Podcasts about growing small businesses

EPISODE SUMMARY: Ever wonder how the timeless allure of trade jobs meshes with the relentless advance of technology? Hayden Slack, the brains behind a thriving foundation repair and plumbing company, joins me, Austin Linney, to unravel this enigma. On the airwaves, we dissect the invulnerability of trades in an AI-centric world, and how Hayden's businesses in Texas are flourishing thanks to customer reviews and savvy digital marketing strategies. His commitment to the craft is not just about maintaining pipes and foundations; it's a testament to how essential human touch remains in an increasingly automated industry.As we chart Hayden's ascent, we uncover the subtleties of scaling a business with meticulous precision. The conversation veers into the value of organic growth, networking with fellow entrepreneurs, and striking that elusive balance between personal fulfillment and professional ambition. We also get a glimpse into the dynamic of steering a large team, particularly in a business where family values are as foundational as the homes they repair. Follow along for a trove of wisdom from Hayden, a man whose Twitter feed blends hard work, integrity, and, yes, his signature sweater vests. GET IN TOUCH WITH: https://glhunt.com/ EPISODE CHAPTERS: (0:00:01) - Tech and AI Evolution of Home ServicesPerception of trade jobs, customer reviews, hard work, digital marketing, and systems driving success in home services industry. (0:16:39) - Growing Small Businesses and Maintaining SuccessNature's journey and mindset shifts in growing a specialized trade business, balancing personal life and team dynamics.(0:36:03) - Following Hayden's Journey on TwitterMeet Hayden, a business operator with integrity and a love for sweater vests. Follow his journey on Twitter for valuable insights.

Join us on The Small Business Show as we welcome Tim Yurek, an experienced entrepreneur and CEO of Tier One Capital, to discuss "Unlocking Financial Freedom: A Primer on Growing Small Businesses." With his skills honed over 35 years in the finance industry, Tim offers an enlightening perspective on the financial challenges that plague small businesses, the costs of bad financial habits, and tools to foster financial stability and growth.This episode features a strategic four-step process to guide small business owners in better understanding and improving their financial position. Yurek sheds light on how existing financial habits may be impacting businesses negatively, offering steps on how to stop and prevent these leaks. He further advocates for the establishment of robust savings mechanisms and encourages the practice of borrowing from oneself. By mastering these financial strategies, business owners can ensure a healthy cash flow, achieve financial freedom, and secure the future of their businesses.Special link for Small Business Show's listenershttps://tier1capital.com/smallbusinessshow/AI Chatbot for anything related to this episodeSocial Links:https://www.facebook.com/Tier1Capital.wbhttps://www.instagram.com/tier1capital_/http://www.linkedin.com/company/tier-1-capital-llc/https://www.youtube.com/c/Tier1Capitalhttps://tier1capital.com/businessThe Small Business Show is the official podcast for Garuda Promo and Branding Solutions. For more information visit Website: http://www.garudapromo.com​​Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garudapromo/​​Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/garudapromoTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/Garuda_Swire​Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swire-ho-thepromoguy-6b9Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/garudapromo/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Garudapromo88/videosTwtich: https://www.twitch.tv/thesmallbusinessshowLinktree: https://linktr.ee/thesmallbusinessshow #thesmallbusinessshow​​​ ​​​ #gaurdapromobranding​​ #smallbusinessmatters #smallbusinessstrong

Welcome back to our Encore of the masterclass edition of the Business Infrastructure podcast! In the first episode of this series, you heard the story of Emily Miller. She's the founder of a fast-growing non-profit. She met a consultant who introduced her to a Business Parts Analysis as a means of sustaining the growth.   As Emily discovered, fast growth is exciting but requires adding more people to your team to make sure important tasks don't get overlooked. Sometimes you may have to re-allocate roles and responsibilities and, through introspection, objectively evaluate your own role as a leader.   The Business Parts Analysis is the first element in building business infrastructure. It sets the foundation upon which all other back-office activities are organized and managed.   In this tutorial episode, you'll learn more about what a Business Parts Analysis is and how to create one in your growing organization through a series of exercises. The results include task, role, and department identification along with a prioritized hiring strategy and succinct job descriptions to attract the right talent. No, this isn't just for NGOs and non-profit organizations. It's for entrepreneurs and owners of any small business serious about establishing a foundation to scale back-office operations to the next level.    

Creating buzz around something new is always a unique challenge and the results are often unpredictable. Foundational marketing strategies are great for just that – a solid foundation. But the secret sauce comes from thinking outside of the status quo.Anna Alessi, owner of Cycle of Heart, and Emily Ackart, owner of Emily Ackart Fitness accomplished an incredible feat of creating, marketing, and seamlessly executing a never been done before wellness retreat for women in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. Through their tenacity and unwavering persistence, they were able to successfully launch Wellness Within Her, in only 4 months' time. “What exactly are we creating here? Ok. We need to communicate that.” – Emily Ackart, Wellness Within HerIn this episode, Anna Alessi and Emily Ackart discuss:Generating impact by coming together for a massive collaborationGrassroot marketing strategies that lead to finding clarity in their messagingDefining roles for the event and trusting a team with those expectationsPlaying to each other's strengths to create a unique experience that perfectly exemplified their missionConsider and discuss: How can I apply this thinking to my business?How can you use partnerships to grow your business?Can you find partners that complement your product or service and add value for your customers? Could a partner expand your marketing reach and influence? What kinds of partners could help you to achieve critical goals in your business? Maybe you need just one partner – who would that be? Or, if you need many partners – in what areas of your business could they help?What creative marketing approaches could you add to your strategy?Are you relying entirely on grass-roots exposure? Are there partners, colleagues or team members that could help gain traction with new reach? Can you add other tactics to your efforts? PR? Paid advertising? Search optimization? Content? Sponsorship? Events?Are you prepared to capitalize on moments where growth is available for your business? Can you move quickly to make decisions and act? Is your approach nimble and able to pivot if necessary? Is the market asking for your concept, idea or solution? Can you meet the market where there is demand? What is preventing you from growing when and where opportunities are present?Key themesPartnershipSmall businessEvent planningMarketingGrowthFor extended show notes, resources, and ways to connect, learn more at: mavenminds.com/season-1-trailblazers Podcast Editor and Strategist: @episodeready

If you are like me, then you understand the importance of revenue and sales to a business. Without sales, businesses fail. I struggled for a long time to increase sales and close deals. However, by learning about the three critical components that are essential for any sale, I was able to successfully sell anything. When you use these 3 critical components in your business you will be able to…Increases conversions and salesChanges your company from transactional to relationship basedReduces stress on you and your teamImproves the loyalty of your customersDid you know that there are listeners and clients just like you who have signed up for our VIP Insights List? Every week they get the in-depth resources for every episode sent directly to their inbox.So although we give you a brief outline below - if you're looking to take action and actually get results in your business then you're going to want to click this link VIP Insiders Access and get your weekly VIP Resources sent directly to you so you can easily increase your sales, and exponentially grow your business.VIP link: https://growingyourb2bsmallbusiness.com/joinvip 

Are you part of the business owners who feel like they don't have the luxury of making time for themselves? Are you a busy business owner who's too swamped in the day-to-day to take the time to make time for yourself.?  Welcome to the Collaborative Connections by Orothopelvic PT! We're your host, Dr. Kelly Alhooie, and Molli Atallah. In this week's episode, we will be joined by Jess Hook. Jess is the CEO and founder of Believe in Blank. Her passion is empowering and growing small businesses through authentic social media connections. She loves sharing stories and building communities on social media, to help people just like you expand their business and grow a business. With years of experience as a certified social media marketer creating and cultivating social media personas for various brands, she knows she's capable of helping your business reach new heights. She works with you individually, crafting the right voice, creating authentic content, and building a community around your unique business.  We will touch on such topics as: You can't handle two pressures at the same time  It is okay to ask for some time for yourself.  Be a supporter of your friend who is having a hard time.  How she met Dr. Kelly Alhooie It's tough to be in physical pain and you're not sure who to look for.  Reach out to Jess: Social:  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BelieveInBlankMarketing (www.facebook.com/BelieveInBlankMarketing) Instagram: @believeinblankmarketing Website: http://www.believeinblank.com/ (www.believeinblank.com) Please visit www.orthopelvicpt.com for more information. Find OrthoPelvic PT: Website: https://orthopelvicpt.com/ (https://orthopelvicpt.com/) Instagram: @orthopelvicpt TikTok: @orthopelvicpt1 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OrthoPelvicPT (https://www.youtube.com/c/OrthoPelvicPT)

Our anchors start today's show breaking down the White House's response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict with CNBC's Ylan Mui. Then, Stifel Co-Head of Global Technology Cole Bader joins for a look at tech valuations resetting, and CNBC's Kate Rooney reports on Bitcoin plunging over rate hike concerns and the ongoing uncertainty in Eastern Europe. Next, Wall Street Journal Markets Reporter Gunjan Banerji highlights the current surge in short sellers adding to their positions amid the Russia-Ukraine tensions, and NBC News Correspondent Erin McLaughlin reports on Russian President Vladimir Putin receiving legislative permission to deploy the country's military. CNBC's Frank Holland also reports on supply chain issues stemming from the conflict, and GGV Capital Managing Partner Jeff Richards offers insight on valuations and opportunities in software. Later, Lendistry CEO Everett Sands discusses the community development financial institution's work to provide capital to vulnerable small businesses.

This week, Stephanie speaks with Laura Clise (she/her) the founder and CEO of Intentionalist. Laura knows that small businesses are important to both the social and economic fabric of our communities. Intentionalist is a company that helps individuals support small businesses through their online directory and community programs. With Small Business Saturday quickly approaching, Stephanie and Laura talk about how intentional spending impacts local economies and the importance of voting with your dollars. Plus, they provide some ideas to get involved with Small Business Saturday and support your favorite places this holiday season.Follow Intentionalist on Instagram @intentionalist_Search through Intentionalist's small business directory and sign up for their newsletter on their website intentionalist.comYou can purchase an Intentionalist Gift Card or certificates to over 100 different small businesses through their marketplace: intentionalist.com/store/This week's episode of Green Stuff is brought to you by our newest digital course: The Plantiful Holiday Feast! This digital class guides you through creating an entirely plant-based meal for Thanksgiving or Christmas, featuring some traditional holiday dishes.Learn more and sign up today at scoopintelligence.com/holidayfeast Follow Scoop on social media:@scoopintelligence@scoopmarketplaceIf you're located in the Seattle area, you can visit our zero waste grocery stores in Kirkland and Renton. We provide carbon-neutral shipping nationwide: scoopmarketplace.com

Business challenges are expected and we can deal with them. What about the more serious, catastrophic, or even just “bad things” we encounter? How do we keep from getting totally derailed in our business?

Have you ever implemented a new tactic that seemed like it was really paying off well, but then you wake up a year later and realize it's not coming close to what you thought it would? Or even worse, you are actually losing money? I know I have. It comes down to effectively evaluating return on investment, both with hard dollars and the not so easy to quantify use of resources. Listen to this episode to find out how to keep this from slowing you down and vastly increase the speed of your company's growth.

Have you ever thought, “If I could only get through the gatekeeper, I know I could sell the decision maker?”Getting through to decision makers is the Holy Grail of marketing and sales. It's critical, but it also happens to be difficult.Let's talk about some techniques to get through gatekeepers, particularly when you are selling high ticket items that aren't an online click a button type of sale.

What is the number one problem small business owners and salespeople face when it comes to getting sales and generating revenue?It's not how competitive our product or service is, and it's not our marketing or sales presentations. It comes down to the most critical but most difficult part of the marketing and sales process - getting in front of decision makers who have the need, resources to afford our product or service, and the authority to make a decision. Without this, we will be getting nowhere.Let's talk about some methods to get in front of your ideal customers and set us up for success.

