)

Just in case that thought crosses your mind, go back to the #2 message above, and if you do it right, you’ll be accommodating the #1 message without even trying. Because? Because you won’t need money because you’ll be too busy building your business and blowing out the walls of your garage!

If you’re truly “locked in” to a healthcare business startup, step carefully, listen carefully, speak and write carefully, and don’t let any amount of cash infusion take control out of your hands unless you have something else ready to put your hands on, and can (and are willing to) walk away comfortably. And remember–above all else– that Healthcare Leadership can mean only one thing . . . and it’s not Obamacare or “Lean” Management!!

You’re on the threshold

of a presentation.

Are you “overkill” ready?

I once worked for an “overkill” boss. It took me awhile to figure this out because he constantly gave me the impression he thought I wasn’t up to snuff with reality, until I discovered that he was simply an OCD  poster boy . . .

“Did you key up the audio so it’s loud enough for those with hearing disorders? Is it timed to come on just as I say ‘New campaign’? Is there a crisp, clean unused legal pad and new pen with keyboard access in front of every chair at the meeting table? Who’s escorting them into the room?

“You’re wearing pinstripes, right? And plain dark suit? No crazy neckties. And kill that erring! Did you check the thermostat? You’re sure the agenda board is 100% perfect and visible from every seat? Their limo is ordered? What time’s their flight? Lunch arrangements? What about lunch arrangements? “

Of course that was just the beginning of his diatribe checklist. He would go on to the exact type and amount and freshness of the tuna salad and bread and veggies and dip and chips and cheese and crackers and fruit, and juice and soda to be served. “What’s the dessert? Who’s making it? Have you tried it?” and on and on. You’d have thought our ad agency sales pitch was a White House attempt at negotiating a global war peace treaty. “WHO,” he would always ask, “is in your pocket?”

BUT WAS HE WRONG?

I’d be interested in your thoughts, but I can tell you this much: While I never became the fanatic he was, I learned to respect the value of being fully prepared ahead of every client and potential client interface — in person, on the phone, and on the computer screen. While I agree that his cage-rattling directives were often excessive, over-the-top, I have come to realize that –in fact– he had a point: You can never be TOO prepared!

And perhaps most important: being fully prepared –including having some contingency plans– helps build self-confidence as well. Why? Because it leaves your mind clear to deal with the person(s) in front of you and adapt to he/her/them and/or the circumstances. If you’re not fully prepared, you may be too preoccupied with fumbling to notice nonverbal responses or room temperature or your own agenda . Sales, remember, are made in “the here and now“!

What is business (and professional practice) all about after all? The customer/client/patient/prospect . . . RIGHT? What else could it possibly be about? So if you think on this a minute or two –or a lifetime’s worth– you will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that your entire career existence is dependent on your’s and your organization’s abilities to attract and keep, and grow your customer base. What else is there?

Even if you work for a nonprofit, and think you exist to make the world a better place, you’ll never succeed without developing a base of supporters. So how does one maximize the odds of attracting and keeping and growing a support base of any kind? With as accurate and perfect and communicative a presentation as possible at every opportunity you get to make a point. You need not become an OCD basket case or a pushy salesperson to make this happen.

You must quite simply put yourself in your audience’s (of one or one million) proverbial shoes and present information at his/her/their level wrapped around expressed needs and interests. Oh, and that can ONLY happen if you listen carefully (at least 80% of the time) to what each and all of them have to say. If you’re unsure or can’t feasibly do this, hire a firm that will do it for you with surveys or focus groups or whatever methods work for your industry or profession.

Otherwise, you’re you’ll find yourself

working inside a box 

that you’ll never learn to think out of!

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  THE FIVE PROVEN STEPS TO

  ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS

  THAT MAKE IT HARD TO FAIL

1.

BE passionate about your ideas and make them work with the help of others. This means, of course, being emotionally committed to what you’re doing 24/7. By doing that, odds are you’ll never have to solicit and recruit others to your crusade. They will see a place for themselves and gravitate there on their own.

When that happens, others’ commitments will be more solid and grounded than if you had gone out hunting for them and then had to talk them into joining forces. It’s a proven fact: When people make their own decisions about what they want to do, they are happier, more dedicated to achieving results, and they do a better job!

2.

Often ACT first and plan second. This does NOT mean rashly jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It instead suggests that over- indulgence in evaluating, assessing, diagnosing, and long-term planning (I call it “analysis paralysis”) wastes time, money, energy, and opportunities.

Entrepreneurial leaders take action, make adjustments, act again, make adjustments, and act again. Except for formal loan and investor-required formal business plans, they limit their planning to the short term — hour, day, week, month. And even those plans are temporary and flexible. Not unlike being too focused on one’s goals instead of the path that leads there, watching the finish line causes stumbling and falls.