Today's guest is Kira La Forgia, someone who actually enjoys 1099s, W2s, FMLA, and FLSA; you know, all that human resources stuff that usually goes right over your head! Her operations consulting company, Paradigm Consulting, provides resources to online-based business owners that put people operations at the center of the organizational structure. Kira knows how to project, streamline, and scale businesses, working with leaders in their fields to blend their strengths, passions, and experiences into their unique company culture and develop a robust hiring and growth strategy, as well as providing you with the people you need to move your business forward! In this episode, we talk about what that looks like at different stages and Kira shares her top hiring tips for growing small businesses. Abagail and Emylee actually hired Kira as a consultant for their own company as they were phasing into growth and hiring employees, which is why we invited her on the show to share her take on small businesses, or businesses who are hiring contractors or virtual assistants, even for the first time. Kira shares some of the things you can set up to better your experience with contractors, the do's and don'ts when it comes to contractors versus employees, everything you need to know about your employee handbook, and how you can make the onboarding process and the associated learning curves and mindset shifts around hiring a whole lot easier! We also touch on HR basics for small teams looking to hire contractors and employees, some of the mindset shifts you need to make when it comes to your team members, plus a new way of looking at org charts and what you need to do differently. We all want a scalable business model with no limit on revenue, which is why Kira's insights are so valuable. Make sure not to miss this incredible and informative conversation, packed full of practical advice that you can implement today! Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, rate and review The Strategy Hour Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. For show notes go to thestrategyhour.com. To download the transcript of this episode head to: thestrategyhour.com.

Have you ever had someone tell you or thought, “you know, I need to go back to school to learn more. That way I will make more money? That might be true for an employee in corporate America. For us business owners, however, there is only one degree that matters and will make us money in the long run. Unfortunately, it can cost us a lot more than the cost of a Harvard PhD if we are not careful.  Check out this episode to find out how to earn this degree without going broke.

Have you ever bought something and then said to yourself shortly after, “why did I buy that?” Then you returned it or felt duped you bought it? This is classic buyer's remorse. We've all experienced it in our personal lives. Buyer's remorse can cause us to lose a lot of money in the short term, but the long term damage is much worse. Listen to find out how we can prevent buyer's remorse.

We all do drugs. Yes, even you. A lot of drugs are bad for you. The ones you manufacture in your brain are natural and even more effective than illicit drugs. If you want your customers to love buying from you and get an actual physical high during the process, you need to help them trigger the release of the drugs in their brain that all humans love.

Ever had a time when things were just clicking, you were kicking butt at work, and you felt on top of the world? What about the opposite? You woke up grumpy, everything was going wrong, you didn't want to go to work, or you felt like giving up. How effective are you at work on those “bad days”? More importantly, how do you make sure you don't have too many of those “bad days” to start off with?

B2B sales is all about logical, dollars and cents analysis of options, right? All selling is emotionally based. It doesn't matter if it is selling to consumers or to sophisticated business owners and executives. Listen to this episode and I'll prove this to be true.

Ever feel like you are playing ping pong going back and forth trying to convince a customer to buy your product or service? The reason for this is rooted in objections and how sometimes we almost ask for prospects to question us. Let's talk about the three major types of objections or reasons people resist buying and how to overcome them and make the sale.

Have you ever found yourself chasing too many ideas, businesses, or strategies, and realized later that you are spread too thin and accomplished none of them? This is called Shiny Object Syndrome. The question is how do we avoid this pitfall and keep our focus on the things that really matter. Let's talk about some ideas to mitigate distraction.

As entrepreneurs and salespeople, we tend to focus on closing the big deal, getting the sale, and going after the “low hanging fruit.” While this is important, we are ignoring where most of the money is actually made if we focus just on this. Listen to find out where that money is.

Do you sometimes feel like you are running 24/7 without coming up for air in your business? This is a dangerous place to be which will eventually put you out of business. How do you prevent this from destroying your business and continually grow?

What happens when Covid-20 hits (or the next economic crisis)? Why have so many businesses failed in the last year and why did some of us survive? Most importantly, how do we prepare for the next crisis? It's not an if, it's a when.

What's one of the biggest reasons clients and customers are dissatisfied? They have totally different expectations and perceptions of your products or service than you do. How do we bridge this gap and turn disgruntled clients into raving fans? Listen to this episode to find out more. 

So you got the appointment with the prospect. What now? How do you turn this appointment into a sale? How do you maximize your time and process to take advantage of your appointment and grow your business. This is part two on how to do this. Take a listen.

When it comes to B2B, we are all focused on getting in front of our prospects. If you are successful, that's only the first step. What do you do after setting an appointment, and how do you maximize your effectiveness? This is part one of what and how to do this. Take a listen.

Ever had someone call your office and go off on your team or you? Or maybe bravely post a really nasty review or social media post? These people are a fact of business and life, but the question is how do we deal with them. Listen to find out how.

Ever been nervous to reach out to a client and ask them what they think of your service or product? Sometimes, it's easier to stick our heads in the sand. Why? It's tough to hear both haters nasty and loud opinions, and sometimes it's equally tough to hear the truth.  Hater or truther, you can't ignore feedback as it's one of the best tools we have. So HOW do we get constructive feedback from our clients that we can implement to grow our B2B small business? 

So you don't like some of your clients, and would like to fire them? What do you do? If you realize you have some(or all) of the wrong clients, how do you get rid of them, and how do you actually attract the right clients? Listen to find out how you can rid your business of the wrong clients and replace them with the ones that will be a pleasure to work with and reduce the stress in your life.

Do you hate some of your clients (or at least dislike them)? That means you are attracting and selling to the wrong people. Yes, it's simple as that. One of the biggest stresses in our business is dealing with clients who we don't like and don't share the same values with. Listen to find out how you can wake up and look forward to interacting with your clients.HighlightsHaving unpleasant clients is not a requirement in business.Do your best to not attract and take on clients that you don't want to do business with.Most inbound customer calls are not positive. So, there are a lot of negative interactions.If your customer service employees are having bad interactions every day, then it is bad for the company. You should be looking for clients that share your company values.Having the wrong clients with incorrect expectations can be bad for the company. They will eventually leave and will not have good things to say to future prospects.Placing money over values and fit can be a magnet for poor client relations.Have intentional planning and strategies for client fit. Define the client in meaningful ways.Many businesses are not aligning their marketing to target the correct clients and repel those that aren't a good fit.

Have you ever been asked by a salesperson after a sale, “Hey, who do you know who would be interested in my product?”. That has to be one of the most annoying and ineffective ways of getting referrals. Let's talk about how to do it right.HighlightsThere are strong and weak referrals.A good referral is an introduction to a prospect that has some trustworthy source that is qualified and is looking for a solution like yours.Trust is critical and there are many ways to build trust. Time, testimonials, referrals, etc. are all ways to build trust.When someone vouches for you, they have transferred their trust to you.You need to make sure that your circle of influence understands what exactly you provide and what a great client fit is.Trying to cater to referrals can damage the relationship with the person that referred the prospect if you are not actually a good match for the prospect.A referral is only a true referral when the prospect needs the service now or very soon.Simply asking a client if they know another prospect that could use your service is a bad idea.  It can quickly turn a pleasant transaction into something sour.The best way to get referrals is to provide outstanding service to your clients.Clients that are excited about your service will not need to be asked for referrals. They will do it because they want to.Design a system to make it easy for people to refer business to you.

Is company “Culture” a fluff statement? I used to think so. We all have a culture in our company, whether we realize it or not. The real question is, is that culture intentional and has your team bought in to it? Culture can either sink your business or turn on the afterburners of growth in your company.HighlightsCulture is the unwritten rules that the members have about values and beliefs in the company.At first, Robert discounted the importance of culture in business. He saw large companies do a poor job implementing it and thought it was a waste of time.Sometimes an employee just does not share the same values as their co-workers, and it can do damage to everyone around them and disrupt the culture causing low productivity and stress.Part of culture is letting everyone know the values so that they know what to expect.An intentional culture allows workers to trust each other.A good culture lets people feel good about their job and productivity will improve.An intentional culture is a great tool to help with hiring. It is easier to identify a good fit and have a successful hire.Every company has a culture whether one is intentionally created or not. The question is whether it is the culture that you want.It is always best to have employee involvement in the creation process.

I'm not that smart. Neither are you. Most of us have heard of modeling as a way to shortcut success by learning from those more successful than us. What if there was a way to hyper accelerate this modeling to go even faster and achieve success quicker?HighlightsA mastermind is a group of peers that are all trying to learn or improve in the same thing.Robert had tried some different types of masterminds and didn't find too much value at first. They mostly seemed like support or networking events.Then he discovered paid masterminds and discovered that there could be great power with the proper mastermind.Most people do not value free information or groups. But with a paid mastermind they have some stake in the process and try.The more you can pay for a mastermind the more proximity you get to people that are at high levels of success.The brainstorming of successful people that may even be further along than you, is one of the most valuable assets to a mastermind.Masterminds have accountability attached to them. Knowing that you have to report to your peers applies pressure to make progress.It is good to have some diversity of industry in the mastermind so that there are some overlapping ideas.Reason number 1 to join a mastermind is that you can gain knowledge from other people discussing their problems.Reason number 2 to join a mastermind is the group accountability for your goalsReason number 3 to join a mastermind is that if you pay substantial money, you will likely get a lot out of it.

Story telling is a critical strategy in the sales process. In this episode we outline a 4 step process to building stories and give examples of ways that good and bad stories can influence a prospect.HighlightsA good story can get the brain to search for similarities to something in your own life.The brain needs things delivered in a story format.Without the story the brain has to search and create one and things can get confusing.In the absence of a great story the prospect will create their own story and they can decide whether your product or service is valuable to them.A story allows the salesperson to illustrate a point without directly confronting the prospect about their belief.Selling is emotional regardless of what some salespeople will tell you.Step 1 of storytelling is identifying a prospects false belief.Step 2 is brainstorm stories that illustrate the new belief.Step 3 is to catalogue the stories and organize them by false belief. Step 4 is practicing telling the stories. Pay attention to the prospects reaction to see how you are doing.Testimonials are one of the best story telling techniques to break false beliefs online.Keep the story simple. Stories must be relatable. Character must be like the prospect.The story must be authentic and must feel real.

There are 5 traits that separate a poor or average salesperson from a top producer. In this episode we go through each trait offering explanations and examples.HighlightsThe same sales skills that make a great salesperson are the same skills that leave you feeling satisfied after a purchase.The skill set is the difference between poor sales and top sales people. Sales is a skill that must be learned.Top 5 sales skills, focused on prospecting, focused on the customer, great story tellers, intentional with language and communication, belief that they are helping.Prospecting: top sellers are on the phone speaking with prospects. They understand that any time not spent prospecting is money lost.Focus: Focusing on prospects needs, helps build a relationship and trust.Great storyteller: A great storyteller can help shift a prospect's identity into someone that is a fit for the offer.Intentional communication: Use of specific words and mannerisms to help communicate effectively to the prospect.Belief that they are helping: Believing that the offer is helpful makes it easy to feel comfortable asking for the sale.

In this episode, we talk about the critical nature of understanding the identity of the prospects that you are selling to and how to think about shifting their identity in a way that aligns with your offer.HighlightsSales and marketing process of Hook, Story, and Offer.The Hook is something that gets the prospect's attention. The Story is where you get the prospect to think about the product in some way that relates to them. Telling them that you understand their problem and you can help them solve it.The Offer is when you have the prospect's interest and then help them act.Don't over complicate the process. Don't try to skip a stage of the process.Identity is what drives most of our actions as an individual.Identity can affect all aspect of your life when making decisions.Look for ways to shift the prospect's identity to match your identity.Whenever trying to sell to a prospect, we need to understand where they are, what their identity is, and how to get them to shift that identity or change.

Hollywood uses marketing techniques to promote projects far in advance of the release date and this is a great strategy for businesses to use to grow awareness and create a strong launch.HighlightsWith most companies, their customers heard about a new product or campaign the day it was released.The more people that buy a product or service the more opportunity there is for word of mouth.Hollywood starts their pre-release campaign a year or more in advance.Start talking about the concept ahead of time.Make a lot of noise and promotion to get scene.Start slow and build over time to keep customers aware and interested.Ramp up ads and promotions the closer you get to the release date.Continue to promote heavily for the first few weeks after the launch.

Let's talk about the current state of cold calling for consumers and businesses, some of the reasons that cold calling is still a good prospecting technique, and the value of outsourcing to professional telemarketers. HighlightsYou should always be asking if you are prospecting in a relevant way. Telemarketing directly to consumers is pretty much dead.Calling businesses is still an effective method for prospecting.Outsourcing your B2B cold calling can be a great way to generate leads. Professional 3rd party companies know their business and will do a better job than most people. Cold calling has a human touch that many other prospecting methods do not have.Cold calling creates a sense of urgency and pushes people to take immediate action.It is critical to have a good list of people to call.Having proper cold calling scripts is important.Good cold calling can be a critical component to marketing and prospecting.

This episode is about the importance of managing time in your daily activities as a leader. Keep focused on revenue generating activities and find a way to delegate or outsource tasks to free up critical time.HighlightsMost of us spend too much time on non-revenue producing activities.Some people spend 50 to 60 percent of their day on non-revenue generating activities.Should be spending 70% or more of time on things that generate revenue.Sometimes outsourcing is like giving yourself a raise.You can also delegate to someone else in house. There can be benefits but be sure to select the right fit.There are low-cost areas around the globe that can save a lot of money and they have good skills.Expect to have some issues but there will be improvement over time while the new person works through projects.

How do we create an irresistible offer for our product or service? Let's talk about common reasons that a buyer will reject an offer and some strategies for building an irresistible offer. HighlightsWhy don't prospects buy? They Don't trust you. They don't see the value. They don't want to make a poor decision.Having a great offer solves many problems and makes running the business easier.Find ways to increase the perceived value of the service or product. Make an offer low risk or have a guarantee.Have testimonials or referrals. People love social proof.  Formal referral programs can help sweeten an offer.Build in some emotional reasons that make an offer irresistible.

For all the entrepreneurs and type A personalities - quit trying to achieve perfection. Listen for some strategies to manage perfection when working toward goals.HighlightsIt is ok to fall short of perfection.Insisting on perfection is bad but focusing on perfection is good.Focusing on perfection to learn to improve then it can be a positive.If we demand perfection before finishing the goal it can slow the process down and even prevent it from ever being achieved.Be sure to have a short-term deadline. A short-term deadline can help ensure that perfection does not get in the way.What are the minimum actions that we need to take to get the maximum result?Focus on solving the basic goal and then worry about taking another step toward perfection.Get comfortable with outcomes that are not perfect.Be specific about the purpose of the project. With clarity it's easy to lose focus and work on non-critical processes.Break down the project into major components.Rank all components relative to how much impact each will have.Focus on the pieces of the project that will get you 80% of the way there.

It can be very easy to fall into the trap of building your business with straw instead of brick.  In this episode we discusses short-term thinking versus long term thinking and why it is critical to focus on the long-term consequences of every decision. HighlightsIf you build a business that is weak on fundamentals you will be in trouble or out of business when market issues occur.Short term thinking are things like, “we need this deal because we need cash”. Decisions that are for now and effect now without consideration for the consequences.Long term thinking considers how every decision will impact the business in the future. You should be looking at ways to get customers to spend long term money. Creating new options for products or services. Catch and keep the right kind of customers.Having strong processes that can grow is a good long-term strategy.When prospecting, think in terms of months and years. Do not get frustrated if they are not ready now.You must have the courage to say “NO” to deals that don't have a positive long-term impact.

Why it is important to understand the difference between revenue, profit, cash flow, and net cash in the bank? This understanding is critical to a successful business, but it's not as simple as it seems. Listen to find out more.HighlightsRevenue and sales are obviously critical.The market votes on your idea by using their wallet.Revenue is cash that customers pay to you.Profit is a theoretical number and should be used as an indicator.What really matters is cash in the bank vs debt and liabilities.Many entrepreneurs generally like to look at sales and revenue and miss profit issues.Make sure to stay on top of and understand financial statements and how to analyze them to make sure that you are focusing on the correct strategies.Always get comparisons to previous periods of time.

Episode SummaryIn this episode, Robert talks about what you should be talking about with clients instead of the traditional features and benefits-based sale. Highlights At some point almost everyone that works at a company is called upon to explain what the company does. Poor salespeople will focus on features.Good salespeople focus on the benefits to the prospect. How the features actually help the prospect.Many people will try to convert your benefits back to your competitors and turn it into a battle of price and features.Great salespeople focus on the result of what the prospect wants. Most prospects are looking for one major priority and that will be a result.If a prospect starts asking about features or pricing too early then you probably haven't done a good job on focusing on the result that the prospect will get.

In this episode, Robert talks about onboarding new hires quickly so that they become an asset quickly so that they can add to the bottom line instead of being an expense. He discusses a new system that his company has recently tried with great success.HighlightsIt can be difficult to convince people to take the time to explain or capture their role in a way that is efficient.There are consequences of not cross training and having multiple people that can do each role. If someone leaves the company and nobody else understands their role, then it can be a problem.Many people believe that proper training is only for larger companies.There are 3rd party people that can be contracted to write instructions and procedures for you.Using a screen capture video for each task while doing the task is a great way to document the processes.Send that screen capture video to the contractor and let them draft more professional training documents.Then the contractor can take all documents and create a step-by-step training plan.Having this process in place can accelerate the onboarding.The cost of paying a contractor can offset months of cost in a new hire's efficiency.Having an effective onboarding removes stress from many others in the company while trying to train and answer questions.

Episode SummaryIn this episode, Robert talks about the trap of competing on price, the consequences of the strategy, and how to really position your company to grow.  HighlightsIf you are the low-price leader, it can attract the wrong types of clients to the business. Most of them are not clients that can grow your business. If your offering is good, then you should charge for it. Charging less devalues the offering.Some buyers get nervous when they see a low price. It can evoke the “What's wrong with this?” mindset. Low price strategies can prevent from spending money to grow the business in the needed places.Customers that buy on price are not typically loyal. They will leave as soon as they find a lower price.Do not be the second lowest price offering. There is no strategic advantage to be the second lowest price.Being a premium price business attracts customers that have the resources and value what you are selling.People like to feel important and buying premium gives them the opportunity.No risk of being undercut if you are the premium option.Most customers that pay for premium trust the value and are easier to work with.Evaluate your offering specifically from the perspective of the customers that you want.Change your mentality from just offering a product or service to one of providing the best solution.Draw a line in the sand on pricing for new clients.Be willing to lose sales. It is an important part of the process. It is more important to have quality clients.Must focus on changing the perception of your offering in the marketplace.Find a way to enhance the perceived value. It does not necessarily have to be something big.

The most important concept for getting a meeting with the right decision-maker, is convincing them that it's in their best interest to take time to meet with you – you need to demonstrate that you're either going to save them money, make them more money, make life easier, improve their image, or solve a particular business problem.There are four parts to this: credibility, a script, the follow-up, and using simple terms.To improve your credibility, Robert suggests getting someone else to make the call on your behalf. You should also include any credentials you have in your email signature block, create and maintain a professional online image, a custom email domain, and professional phone system.Robert recommends using a script. If you don't have a script, you will lose control of the conversation. In written or online communication, it would be a template or sales letter. You need to start the conversation with a hook to give them a reason to talk to you – something relevant in the news or some event that may affect them. Then the script needs to follow a basic outline: who you are, why they need to listen to you, a brief offer of what they gain from listening to you, and close for the appointment.The follow-up is important to avoid the meeting being cancelled or the prospect not showing up for the meeting. Robert reminds us that, although we might feel like we're annoying them with emails, there's no such thing as sending too many reminders. The more you can get them to remember you, the better your chance of having a successful meeting.It's important to speak in simple terms. If a fifth grader can't understand it, it's probably too complicated.If you're cold-calling via phone, should you do it yourself or have someone else do it? If someone else does it, they just need to follow a script, and it sets you up in the eyes of the prospect as being important enough to not have to make your own calls. Robert elaborates on the pro's and cons of using third-party services and/or making the calls yourself.HighlightsIf you make the call yourself, you have to work hard to not come across as just another salesperson.“Your website is the modern version of your business card, so it better look professional.”“When you talk to them, get to the point quickly and talk to them about their needs and desires.”“A prospect doesn't care about you or your business, what your background is, or anything else. And yet, most salespeople, that's what they do immediately.”“Speak English. If a fifth grader doesn't understand what you're saying, it's probably too complicated.”“You can't send too many emails.”“People ignore regular mail, but a FedEx is always going to make it to the decision-maker's desk.”“Your whole approach to selling the meeting with the decision-maker is to figure out how you can show them that it's going to be worth their time to meet with you. Nothing else matters at this stage.”“Take action. Nothing happens until you do.”Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at https://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

Highlights“Without clearly defined rules, parameters, and expectations, we can easily get ourselves in a bind when we don't deliver what the customer expects.”“It goes the other way too – if the customers are not given specific expectations as to their responsibilities, you're going to find yourself upset with them and will have a hard time serving them if you feel taken advantage of.”“Even if you don't have a need for an attorney at the moment, always be on the lookout for a referral or someone you can come in contact with as you're probably going to need them at some point in your business.”“When you're defining something, it's easier to define what it's not.”“A covenant is an agreement that is based upon mutual trust and dedication to each other.”A contract is the opposite. “It's based upon mutual distrust of each other.”“You have to balance the financial losses you'll take in any situation versus the damage it can do to your reputation.”“Money is almost always better than ego.”“Getting upset with an employee because they didn't meet your expectations may make you feel good but it's usually not their fault.”“If a team member has worked hard but not done as you expected, it means one thing – you haven't clarified scope and expectations for their job.”“Whenever you hire a new employee, or whenever you have dealings with your existing team, it's critical that you be very specific about what outcomes you expect from them.”“Your reputation is far more important than any one customer transaction.”Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at https://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

HighlightsWe need to find ways to take on clients that fit our business culture and expectations, and someone who we enjoy working with.“Life is too short to spend around people you don't like.”“Money is great, but at the end of the day, if you're not getting the satisfaction of knowing your business is making a difference in people's lives, you're never going to be satisfied and fulfilled by what you do.”“If you're trying to sell customers a specific service or product that they don't want or need, you're selling to the wrong people.”“Business is actually very simple, but most people overcomplicate it.”“It's not enough to find out what the customer needs and deliver it with great service. You then need to continue to improve your product or service based on the feedback that you get from your customers.”“Sometimes you've got to take a step back before going forward, and that's part of business and part of success in general.”Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at https://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

There is a common misconception that sales people are sleazy, unethical, and greedy. Sales is seen as a sort of low-end profession. Robert reminds us that without salespeople, there would be no functioning economy – so we should be thanking them for the conveniences we have every day.Robert tells us that every person is a salesperson in some way, and that as salespeople we need to be helping people make decisions to use our product or service, because most people have a hard time making decisions to begin with.How do we change the way we think about sales? The first step is to realize that we have a problem. When you catch yourself experiencing the fear in the sales process, remind yourself of the value that you're giving the person on the other end of that transaction. We need to work on our own beliefs before we can influence someone else.If you're convinced that you're in a noble profession and adding to people's lives, others will be convinced too and your sales will skyrocket.Highlights“Without sales, there's no economy, no business, no products, no services, and no money in your pocket.”“It's not about convincing anyone or even persuading them of something, it's about guiding them and helping them make a decision if your product or service is a good solution for them.”“Somehow, through decades of negative media bombardment, bad sales trainers, and a few bad apples, our society has gotten this idea that someone in sales is sleazy, unethical, greedy – something that you do if you can't be a doctor or lawyer.”“If you over-promise, puff, exaggerate, or worse, you're not a sales professional, you're a con artist.”“Sales is one of the most noble, if not the most noble profession in our society.”“If nothing gets sold, absolutely no economic activity is done.”If you have any hint of fear in the sales process, it's likely that you have some false beliefs that need to be addressed.“In any influence situation, congruency is critical for success.”“If in the back of your mind, you haven't convinced yourself that you're a valuable part of delivering value to your customers, it's going to come across to your customer.” 