3.

Always RESPOND instead of react. A key ingredient in the success of this pursuit is stress management. Bottom line: If you always respond instead of react, you can never over-react. If you never over-react, you will be faithfully followed. Built snugly into this thinking is this important awareness:

HOW you respond to someone who

(or something that) is out of control

. . . IS WITHIN YOUR CONTROL.

And we know this because? Because every behavior — yours, your employees’, your customers and prospects — is a CHOICE. It’s just as easy to choose to make a situation easy as it is to choose to make it hard. It may require some conscious stress management effort but, in the end, leadership is measured by ability to gain results through control and responsiveness!

4.

LEARN as much as you can about yourself –your SELF– may be the single most important determinant of entrepreneurial leadership because it is the foundation, the cornerstone, of each of the above criteria, and of any others you might add to the list. Without knowing what makes you tick, you cannot pretend to understand others enough to be a true leader. TALK TO YOUR SELF. Oh, and remember to listen!

5.

USE hands-on specifics. Keep a journal. Date every entry every day. Separate facing pages into “What Happened” on the left and “How I felt” on the right. This discipline helps sharpen your skills to separate fact and observation from opinion and feelings. Write, draw, diagram, paste photos, spit, whatever floats your boat. It’s YOUR journal.

Attend group and individual “personal and professional growth and development”-type discussion and counseling sessions. Take advantage of local adult education programs that focus on self-expression — from giving speeches and stand-up presentations to writing or painting or photography or music or handicraft courses. DISCOVER YOUR SELF!

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“There’s no business like small business

It makes economies grow

Everything about it is revealing

Got everything that customers want now

Nowhere could you get that happy feeling

When you make a sale-with-service vow”

(With There’s No Business Like Show Business adaptation apologies to Irving Berlin)

Like Broadway without lights, imagine America with no small business. We have thrived as a nation because of small business. Small business employs the vast majority of workers in this country, and stimulates the U.S. economy more than all the nation’s giant corporations put together!

ALL things great that happen in business

happen first in small business.

Entrepreneurs deserve the credit for our existence as a people. They brought us (and continue to bring us) to our senses. They made (and continue to make) the freedom of our daily lives happen. Our military forces deserve the credit for keeping our existence free.

Yet neither finds favor in Washington? Or, in fact, with a great many state and local governments?

Why do you think this is?

Government people are charged with regulating business but rarely if ever have enough business experience to even understand the consequences of their regulations. If, in fact, they were entrepreneurs to begin with, they would never have ended up in stultifying government careers.

What more poignant example could there be than the U.S. Postal Service . . . dying a long, painful death since 2008 (at taxpayer expense!)?

Show me a single entrepreneur who thinks that the way to make more money and compete with Fed Ex and UPS et al is to reduce services, close down basic operations, and raise prices. Please. The Postal Service is a shameful waste and an ideal example of everything that’s wrong with our government and our economy.

• They take mailboxes off the streets because they don’t know how to make them profitable.
• They cut employee hours, close offices and stop Saturday delivery in many locations to save money.
• BUT they spend many millions of dollars in meaningless, empty advertising campaigns run by Madison Avenue ad agencies seeking to win awards instead of making sales. Clearly an example of what your Grandmother used to say about the right hand not understanding what the left hand was doing.

What’s really discouraging is that it doesn’t take—pardon the trite expression, but it says it best—a rocket scientist to figure out that the U.S. Postal Service is in shambles and that it’s ego-maniacal ad agency is certainly not the bail-out answer. It takes an entrepreneur.

Only an entrepreneurial-spirited soul has the wherewithal to fully understand and appreciate how to transform the Postal Service into a privatized, profitable business. Think this is unimportant stuff? Guess what? America’s government from the top down is agonizingly in need of reform and innovative new approaches if it is to survive.

This kind of thinking is not forthcoming from our nation’s leaders, and never will be until they are replaced en masse. You own and operate a small business? Are you willing to step up? It’s YOUR business, and ultimately your family, that’s on the line. Please do SOMEthing. Even if that just means “Talk it up!” Without small business, there IS no America!

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 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below

Only 10% of salespeople

make more than 3 contacts

with a prospective Customer.

80% of sales are made

on the 5th to 12th contact.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the message behind these stats from the National Sales Executive Association, as brought to the surface on LinkedIn by

Douglas Green, National Field Market Manager, Healthcare at LanguageLine Solutions, Austin, TX.

Take the bitter pill! If you own or manage any part of a small or medium-size business, or if you are part of an individual or group professional practice, like it or not, you ARE a salesperson! If you can’t accept that and move forward, your business or practice won’t move forward. It is that simple.

So let’s explore this for a minute:

As a salesperson, what keeps you from making more than three contacts with a Customer or prospective Customer? What makes you stop short? Hint: It’s not likely to be the prospect or the circumstances. It’s your CHOICE — active or past– that’s holding you back!