In this episode, Robert talks about the importance of your role as a business owner – this could apply whether you're in B2B or in B2C.Robert reminds us that small businesses make up the vast majority of all existing businesses – the Fortune 500 or major corporations account for a very small percentage of businesses. We hear the stats regarding the contribution that small businesses make to the bigger picture, but also the rate at which small businesses tend to fail.While the pandemic has shone a light on the incredible healthcare workers as heroes, Robert submits that business owners, and especially B2B business owners, are also heroes – as defined by the Merriam Webster definition of the word “hero”.Robert personally thanks you for your contribution, even though it may not be the most glamorous work.Understanding your role in society and your responsibility as a business owner should make you feel proud of what you do. Take a step back and remind yourself that you're one of the good guys – a true hero. The world needs more people like you.Highlights“It doesn't matter if you're starting out or you've grossed tens of millions of dollars, just making the attempt to be a small business owner means you're different than most people.”“Every small business owner is a hero, and many B2B owners are the true unsung heroes since it's not too glamorous.”“Courage is being scared but doing it anyway.”“Entrepreneurs add incredible value to our society.”“If you have the ability to make money, and therefore add value to people's lives, you have not only the opportunity but the obligation to make as much money as you can.” 

In this episode, Robert talks about how we tend to confuse customers and how we can remedy that.Consumers nowadays are overwhelmed with choices – we see this in shopping centers where we can choose between 15 different kinds of soaps, or on Netflix where there are thousands of shows. This means a company has to be aggressive in their marketing just to stand out.Robert tells us that besides being aggressive with our marketing, we should be telling our prospects what they should be doing. At every touchpoint, we need to be narrowing down our prospects' choices. We get to hear about the principles of sales funnels – both offline and online.Be patient. In B2B, it takes time to develop customers.Highlights“If you think you can sit back and be stuffy and all professional without aggressively going after prospects, you're not going to last in today's market.”“You should be relentless in your follow-up, your psychology in dealing with prospects, and constantly moving things forward – and don't be afraid to contact a prospect too often.”“Whatever rate you think you need to be contacting them, it probably has to be double or triple that.”“It doesn't matter if you're aggressive and a great marketer, if you're not giving them an action and a reason to move forward and telling them exactly what they need to do, and getting them to do it, you're going to fail.”“Everybody wants us to be formal and fancy with big words. No, you need to speak in English – on your website, over the phone, and any way you're communicating with your customers.”

In this episode, Robert talks about the power of influence that the people you surround yourself with have on you – whether physically or virtually.Robert tells us about his experience in the army and his experience with the concept that “we become like those around us.” We learn about the 3 social groups that we may find ourselves in and how they influence our business and behaviors. Robert challenges us to look at our lives, identify the influences we have around us, and determine which ones we want to keep.Robert reminds us that the second largest influence on our lives is virtual – the online media that we consume, from news to the people we follow on social media. We need to become more aware of the things that influence us on a virtual level, often more so than physically.How do we manage this? Robert tells us that because we can't control who our family is, we should take what they say with a grain of salt. We do have some control over which friends we keep, and when we seek out new relationships, we should be asking ourselves the following question: Is this relationship going to be something that brings me joy, builds me up, and pushes me to grow?If you ignore the influence of people around you, physically and virtually, you're holding yourself back, and therefore holding your business back from becoming what it should be.Highlights“As human beings, we need to be part of a group and we want to be accepted in a group.”“The power of rapport and the need is so strong that people will do unimaginable things to others if they feel like that's the accepted behavior of that group.”“Those you surround yourself with, who you hang out with, who your friends are, what books you read, whose podcast you listen to, speakers you follow, and so on will all directly affect how you'll conduct your business.”“Your attitude towards money is going to have a big impact on your success in business, positive or negative.”There are three kinds of groups: the Negative Group, the Neutral Group, and the Achievers Group.Often the brain can't tell the difference between beliefs you heard virtually versus those you heard from someone right in front of you physically.“Always be on the lookout to develop relationships with people who have had more success than you've had in business or their area of expertise in life.”Relevant LinksGrab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.comWebsite: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble 

In this episode, Robert talks about evaluating your business risk and looking at the potential upside – getting it wrong really hurts.Robert reminds us that as entrepreneurs, it's critical that we have vision, excitement, and forward positive thinking. If we don't have that, we won't be able to achieve what we set out to do.On the flipside of that, Robert tells us that if we look at everything with a positive attitude, we're eventually going to get blindsided by a problem that could be catastrophic. Looking at the downside is just as important for the long-term health of your business, but obsessing over the risks could also be detrimental.Robert talks about the different types of risks that we need to be aware of, and he provides some perspective on risk assessment for different sized companies. We get to hear the steps that we can take to navigate between risk and upside potential, and Robert emphasizes the importance of evaluating not only the risk impact but also the likelihood of the risk occurring.Evaluating the downside risk can be a very positive boost to your self-confidence and push you in the right direction in your business.HighlightsCourage is being scared to do something but doing it anyway.“We as entrepreneurs and professional salespeople tend to be dreamers and look at what's possible.”“If not everything is what it seems, what it means is that it usually is.”“You have to pair positive expectations with honest and sometimes brutal evaluations of not only where your business is but also evaluating each tactic or strategy in your business.”“Your mind is more like a garden, and you can sit there and tell yourself there are no weeds, but they're going to grow and there's nothing you can do about it. Instead, you've just got to pull them and move on.”“Vegas wasn't built on winners.”There are different types of risks: Regulatory Risks, Economic Risks, Legal Risks, and Business Specific Risks.“Business is about taking risks, but to be successful, you need to take calculated, well thought out, logical risks.”Robert sorts his risks into 3 categories: Minimal Impact Risks, More Substantial Impact Risks, and Catastrophic “Business Killer” Risks. 

In this episode, Robert talks about the temptation to take an easy influx of cash. This is a temptation that most entrepreneurs face, and today Robert tells us how to resist it.There's a different mentality when you're dealing with millions of dollars versus living paycheck-to-paycheck, and Robert shares some examples of how being unprepared can lead to bigger problems.Robert reminds us to be weary of anything that comes quickly or easily if it's out of the ordinary. If we aren't in the right mentality to handle a certain level of growth in our business, we could likely end up losing it and ending up worse off than when we started.It's human nature that if something is handed to you, you're not going to value it or know how to manage it, and you'll probably lose it quickly. It's hard to be disciplined in this area – if you are, you'll continue to become the person you were meant to be. Highlights“You can't be handed a business or opportunity if you aren't personally ready for that next level.”“Each one of us is the roadblock to the growth of our own income in our business because we haven't earned it through growth.”“We have to be weary of anything that comes quickly or easily that's out of the ordinary.”“If you don't grow as a businessperson at the same rate as your revenue or cash growth, you'll likely lose it and be worse off than when you started.”“If you're providing more value to more people, you get paid more. If you aren't providing the value that can provide you the income you want, it's because you haven't developed the skills to become the person who can provide that value to the marketplace.”

In this episode, Robert talks about the importance of a consistent sales message throughout your whole company. This can either kill your client retention or take it to new heights.People tend to have a negative connotation of sales – this is mostly due to the unscrupulous,  unprofessional people who call themselves salespeople.Robert reminds us that, as entrepreneurs, we need to acquire the skills needed to sell – if we look at the companies that dominate their industries, it's usually because they're masters of sales and marketing, and not necessarily because of the quality of their products.How do we make sure the same sales message permeates the whole company? Robert gives some examples of integrating all staff members into the sales process, and how that could yield some surprising results.Sales is about influence. Work with your salespeople, but don't forget your admin people – teach them how to present a more consistent message to your clients and, more importantly, why it's important.Highlights“Every person in your sales company should be a salesperson.”“Sales is all about influence.”“Whether you want to or not, if you're going to be successful as an entrepreneur, you're going to have to acquire the skills of a salesperson.”“If you don't have the sales and marketing down, and it's not permeated throughout your whole organization, the product doesn't matter, so you're wasting your time.” 

In this episode, Robert talks about one of the greatest roadblocks we face as entrepreneurs and salespeople – the belief that monetary success and wealth are evil and bad. Robert encourages you to keep an open mind in this episode, as he will be saying some controversial things.Robert looks at how success is portrayed in the Western world – in movies, the antagonist is usually an evil corporation looking to get more money by stepping on the average person. “Demonizing the rich is almost a tradition in this country.”We hear how this mindset is ‘taught' to us throughout our lives, and how misconceptions have allowed that mindset to become engrained in our society. To counter that, Robert gives some examples of where money has been a force for good.The biggest thing you can do to get yourself out of that mentality is to focus on the people you'll be able to help by becoming wealthy.Highlights:“The subconscious fear of success, which in business means money, is hampering us.”“When you're selling and growing your company, if you don't believe that money is good, you're going to limit and hold yourself back, and self-sabotage.”“Only with time and practice are you going to be able to break through that deep-seeded belief.”“If you're not making money, and you have the ability to make money in business (and can make a lot of it), and there are a lot of people that need you to do that, you're actually being selfish.”“Get rich and give back.” 

In this episode, Robert talks about the difference between marketing and sales. If you don't understand the difference, it's tough to do either one of them effectively.Robert tells us about the “hook-story-close” concept, and the importance of breaking down beliefs in the marketing phase in order to get to the sales phase.How do you do that? Robert elaborates on the three phases: getting their attention, storytelling, and selling. We also get to hear how he structures his stories, and how to handle resistance in the sales phase.We learn that emotions play an important role in sales – even in B2B. Once the emotional component of the sale is completed, we need to back it up with logic to justify the sale – this is where many sales fall short. Robert gives some practical solutions to solve this.You have to keep this process in mind because it's the only way to keep the pain out of selling, make it more effective, and improve your close rate.Highlights:“If you don't understand the difference between marketing and sales, it's tough to do either one of them effectively.”“Marketing is really about changing beliefs and preparing people for the selling phase.”“Sales is just giving someone a reason to act now for changing their beliefs.”“When it comes to marketing, you can have great sales skills, and a great service, but if no one knows about it, you can't sell them.”“The best salespeople are usually great storytellers.”“If you encounter resistance in the sales phase, all you need to do is go back into marketing mode.”There are two parts to a good sale: getting them to emotionally want your product, and backing it up with logic to justify their emotions

In this episode, Robert talks about developing an exit strategy and focusing on developing your company into an asset and not a job.Robert elaborates on 2 scenarios, and shares his personal experience losing his business partner of 20 years. People tend to shy away from thinking about death, but Robert emphasizes the importance of responsible planning in business.We're reminded that systemization is critical, and that if the company can't function on its own without major input from us, we are essentially employees, not owners. Robert tells us we need to constantly look at our companies from an outsider's perspective – even if we think we're going to keep it forever, it's important to keep track of the value of the company to stay focused on the right things – profit and long-term potential are what drive value. Robert gives us the tools we need to do this.This is important not only for the scenario in which you prematurely pass away, but also when it comes to growth on a day-to-day basis.Highlights“You never know what's going to happen in life, and the things that you think are never going to happen – when they happen, it's a reality check.”“If you can't take a vacation for a week and the company doesn't run by itself without any major input from you, you're not really an owner – you're an employee who happens to own 100% of the stock in the company.”“You really need to build value in your company. You should always aim for this.”“Your goal should be to always look at your company from an outsider's perspective, and what you could sell it for right now. Thinking how you can increase the value consistently will keep you focused on the right things, i.e. profit and long-term potential.”“When it comes to creating value, the number one thing is you want to focus on recurring streams of income.”“It may not be sellable, but if you die, you still want to make sure that your employees (if you have any) or, at a minimum, your family is taken care of.”It's much easier when your small and starting out to implement something like this than to try and impose it on a bigger enterprise.

In this episode, Robert talks about the concept of Scale. It can be one of the biggest roadblocks or accelerators for your business, depending on how you use it.Robert tells us that in order to avoid multi-level consequences, we should consider scale. We hear his philosophy on evaluating downside versus upside risk, and he tells us how to determine whether an activity is scalable or not.When we spend time thinking about scalability, we are more able to see the long-term potential of a strategy, and therefore give us more confidence to move forward – “if you don't have this confidence, you're really throwing darts at the board."How do you evaluate and consider scale? Robert elaborates on this with an example, we learn the difficulty of scaling a time-for-dollar business, and he gives us some solutions.The process really is to test and identify problems, try to mitigate those problems, consider the upside and downside, and make a decision to either keep or throw out the idea. Systemization of your tactics and strategies will save you at that point.Highlights“When you don't consider scale, you have all kinds of problems.”“Thinking about scalability is a discipline, and we as entrepreneurs tend to want to do anything that makes money and has success, and we have a hard time passing and saying no to projects that initially appear very profitable.”“The upside of thinking about scalability is that it allows you to see the potential and the realistic possibilities of a tactic or strategy.”“Time-for-dollar businesses are the hardest to scale. You're only able to grow based on the number of consultant you have.”“Systemization is really the only long-term cure for avoiding the pitfalls of scale.”“If you can't fix a problem or you can't find a system to minimize it, don't do it.”

In this episode, Robert talks about how to avoid spending tons of money and time going after prospects with the wrong sales message.If we don't know in which stage of the buying process our prospects and customers are, it's difficult to market and sell to them effectively. Marketing to people with messaging that doesn't fit them will most likely cost you the deal.Robert reminds us that we need to know who our “dream customer” is, and we learn how to identify the 3 different stages of buyers. While we do want to tailor our sales message to our “dream customer”, we also need to have a general sales message that can appeal to everyone – this is apart from the micro-targeted messaging that should be tailored to each buyer stage as well.If you segment, market, and sell to your prospects this way, you're going to save yourself an enormous amount of time, money, and frustration. At the same time, you're going to shortcut the sales process.Highlights“More than any politician, business owners (and small business, in particular) and professional salespeople are the true influencers and effectors of change for good in our society.”There are three stages of buyers: the Hot Buyers, the Warm Buyers, and the Cold Buyers.“Once you've identified them, find out where they're congregating.”If you were in a stadium, and you looked out and there were 1000 of your prospects out there, 3% would be Hot Buyers, 7% would be open to buying, and the remaining 90% are indifferent or uninterested.“You have to be very clear on who your dream customer is first, find out where they congregate, identify the stage in their buying process, and then the marketing and sales can start.”We've got many more opportunities today to target potential customers than we would've had 10 years ago.

In this episode, Robert talks about giving yourself a raise in your business, regardless of what stage your business is in. The focus today is on what you spend your time working on, and what you don't. In surveys, Robert found that his clients spend less than 40% of their time doing revenue-generating activities.What are revenue-generating activities? These are things like sales, marketing, and conversations with prospects, to name a few. These are not to be confused with administrative activities – typically “easy, fun, repetitive, or brainless” in nature. To distinguish between revenue-generating and administrative activities, Robert asks himself, “is what I'm doing now going to directly increase revenue in the short or long term?”Robert reminds us that if we focus on the wrong things, we shouldn't be surprised by the fact that we don't get what we want. We also learn how we can deal with the issue of delegating and outsourcing – these are often difficult for entrepreneurs to do.Robert also tells us that there's a dollar amount attached to our own labor, and he gives us the formula to calculate whether or not it would be cheaper to outsource a task rather than do it ourselves.Highlights:“In business, and in life, what you focus on is what you get. If you're focused on the wrong things, you won't get what you want.”“Most entrepreneurs spend too much time on activities that aren't revenue-generating.”“If someone else can do it, and they can do it maybe 80% as good as I can, then I should dump it. Don't let perfection be the enemy of your progress. No one's ever going to do things exactly as you do them.”“Money is better than ego, so let go of it.”“When you feel yourself getting off track, think about the money you're losing by not spending your time in the right places.”

In this episode, Robert talks about Owner Time. Have you ever been at a point in your business where you realize one day that you've been mostly reacting to events over the past 6 months and not made a lot of progress towards the goals you've set?Business owners aren't a lazy bunch, but Robert reminds us that they often get caught up in momentum and don't realize when they're not focusing on the right things. Although it is true that action is ultimately better for progress than just thinking, taking the wrong action without thinking about the bigger picture will slow down the progress to a specific goal.How do we get ourselves to pause for a minute? Robert tells us about his ‘Owner Time' scheduling – this helps him stay on top of what he's doing as an owner. This is split into 2 half-hour sessions, one of which is dedicated to ‘Thinking Time', where he unplugs from all the distractions and assesses his goals and the progress he's making towards them.Robert reminds us to start by asking ourselves basic questions: why are you an entrepreneur? Who are you trying to serve? We should be asking questions that aren't pertinent to the daily operations of the business, but rather the Bigger Picture questions. We learn that a formal degree doesn't do much for you as an entrepreneur if you don't add to it over time, and Robert recommends scheduling time for self-education. “If you're growing, your business will grow with you.”If you force yourself to take a step back and focus on something besides the day's problems, and learn and improve yourself, this helps turn a tough day into an awesome one and gives you the motivation and energy to plow through your problems.Highlights“The faster you're running, the easier the trap is to fall into.”“If your business can't function without you, and you're critical to its daily operations, then you're an operator, not an owner.”“Your business is really only going to grow in proportion to the amount that you grow as a person in your skillset and your wisdom.”“Having a formal education is a great start, but if you don't keep adding to that education as an entrepreneur, you've really wasted your time and your money.”“Remind yourself that, as a leader, you're responsible for improving yourself.”“Not everything is about saving the world and impacting people's lives. It's totally okay if you want to make more money.” 

You won't ever come close to the full potential or your company if you don't intentionally focus on understanding your numbers, what they mean, and what to do about them. When I say “numbers,” I am talking about your lead generation numbers, the cost per unit of your product or produce, labor cost per hour, cost per customer acquisition, number of new customers needed to grow, etc. Let's say you do know your numbers. You've tracked them and put them into some meaningful format. The next skill set is interpreting your numbers. First, generate and document your numbers. Then, look at them over time and evaluate how they move in relation to the actions and changes you have made in your business. Basically, all that a successful entrepreneur does is find the right customers to sell to, find out what they need, and deliver a solution. Here's where the numbers come in; constantly iterate and innovate off that solution as that's the only way you can grow. The way to succeed in innovation is to use cold hard numbers, even when if they don't say what you thought or even hoped they would say.You will need to go through the document, analyze, and take-action process. Once you have come to the conclusion that you need to take an action(s) to support what the numbers are telling you, you need a steady process of implementing these changes. For example, don't change everything at once because then you won't be able to carefully analyze what difference made produced what change to the business. Key Talking Points of the Episode:You won't ever come close to the full potential or your company if you don't intentionally focus on understanding your numbersAll that a successful entrepreneur does is find the right customers to sell to, find out what they need, and deliver a solutionYou will need to go through the document, analyze, and take-action processPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble 

Cost is the actual hard cost in dollars of physical materials and labor it takes to get a product or service out the door. Price, on the other hand, is what your company chooses to tell prospects they can purchase your product or service for in dollars or even other forms of payments. Finally, value is what your customers and prospects think of your product's utility in solving their problem. In B2B, this usually means how much money it will make them or save them.If the cost is too high compared with the value, you have a problem, and need to find a way to lower the cost or increase the value. As salespeople and entrepreneurs, we tend to value our products or services from a casual value standpoint which is generally more fact/feature based. However, how we sell our products in a competitive marketplace is to focus on the perceived value that the prospect has and quit thinking about it from our perspective, because we aren't the one buying it. How do we actually increase the perceived value of your products or services? It's figuring out how to show the prospect how the product solves the main problem they are thinking about. It also solves the problems that the main solution creates. That in itself is a powerful concept we'll talk about in a future episode. So, instead of offering them the main product or service, here you go, take it or leave it, buy or not, we need to figure out ways to break it down into individual parts and build it back up into a total increased value. We do this by breaking down the individual components of the solution and showing the prospect how EACH of those parts has a lot of value in solving the main problem as well as other problems in and of itself.Key Talking Points of the Episode:Cost is the actual hard cost in dollars of physical materials and labor it takes to get a product or service out the doorPrice is what your company chooses to tell prospects they can purchase your product or service for in dollars or even other forms of paymentsValue is what your customers and prospects think of your product's utility in solving their problemIf the cost is too high compared with the value, you have a problem, and need to find a way to lower the cost or increase the valuePlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble 

The Coronavirus has been a huge tragedy in almost all of our lives. However, the question becomes, how can you take this bad situation and turn it into a positive? When the Coronavirus panic hit in mid-March, the financial markets collapsed and most of the country went home. It would have been very easy to get severely depressed and feel helpless. However, something in me told me that I needed to take this as an opportunity to grow myself and our company. I really started changing my thought process from a defensive posture of dealing with obstacles and life to a more proactive mindset. I love Myron Golden's idea that life happens for you, not to you. As I started to think about business and life like that, it gave me more power and peace than I have ever had.With this conscious decision to take this time as an opportunity to reevaluate what we were doing as a company has been one of the biggest changes in 20 years of SalesDouble's history as a company. I'm very proud of what our company has become, the number of client's we have helped over the years. We've improved our service, gotten better at it, added features, etc. By forcing myself to go back to the basics, focus, and work on why we exist as a company, there have been a lot of revelations, and we have made a lot of changes internally. Not everything has come to fruition, as only small changes are seen on the surface, but internally, we have refocused on how we can serve our clients, what problems they have, what they want and need, and how we can help them with those problems.Key Talking Points of the Episode:The Coronavirus has been a huge tragedy in almost all of our livesI needed to take this as an opportunity to grow myself and our companyBy forcing myself to go back to the basics, focus, and work on why we exist as a company, there have been a lot of revelations, and we have made a lot of changes internallyPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

Let's say you have 10 employees and do a million a year in revenue. You sell high ticket B2B, so maybe you have less than 100 customers, and a handful that make up a lionshare of your business. If you came into work one day to find that your biggest client that accounts for 25% of your revenue is pulling all of his company's business, you are out $250K overnight. Quite a hit.It would still seem customers would be the most valuable. Maybe so in the short term and in the financial sense short term. Contrast that with the same day, coming in to find out that your top sales rep or manager has jumped ship to your competitor. It's not uncommon for companies to try to poach their competitors' people by enticing them with a better deal (at least on the surface). If it's an employee that has relationships with your customers, they are likely to bring those customers with them.What if it is an operations person or an employee who doesn't have direct interaction with clients so there is no risk of that? You may have NDAs, Non-compete agreements in place, but it is extremely hard and expensive to enforce these in real terms. That person takes all the internal knowledge of your company, your intellectual property consisting of things like your processes or systems. Suddenly your competitors realize, oh, that's a good idea, let's do what they are doing internally. How much has that cost you and how much damage has that done? Potentially, a lot.What I am getting at here, is that I kind of view assets in terms of the value they have if you lose them. It's just like sometimes in relationships, “don't know what you've got until they're gone” or however the song goes. An asset should be viewed not in what it brings to the table as that is speculative, but what it will cost you if you lose it.Key Talking Points of the Episode:The most important asset a small business owner has is the team you put together, whether it's your employees, contactors, or a combination of the twoIt would still seem customers would be the most valuable. Maybe so in the short term and in the financial sense short termAn asset should be viewed not in what it brings to the table as that is speculative, but what it will cost you if you lose itPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble 