If you’re so easily discouraged in representing your ideas/products/ services more than three attempts, imagine your credibility–never mind the credibility of your ideas/products/services–plummeting in the eyes of someone or group or entity after you’ve made only three attempts.

But whom, you may ask, wants to visit with someone five to twelve (12!!!) times to make a sale? A top performer, that’s who! The top performer you are capable of being, if you CHOOSE to be!

Frustration doesn’t fall from the sky and land on your shoulders. It’s something you intentionally or inadvertently CHOOSE.

Here’s a cage-rattler for you, from the good-fortune experiences I’ve had working with and learning from some of the world’s greatest salespeople: IT IS at least AS easy to choose to make the challenge of 5-12 contacts easy as it is to choose to make the challenge be hard.

And you must be lost in the Stone Age if you interpret “contact” or “visit” as a physical movement of your being back and forth to a prospect’s space. It’s true that physical back-and-forth trips may actually be called for in the case of high-ticket projects, but most of the time, contacts and visits take the form of phone calls, emails, text messages (when requested or agreed to ahead of time), or –Heaven Forbid!– a handwritten note or two (Huh? Handwritten?). Yes really! It’s all about Communication.

It should go without saying, but I’ll pop the comment in anyway: It’s not probable that 5-12 prospective Customer contacts will succeed if they constitute a bombardment or avalanche anymore than if they are as far apart in time as most dentist visits, so common sense must be paired with choosing persistence.

The bottom line: If you want to rise above the rubble, make a conscious choice to rise and a conscious choice to not be sidetracked.

Play the 10%-80% odds! Remember that Consistency Sells! And guess what else? Repetition sells, repetition sells, repetition sells. Repetition . . .

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 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below

Small business owners, doctors, lawyers, accountants, consultants, and sales reps…

It’s all about what you DON’T say!

It’s what you don’t say that makes a sale, that brings in new patients and clients and customers. Try sharing this bit of wisdom with any fast-talk car dealership or mattress store (the most distrusted U.S. businesses) then step back to get laughed at… which, all by itself, should be sufficient to convince you.

It’s true that being on the sales end of the spectrum in any given conversation, presentation, meeting, or conference, carries with it the responsibility to pay attention more, listen more, and shut up more! I’m not always smart enough to DO it, but I try because I think the old axiom that we should listen 80% of the time and talk 20% is true!

Besides forcing me to listen more carefully, the 80/20 formula enables me to be more patient with others and myself. It also prompts me to be more concise, more to the point — we inevitably choose our words and examples more carefully when we do take our 20% slice of a discussion.

People buy from knowledgeable people who excel at active listening. We like to hear –or at least I do– about what we don’t know when we ask for it but, Boy! I really resent the intrusion on my time and mindset by those who flaunt it when I plain just don’t care? Talk does not cook rice!

Oh, and how about those who simply pay no attention to my verbal, facial, and body language signals? How do they miss my scowls, my squinted or rapidly-blinking eyes, my folded arms and jittery feet? Ah, then there are those who stare dumbly into space, or at my shirt collar, shoes or hair (or lack of), or their own hands or feet?

Or, yikes!… their wristwatch!

How many times have you—as a prospective customer/patient/client—been scared off by a know-it-all sales rep/ doctor/ lawyer/ accountant/ consultant? You know the type. “Everything is under control, my friend” (not a particularly ingratiating line from a friend I’ve never met). The great sales asset of genuine empathy is an entirely different matter.

Perhaps you’ve heard someone tell you: “Don’t worry. Be happy.” Worse yet, that was the song my former CPA played on his outgoing phone message. After producing an April 14th “minor” ($10,000) “IRS payment that needs to be paid with tomorrow’s taxes,” you’ll surely understand why I referred to him as “former.”

Instead of hearing and responding directly to my purchase interests and concerns, I get tons of information I don’t care about. And how much do you love token, dismissive head nods offered as pathetic attempts to pretend to be listening, but serving instead as a “yes but” lead-in to the next round of information dumping? Can you hear me now?

Oh, and to underscore the point, many in-person information overload spiels are accompanied by the spieler paying more attention to whom or whatever is going on behind me (or being more tuned into a blinking smartphone). And only heaven knows the distractions that keep telemarketers telemarketing.

Dynamics like these always make it tempting to ask:

“Uh, did you hear anything I just said?”

But I just walk away or hang up. How many of your prospective customers, clients, patients just walk away, or hang up?

C’mon, people! If you’re in sales, or healthcare, or law, or consulting, and you can’t get it together enough to listen attentively enough to prospective customers, patients, or clients, and be able to address their needs, go work for your nearby automobile or mattress dealer. You’ll fit right in.

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