From my experience in dealing with our clients and other business owners, too many entrepreneurs and salespeople leave money on the table by discarding a prospect because they aren't ready to buy now. I have personally prejudged leads to my own detriment, but I think it's important enough to remind everyone that it's easy to fall into that trap. If you are managing leads yourself, you have to watch out for this, and if you have a sales team that is handling leads for you, you definitely have to educate them and keep a constant eye and spot check things to make sure they don't fall in this trap.You may think long-term follow up on seemingly uninterested leads is a waste of time. I want you to think about how you interact with potential vendors. Do you sign right away, or do you take your time to list out the pros and cons, do your research, etc.? Most likely you are going to take some time to think about it before you sign. Your prospects are going to want to do the same thing, and it's important that you're keeping your business in the front of their minds, without harassing them, so that when they are ready to buy they will think of your business.Based on previous research we have conducted with SalesDouble's service, we have discovered that if we are only working out “hot leads” then we are leaving anywhere between 10-30 of sales on the table. Based on the numbers we discovered, if you made $100k, you could have made between $20k-40k more with a little automation and effort. The only way to treat all leads as valuable is to have some automation in place to follow up on “less urgent” leads by letting the buyers identify themselves over a period of time with good follow up mechanisms.Key Talking Points of the Episode:From my experience in dealing with our clients and other business owners, too many entrepreneurs and salespeople leave money on the table by discarding a prospect because they aren't ready to buy nowYou may think long-term follow up on seemingly uninterested leads is a waste of time.The only way to treat all leads as valuable is to have some automation in place to follow up on “less urgent” leads by letting the buyers identify themselves over a period of time with good follow up mechanismsPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

Your attitude and commitment to hiring right is the start to doing it right. It wasn't until almost a decade of hiring that I started putting more time and energy into the recruiting process. If you are in the position of just starting out in business and don't have any employees yet, you should plan on dedicating substantial time to this because your employees are your business.If you have employees and have been in business for any period of time, you should sit down and think about the last person you hired. In financial terms, there is the cost of advertising for candidates, the cost of your or your staff's time to go through the hiring process, and the cost of the new hire's salary and benefits until they start contributing more to the company than they are costing the company, etc.If you are hiring an admin person, salesperson, operations person, etc. there are certain basic qualities that they need to have. The number on qualification is their speaking and writing skills. If you do a pre-interview over the phone and they do not meet these expectations, you need to move on. Besides a grammar and typing test, you should find any other relevant rests that might help you screen people out. For us, it's an excel test for anyone administrative, or it might be a sales personality / DISC assessment, and so on.Understand how costly it is if you make a mistake in hiring and make a commitment to getting good at hiring as a skill.Key Talking Points of the Episode:Your attitude and commitment to hiring right is the start to doing it rightIf you have employees and have been in business for any period of time, you should sit down and think about the last person you hiredBesides a grammar and typing test, you should find any other relevant rests that might help you screen people outPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble 

The old philosophy of mine that we should focus on building a great service rather than focus on what our clients actually need and wanted kind of permeated our whole organization. We were more focused on the fact that we offered a great service but didn't take into consideration that what we offered wasn't hitting the spot on what our clients needed. Or, that we weren't targeting the right clients for what we were offering. I was obsessed with the service we provided when I should have been focused on our clients, but I was determined to turn my attitude around, that of our staff, and the direction of our company. I've been focused on this ever since, and it has made a huge difference.Although I realized our focus needed to be client-centric instead of service/product centered, I didn't realize some of the reasons why this was other than the general idea of trying to come at it from a service standpoint instead of what's-in-it-for-us standpoint.In addition to focusing on the client vs. the product, you need to focus on the clients you are targeting. If your product or service is not needed, then you will always struggle. Try to find the value in what they will see if they choose to purchase from you. If you are selling to the wrong customer, you will continually finding yourself having to convince them to purchase, when you want to sell a product or service that speaks for itself and doesn't need twisting arms. This is better for your business and better for the needs of your clients as well.Key Talking Points of the Episode:I used to focus on our service more than what our clients wantedPer Steve Larsen, “You don't fill your own wallet,” meaning that you are not the one buying your product or service.When you start focusing on genuinely doing your best to serve your clients instead of selling them something so you can make money, it comes through and your clients will love you for it.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

Your business needs a good system in place in order to run efficiently. The first thing you have to do is start documenting all the tasks your business has on a daily basis. Larger, successful businesses have operation manuals or knowledge bases, or some kind of training resources. This is not just corporate fluff. Without systems in place that are documented, they would have never gotten as big as they are. If you don't have things documented yet, I would start out with the most important items and the rest can be added overtime. Anytime an employee works on a task, they can document the procedure for that task and update it any time things change.I believe that you should look at every new decision or strategy in terms of the long-term impact and feasibility of the action. If it cannot be documented and put on autopilot, it's probably not a good strategy. Think about the end game – what would turn your company from a job someone could buy from you, to an asset that has much more value on the open market that someone could buy it and walk in, hands off, and the business would still function.If you can get to this point in your business, it will change the lives of your team, your customers, and you. If you aren't systemizing your business, now is a great time to start.Key Talking Points of the Episode:You have to put systems in place at every stage of your business before you can grow to the next level.The goal of any business venture for you as the entrepreneur is to create a valuable asset – your business. Systemizing your business to be able to run on autopilot without you will substantially reduce the stress in your life.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble 

I isolated myself for three days in a hotel on the border of California and Nevada in order to disrupt my normal mental routine. This helped me to focus and zone in on the task at hand – setting goals for my business. After my business partner passed away, I was force to take over all of his duties and be the sole face of the company. I was overwhelmed with work and fell into a routine of working in my business rather than on my business, so I finally isolated myself away from the business and my normal routine.To start on setting my goals for my business, I set basic questions that needed to be addressed in my business. I discovered that I need to ask myself these questions every time I isolate myself. If you don't ask these questions every time you do an isolation retreat, you can lose sight of your direction. Going back to the basics helps to keep you focused and evaluate what you have been doing to see if you have gotten off course. If you do, don't worry – you have to remember that there are no unrealistic goals, just unrealistic time frames. Come up with specific actions that will start to close that gap. Then, write out the dates you want to have completed by, so that next time you meet with yourself, you can see the progress you made. I would encourage you to take the time to figure out how you can do some kind of isolation a few times a year. I think you will see big gains and growth inyour business when you start focusing on how to grow your business instead of constantly working in your business.Key Talking Points of the Episode:In life and in business, sometimes difficult circumstances force you to grow and find new ways of growing your business that you wouldn't have considered without the bad experience.I forced myself to take a step back and reevaluate my business with the new situation of being alone to be the sole leader of the company. This turned out to be one of the most valuable things I have done in my business career.What do you write about or brainstorm about? When it comes to the actual mechanics of what you should be focusing on, I think it's critical that you go back to the basics - every time, not just once. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

How do you control your state of mind? Start the day off right and keep momentum through the day. To paraphrase Tony Robbins, “You can't be grateful and depressed at the same time.” Being in a state of gratefulness for all the good things in my life automatically puts me in a better state. No matter your situation, I guarantee there are millions of people who wish they have what you have in your life. Different approaches work for different people, so I encourage you to find a routine that best works for you. You will find that putting in the action and working to increase your mood will improve productivity in the workplace tenfold because you will overall be a happier and more motivated individual.We build relationships with our clients through face-to-face interaction, over the phone, video, etc. If you are feeling confident and energetic, it will show. If you are feeling down, it will also show. People tend to feed off the energy you put out, so the more confident you come across, the more confident they will be in what you are offering and the more likely they will want to do business with you.Key Talking Points of the Episode:Your state controls how you feel about things, which in turn controls your actionsCreate a routine you can realistically follow that will improve your state of mind throughout the dayIn B2B, it's much more common to be having important conversations with owners and executives, so our state while interacting is especially importantPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble Keywords: b2b marketing,b2b small business marketing,b2b small businesses,growing small businesses,marketing for b2b small businesses,small business owners

No matter how high your IQ test shows, you cannot run everything in your business on your own. Maybe your ego is saying that only you should handle x, only you could deal with y, and only you can possibly work on z. That's just not the case. In fact, IQ does not necessarily determine a business's success. It helps, but where does expertise in one area get you if your business is still struggling financially because you are not able to complete certain duties the way they need to be completed? Not only are you going to spread yourself too thin and inevitably lose your sanity if you are trying to juggle too many tasks, but chances are, you are throwing money out the door by not handing over duties to an in-house employee or outsourcing them. You're probably thinking: how can I lose money if I'm not paying someone else to do my job? First, let's talk about your value-per-hour; what it costs for you to handle the tasks you do. Then, calculate what it would cost to outsource or hand xyz over. If it costs you more to do a task than it would someone else, you need to consider handing it over. Everyone should know how important networking is for a business. When you have created a network of individuals who have strengths and smarts in different areas than you, your business will act as a “well-oiled machine” of various moving parts that work correctly and more smoothly for you and your clients.Key Talking Points of the Episode:Financial success is the scoreboard we use to indicate how much value you are providing to the marketplaceCost-per-hour calculation of any significant recurring activity you doIf you are able to find and build a team of people who can do all the tasks needed to solve the problem you are going to solve for your clients, you will be successful and your income has huge potential for growthPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

Take a look at what your business offers. Are you selling high-ticket items or are you selling some kind of service? Then, think to yourself: am I relying on my customers to make a one-time purchase and am I struggling to get new or recurring business in the door? Once you've identified what your company already offers, think about ways to extend this offer that will reel them back in; what kind of recurring, subscription-type service can your business give to them after the initial transaction? For us at SalesDouble, we started out only offering our clients a block of calls, and so we relied on them to come back and request additional blocks. What we realized was that we could offer a program-type service that included ongoing blocks of dials, then soon after, email marketing, a CRM system, etc. Not only was this beneficial for our business because it kept our clients in the door which provided a steadier revenue stream, but this created better results for our clients in the long-run as well. B2B generally needs to be an ongoing or longer-term relationship. This is because as the cost of a purchase increases, so does the need for trust to be increased proportionately. The biggest benefit of some kind of recurring program that you can offer isn't just revenue but keeping your business in the front of your clients' minds. So, if you sell a high-ticket item, you could offer maintenance or support on a contract or subscription basis, or if you are selling a service then you could provide educational materials that relates to your business and how it can help them. You can keep clients coming in with a subscription or program-type service that will increase the importance and need for your business, build trust which may also lead to more referrals, and create a more predictable revenue stream. Key Talking Points of the Episode:We can separate the way businesses interact with their customers or client'sHow SalesDouble turned infrequent transactions into a reliable, subscription-based programYour B2B company can offer helpful and recurring knowledge or services to clients to produce a more reliable revenue stream with a type of subscription or programPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook - “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble 

At West Point, I was a plebe (freshman cadet) where I underwent various drills, one of which was “The 4 responses.” For all questions asked, I could only answer with “yes, sir,” “no, sir,” “sir, I do not understand,” and today's topic – “no excuse, sir.” The “no excuse, sir” answer was meant to teach new cadets about taking responsibility and the importance of leadership by being accountable for the actions you did, did not, or will take. It created the mindfulness in me that there are no excuses for most problems I face. I decided to apply this principle to my business and the results have been astronomical. Business is never smooth for too long. When you hit those bumps in the road, it's easy to point fingers at everybody else, but what does that solve? In the short-term, it gives you an out because if someone else is to blame, you don't have to do anything. However, what you're also doing is taking power away from yourself and leaving no room to fix the situation, because if you “can't” fix it, you won't. Instead, shift that mindset. Recognize that you do have control and be accountable for your business. When you own the problem instead of blaming an outside factor, it will be easier for you to take the actions needed to really solve the problem. More accountability and action lead to less stress for you in the end, and you'll find yourself in a better position each time. I hope this idea hits home with you. I know it has been both a positive, and at times when I didn't do it, a negative for my business. Key Talking Points of the Episode:   “no excuse, sir” exercise story• Blaming an outside force for losses comes at a cost – you feel powerless and unable to fix the situation, which means you won't fix the situation• Taking total and complete responsibility for all matters in your business empowers you to come up with solutions to prevent problems from happening againPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.

Like a lot of young salespeople and marketers, I have tried several different approaches which seemed like good ideas at the time. A mentor once reminded me of something he used to say often which was, “everything works sometimes”. What he meant by that was that no matter what marketing technique you use, you are likely to have some level of success. The real question that you should be asking at that point is, is that repeatable consistently, and does the cost justify the investment, what kind of ROI are you getting for your money, and are there better uses for that money.You simply can't make an assumption based on a small sample in a short period of time. My business partner at SalesDouble used to say, “even a dog with a note in his mouth would get some sales” which goes back to “the everything works sometimes” concept. You have to give a marketing campaign or sales a process enough time to get to critical mass and start bringing in clients consistently.Just because you hit a sale right out of the gate, means nothing. It's like going to Vegas and putting a nickel in the slots and you win big. What do most people do, they take that money and throw it right back in with no results. Professional gamblers know the only way to win is to play consistently over a long period of time as the house's edge get's much smaller over time.Another pitfall to avoid is changing more than one variable in the campaign or strategy. Even with a large enough sample size, you won't know what the real change was that increased results. Then you have to test the two variables again. I'm a very analytical person by nature, so this makes sense to me. Over a larger period of time, like a year, you will see what variables are increasing results, keep them in the campaign and dump the others.When applying this concept to your business, I would recommend you try multiple marketing campaigns and methods and judge them overtime in isolation. When something fails over time, don't get discouraged as that means you have figured out another way NOT to increase results, and eventually you will be left with only techniques in your campaigns that yield the best results.Listen to the whole episode or read the transcript for a more in depth explanation of these concepts.Key Talking Points of the Episode:“Even a dog with a note in his mouth will eventually get a sale.”Campaigns and Marketing techniques must be evaluated over a substantial period of timeDon't change more than one variable at a time when evaluating a campaign.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

I want to talk about a skill that has helped me immensely over the years in business selling B2B and in my personal life with family and friends. That skill is understanding people, where they are coming from, and how best to influence them in a positive way.This may seem basic in nature, but over and over again throughout my career in business I have seen people ignore this facet of communication and the consequence of not having this skill.I don't remember where I picked it up, but I love the saying, “Talk to people in terms they can understand.” What I mean by this is that if you want to influence people to do what you want them to do, buy more of your product, be loyal to your brand, and have a long term relationship, you have to communicate in a very specific way.When dealing with a decision maker, a lot of sales people will walk in there, start some small talk, and then start feature barfing and go on and on about their product, why their company is the greatest, etc. They do the vast majority of the talking because they are nervous or not confident enough to handle the typical silence in any sales conversation.I know I did that in my early days of selling, even though I knew better. It's a very easy trap to fall into. Instead of getting the prospect to tell me about their needs, desires, and what's important to them, I monopolized the conversation.One thing that helped me change my mentality was a book written about 90 years ago called How to Win Friends and Influence people by Dale Carnegie. There's a link to it in the show notes. I highly recommend it as the principles taught in that book are timeless.While psychological rapport building is important when you are selling to anyone, it is particularly important for B2B since it tends to be one on one with decision makers who are sophisticated and get pitched constantly by unethical salespeople.When you are talking to a prospect, it's critical that you spend 70-80% of your time listening to the prospect instead of talking about your company or yourselfThis is one of many techniques in rapport building, and we don't have time to go into each one as each one could be a podcast in itself.In addition to verbal rapport you can create rapport with your body through mirroring and matching. Go get a good book on rapport building with NLP or one of those types of books as it's scientifically proven to work.Even if you are not good at rapport building, one way to counter this is simply showing genuine interest in the prospect's problems and their life in general. As you probably know, the more you know about a subject, the more interesting it becomes. The same applies to people. One other easy thing to do is give a prospect a sincere compliment. This sounds simple, but it's an easy way to knock down barriers. It may take a minute to figure it out, but if you can find something to compliment them on, it's human nature for them to connect to you. The takeaways from this episode are the importance of creating rapport in building any business relationship, some of the mechanics of rapport building, and most importantly, be sincere in your communication. These components have made a huge difference in my sales career and as a business owner. Whether you are talking to prospects, your employees, your spouse, or anyone, I encourage you to make this a lifelong habit.In the next episode, we are going to talk about how to evaluate your marketing success, when you should pour resources into a marketing method, and when you should dump it.Key Talking Points of the Episode:Rapport building is a must have skill when dealing with B2B decision makers.75%+ of any conversation with a prospect should them speaking instead of the salesperson.Be sincere, show genuine interest, and give genuine compliments.Please subscribe and rate the show o

I want to talk about an uncomfortable topic for me personally, but all entrepreneurs, salespeople, and anyone with success in their life faces it on a daily basis. That topic is becoming the person you need to be to achieve your goals.When I say this is an uncomfortable topic for me, I mean it has been quite a journey, and I'm not proud of my lack of growth over periods in my life. I went to the Tony Robbins Business Mastery a few years ago - which I believe every business owner should attend. One of the themes that Tony and other speakers hit on time and time again, was that 80% of business success is mental, and the other 20% is tactical or the mechanics.The more I have looked over my business in the last 20+ years, the more I realized that this was true. Unfortunately, in looking back over the years, at times lost focus on growing, and just cruised through life. This directly affected my business. When you stop challenging yourself and stop learning, you tend to do what you have always done and not grow as a person.If you are not growing by constantly trying new things and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, your business will most likely not move forward. It took the passing of my business partner and being forced to change and grow into my new role and skillset to really change the business. I went from doing things that were comfortable and easy for me to managing sales people, being in charge of marketing, and managing our current clients in addition to my other areas of responsibility.I've realized over the past few years that the reason our company wasn't growing was because I wasn't growing and putting myself in uncomfortable situations. So why is personal growth so important and why does it affect your company? I think the perfect example is lottery winners. I've forgotten the exact percentage, but statistically the vast majority of lottery winners who win a substantial amount, like a million or more, are either broke or bankrupt within 2 years of getting the money. The reason they go broke so quickly is because they did not grow as a person who can handle that kind of money.As I have pushed myself to do new things like get on video, record this podcast, work on blog content, and become the public face of our company, I have realized how much further I have to grow as a person to make my company grow. If somebody handed us an account of $10mm dollars, we as a company couldn't handle it - and the primary reason is because of me. I now understand that if I want the income and growth of the company that I desire, I am going to have to continue to learn and change.Although this topic is not specifically for B2B small business owners, I think it is critical in our businesses. You may be able to get away with some mediocre growth in B2C because of the sophistication of the average customer, but in B2B, you are going to be dealing with high level professionals and business owners, and that takes a skillset that you aren't born with and requires you become the person your business needs to grow.Key Talking Points of the Episode:80% of business is between your ears.Your growth as an individual is directly proportional to the growth of your business.Getting out of your comfort zone is critical for both you and your business.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

Have you ever had a salesperson pitch you on a product or service for your business that they claimed was going to have people knocking down your doors wanting to do business with you? There is a myth in business that if you brand yourself well, have a fantastic product or service that no one else has, that customers will come to you in droves begging to buy from you. We fell in the trap of falling for passive marketing techniques I talked about in Episode 1 when we should have been focusing our time on active methods. In a nutshell, passive marketing is marketing that is general in nature, like a billboard ad, sponsoring some event or sign at a stadium or something that is difficult to measure your return. It is completely reliant on your customers to see that ad, then go out of their way to contact your business. Most people barely see this kind of marketing, and it's really challenging in B2B to direct those ads to the right people.Every entrepreneur or sales person would love it if their customers just called them and said please take my money. That sounds ridiculous, but this idea of “build and they will come” just isn't reality. It's important to have a great product or service, but there are tons of failed businesses out there that had great products but fell for this idea that the product will sell itself. It's just not reality unfortunately. We made this mistake years ago when we changed our company name, got a nifty new logo, paid a lot of money for a fancy website with professional actors for video, and tried to optimize our website for search engines. It was an abysmal failure because we fell for the myth that our customers would find us, based on advertising and would convert based on our fancy website.Even though B2B company owners and top executives may act more professional or dress in a suit, doesn't mean you shouldn't be aggressively marketing to them. In addition to increased revenue over time, the other benefit of aggressive marketing and prospecting is that you are in control of your business instead of waiting around for customers to find you.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

I want to talk about the crossover between B2B and B2C and we can use the best techniques to get the best results.First of all, let's define what we are talking about with B2B on this podcast. Although some of the same concepts apply, this podcast is directed at business owners and sales people for smaller B2B companies, generally with sales under $5mm in revenue and who sell to other small or medium sized companies. There are very few resources for small companies selling to other smaller companies, which has always been surprising to me over the years, and it hasn't gotten better over time.If you've listened to some of the past episodes, you might have noticed that a lot of them weren't specific to B2B. The reason for this is that the fundamentals of selling and running a business are the same whether B2B or B2C and whether you are talking about offline or online techniques.What makes B2B different than B2C? In the simplest terms it's the type of customer you have. The question becomes, how do you get through to decision makers? You have to find ways, offline and online to penetrate the corporate structure or gatekeeper to get to the decision maker before marketing and selling even starts to take place. When you are dealing with another business professional, oftentimes the owner or CEO of a company at the smaller sized company, you have to approach them differently than just a consumer off the street.Once you have found where your target customer hangs out, you want to find out if there are more people involved in the sale than just the top level decision maker. In B2B, the decision maker might be the owner or CEO, but it's very likely that they will have some other executive at the company evaluating the proposal as well so you need to find that information at early in the sales cycle to make sure you are spending time selling them as well as the top level decision maker. Most B2B resources out there teach you that you need to do a formal analysis, provide tons of data, do a formal presentation about how your product or service is superior to your competitors, etc.We are hardwired to think and react emotionally to most decisions. Whether consumer or B2B decision maker, emotional feelings about the sales process is unavoidable. Only after a decision maker has made this emotional decision does logic come into play and that along with urgency is what kicks them over the decision to make the purchase. It's fascinating to me how we do this as humans, and it's because our emotions are often stronger than our logic.If we don't evaluate growth techniques through the lens of this basic understanding, we are going to spend a lot of time on things that don't work.I would challenge you to sit down and think about these differences and similarities and the techniques you are using. Are the tactics you are using currently effective in B2B? If not, what can you do differently. If you are taking these things into consideration, keep them on the forefront of your mind when evaluating any new marketing strategy you hear about or are being sold on.Key Talking Points of the Episode:B2B and B2C share some similarities, but also important differences.The type of prospect in B2B is very different from B2C and must be approached differently.Selling is always emotion driven including in B2B.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

This episode is about a problem that every business owner has who either has employees or plans to have them. This problem is the true cost of hiring the wrong employees, having the wrong people on your team, the toxic environment it creates, and how to deal with cutting out this cancer, while at the same time minimizing the stress it causes you a business owner and entrepreneur.First, please know that this is general theory and my opinion, not legal advice in any way shape or form, and you should consult an attorney on this subject as employment laws at the federal and state level differ quite a bit. For those of you who have been business owners for more than a few years, you most likely have had to let employees go for a variety of reasons. It's generally not a task most business owners enjoy. However, terminations are a critical part of your company as it drives, company culture which is one of the most important aspects of your company.A few years ago I decided to write down a list of beliefs or values that I wanted our company to stand for. I then took this list of 8-10 belief statements and took them to my team in one of our weekly meetings and went through them one by one. Over the years, I found that things like having an employee who doesn't share the same beliefs about how they deal with their co-workers and our clients, never lasts. Not only don't they last, but they can do a lot of damage to the other team members.Typically, what we are taught in how to fire someone is to sit them down and explain the reasons they are getting fired by going over a laundry list of infractions or weaknesses and tell them it's just not working out because they do this wrong, that wrong, aren't strong in this area, etcSo how do we handle firing someone? I changed my approach after many years of doing it the standard way. Now when I fire someone, I select an external reason outside of the person's inability or main reason you are firing them.I'm not advocating you lie to people as you want to be truthful, but you can most likely come up with legitimate reasons for letting them go. For example, every business has to make staff realignments from time to time and this restructuring causes layoffs.By trying not to burn bridges with someone who has internal knowledge of your company, you don't incentivize them to go out of their way to badmouth you on social media or elsewhere.I would encourage you to take a step back, sit down with your employees and come up with a list of what your company standards are for dealing with fellow staff members and also review how you fire someone, and try out some of these ideasIn the next episode, we are going to talk about the difference between B2C and B2B businesses, and what you need to focus on as a B2B entrepreneur.Key Talking Points of the Episode:Company culture and morale are critical in your company's successLetting one bad employee pollute your other team members can be costly and do real damage to your business.When firing someone, choose reasons that are external to the employee so they don't badmouth you and cause you less stress.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

When you arrive at work every day, do you have a plan for what you are going to accomplish that day? When the day is over, do you feel like you got a lot done or do you think to yourself, what did I even do today? For the first decade after starting our company I worked 60-80 hours a week, often 7 days a week. I'm sure a lot of you can relate.I spent time talking to clients, handling employee issues, messing around on Facebook, and just reacting to the day's fires. If we are spending most of our time focusing on the revenue side of our business as the entrepreneur, then we will grow. If we get stuck putting fires out and doing non-revenue generating activities most of the day, we will stay stagnant.I looked at different time management systems, and decided to try the Tony Robbin's program, called “Time of Your Life. You can get more info at the link at the bottom of the notes. This program is a seminar type audio program that is quite a few hours long, but I found it to be well worth it.You don't have to use it, but you need to do something and most importantly do something that you will actually do on a consistent basis. It does no good to start some kind of method and give up on it in a few days and go back to bouncing from fire to fire. Most of us can set aside time for important blocks of time for things like prospecting. Shut off your phone for inbound calls, close your email out, silence your cell, etc. The key to blocks of time is scheduling them and being ruthless at sticking to them. Don't let yourself get thrown off unless you have flex time built in and only for very important reactive events.One other trick I found out early on in my cold calling career was to do my cold calling first thing in the morning. When you get to the office in the morning, the first thing you want to do after you get settled is turn off your email, put your phone on do not disturb, don't talk to your assistant about any client problems or issues, and do your block of time cold calling before your mind starts getting polluted with the inevitable negative input from an email, voicemail or some other problem.The take away I hope you get from this, is that how you use your time directly affects the growth of your business and can either stagnate it, or grow it. Use this asset wisely. We all have the same 24 hrs, so those who are successful in mastering the use of their time will always be more effective than those who just jump from fire to fire.In the next episode, we are going to talk about one of the hardest things business owners have to do: Terminations and layoffs. We'll talk about the strategy I use that works while at the same time minimizing the stress it causes you.Key Talking Points of the Episode:We all have the same 24 hrs, so use it wisely as that is what separates the successful and unsuccessful people..Find a time management system that you will actually use and commit to it.Get tasks you don't want to do first thing in the morning.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Tony Robbins “Time Your Life” Program: https://store.tonyrobbins.com/collections/breakthrough-app/products/the-time-of-your-lifeWebsite: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

In part one of this topic of getting help outside of your own head, we focused on using the goldmine that is your internal team of employees. But what do you do if you don't have employees? Are there any other ways to get feedback and insights into your business that will help you see things you aren't seeing?Other than getting input from your team, you can get advice, feedback, and an outsider's perspective by bringing in some kind of third party business coach or consultantOne of the things that I have done my whole life is to try to ask those around me who were successful, what did they do to become and stay successful. In my single days, if I met someone who appeared to have a successful marriage, I'd ask them about that, if I saw a successful business person, I'd ask them for advice. It's amazing what you can learn from just asking and most successful people have no problem sharing.While it's great to reach out to successful entrepreneurs and business people who are good role models, there is only so much time you can take of theirs without feeling like a leach.The solution is to hire a professional business coach or consultant. I've been involved in multiple coaching programs, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. It's crazy, the more successful you are, the more you will want to spend on coaches or advisors. As I mentioned, the most successful people in the world have multiple coaches. If you want to be like someone, you have to do what they do.On the next episode, we are going to talk about some techniques that have skyrocketed my personal productivity as an entrepreneur and given me back control of my timeKey Talking Points of the Episode:You aren't smart enough to come up with all the ideas for your business - you need an outside perspective.Hiring a professional coach gives an unbiased look at your business and keeps you accountable.If you want to be like a successful business owner, you have to learn from one who already is successful.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

In the last episode, we talked about how to implement follow up systems in our businesses.Today I wanted to go a little different direction and talk about a subject that I think most of us are guilty of at one time or another - getting tunnel vision in our businesses.I mentioned in a previous episode that I had a great business partner for many years in building our company, SalesDouble. There is definitely a synergy you get from being able to bounce ideas off of a partner or partners in business. Unfortunately, most partnerships don't last and sometimes end in a pretty nasty divorce, so there are definitely pro's and cons for partnerships.The model of how we would deal with employees for the next 15 years or so - was to figure out what needed to be done from our perspective, and give orders. It was very much a military style top down management with almost no input from the people doing a lot of the day to day work.My business partner and I would meet 3-4 times a week, work on strategy and planning and come up with our directives for the employees. You hear a lot in business circles and with leadership training, you should delegate, delegate, delegate. However, what they are talking about is delegating work tasks that you shouldn't be doing, and it's a one way relationship, meaning, you have an activity you need someone to do, and you tell them what to do, and that's the end of that. Of course, good leaders are open to and invite feedback, but it's easy to just tell someone what to do and get it out of your mind so you can focus on other things.We ran our company this way for many years, until I was forced to change. Sometimes in life, it's the moments when things appear to be falling apart or you face incredible challenges that you come up with your best solutions and ideas.The day after the 4th of July in 2017, I came to work in the morning as usual and my business partner didn't show up. I later found him at home where he had suffered a fatal heart issue. Obviously, this was a major shock personally and for the business. In one day, after almost 2 decades in business, I was solely responsible for our business. After struggling for several months trying to figure out what to do and what direction to go in, I realized that I couldn't grow the business myself based on my ideas alone. I started searching for some kind of guidance on how to get help. In my search, I realized that I had a goldmine of perspective right in front of me - my staff. For those of you who already take advantage of the feedback and wisdom of your team, kudos to you. Whatever you are doing, keep doing it, and find ways to get even better information from your team.I rectified this situation by starting with one meeting of the staff, which for my company is a pretty small group. During this time, I attended Tony Robbins Business Mastery weeklong seminar, and he challenged us to have at least one 90 minute meeting with our team every week and talk to them about ideas focused on growing the business, not day to day operation stuff.So we started doing a weekly meeting starting at the beginning with the real basics asking questions like why are we in business. As I humbled myself and realized I didn't have all the answers, a flood of fresh ideas and strategies I had never thought of came from the employees in these meetings. A lot of things really surprised me and I found I had uncovered a fountain of information I was lacking about my own business. I won't lie and say this didn't give my ego a little dent. After all, I had been in sales for over 20 years and thought what could this 20 year old teach me. But, as a phone sales training guy I followed in the 90s, “money is better than ego, every day of the week.” If you struggle with this like I did, think about the old, would you rather be right, or rich. I'll take the latter.I can say with 100% certainty that this o

In this episode, I want to talk about how you make sure you are avoiding the pitfalls many of us, including me, have fallen into, and how to implement an effective strategy for both prospecting, follow up, and growing your business.When we first started out as a company, as I mentioned in a previous episode, we did cold calling for our clients, and that was it. We'd take either their call list or generate one ourselves, and have our callers generate appointments or leads and email the info to our client - and that was the end of our job.Sometimes you can learn more about what product or service you should be selling by talking to your clients or observing their behavior than all the brainstorming you and your team can do. They will tell you verbally or by their actions what they need from you, so all you have to do is listen, build the product, and boom your client's needs are filled instead of trying to stuff your existing product down their throat whether they need or want it or not. We found that when we set up an appointment or generated a lead for our client and emailed it to them, oftentimes, they did nothing with it. We realized that once we handed out a lead or booked an appointment, they rarely did any follow up. We decided to provide them with prewritten marketing materials in the CRM we built for them, but. we quickly realized that even though they had the capability to follow up and send out things, they were either scared, intimidated, or too disorganized to do it.To solve this problem, we took it to the next step, and set up automated email campaigns for them using their personalized marketing materials including a mix of value added content and text based emails. This significantly enhanced results our clients were getting because some level of follow up was being done.However, once again, our client's behavior told us they needed more. We noticed that when we would send out automated email campaigns using the return email address of the client so they would get the replies, clients would be confused on what to do next. To handle this, we then built a system to manage email replies to our client's marketing emails so that replies would come to us, and then our team could review and decide where to go from there based on the response. We also knew we needed to start doing the follow up calls for our client. This was the strategy that completed the follow up loop and #4 of the components of follow up I talked about in the last episode.Today we still use a similar approach, and it has been extremely successful for our own growth with new clients, but also with our client's businesses. It is an example of the power of good follow up.Well, there are two lessons to take from this experience with our company. The first is that listening to what your clients are telling you they want, and more importantly what their behavior is showing you should be the driving force behind what product or service you are offering them. I would really challenge you to look at your business and the behavior of your customers and clients. What do they do with your product or service? What do they buy in tandem with your product? Are they verbally telling you they want X feature or service? The second thing I'd like you to take away today is the example of the full circle follow up system. Like most things, if you don't systemize it, it's unlikely to happen consistently and with the same results.All of this sounds like a lot, but you would be amazed how well it can work once it is set up. Our company SalesDouble offers this complete system to our clients, and we are certainly a good choice for some B2B businesses and probably not for others as we are very selective about who we take on as clients. However, there are other companies that do each of the individual components of this follow up system and you just have to manage the different compone

In this episode, I want to talk about a subject that I actually love. Why do I love it? Because in my opinion, and most marketing stats will agree with me, it's where the money is made in your business.Am I talking about bringing in more clients, getting more sales, spending less to acquire a client? Yes, all of the above in a roundabout way. What I want to talk about is follow up. I know you are thinking, ok Robert, that was quite a build up for such a basic principle. Everyone in sales or trying to grow their business knows that you should follow up with potential clients, so that seems like a no brainer.I agree with you that it's a basic that everyone should do. However, reality is always a little different than theory. We should eat better, we should exercise more, we should spend more time with our family, whatever. We all have “shoulds” and not a lot of musts, and I've found in 25 years in sales and marketing, that this is definitely a should for most salespeople and most entrepreneurs.I know, because I am guilty of this as much as anyone. Follow up with prospects whether you sell in person, over the phone or online is not an activity most people like to do. It can be boring, time consuming, difficult to organize, easy to procrastinate on, and oh by the way, absolutely essential for survival of your business.Follow up is where most of your sales and growth as a company will come from. Not right now, but if you are patient and committed, it will happen over time.While it's still great to send personalized notes through the mail, it can be just as effective to write personalized emails, and I don't mean a colorful html email that is full of graphics and pretty formatting. I'm talking about a text based email that appears you sat down and wrote yourself. The prospect may realize it's an automated email depending on what they know about you, but we've found over the years that psychologically they will still respond better to a text based email.If all you do is email someone for follow up, you will not stand out. Only with phone calls or in person visits will you make the impact you need in order to get their business.For example, my insurance agent, who happens to be the owner of his agency, and I really don't deal with him but one of his agents, he calls me personally on my birthday each year and has without fail for 15 years. Because of that personal reach, I'm very loyal to him. So follow up is just as important for your existing customers and clients as new prospects.In my mind, there are 4 components to effective follow up. Timeliness and consistency of contact, providing value when you do follow up, personalization of contact, and some kind of physical connection on the phone or in person.If you and your team implement this in your business both for new prospects as well as your existing clients, you will reap the rewards of not only new sales, but keep the ones you already have, particularly if you have a product that is subscription based or some kind of recurring contract.I hope you got some kind of value out of these ideas. It has made a huge difference in our business and that of our clients. In the next episode we are going to talk about some specifics on how you can implement follow up plans and automation to minimize the hassle and maximize your results.Key Talking Points of the Episode:Follow up is where most of your sales and growth as a company will come from. There are 4 components to effective follow up. Follow up is just as important for your existing customers and clients as new prospects.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook:

Last time I talked about outsourcing as a way of making both your traditional prospect over the phone and in person or online marketing effective.In about 2010-2011, we had given up on our online marketing efforts. In retrospect, it didn't work because we didn't do it right as I explained in the last episode. Regardless, the country was still recovering from the 2008 crash as were most businesses. As I mentioned in an earlier episode, we have grown our company almost exclusively through phone based cold calling since 2002. In about 2005, we were in the position to hire sales reps, so we created a phone room of our own. We eventually got it up to 5-7 reps, something like that, and we were spending I think 250-300k  just in salaries and commissions. We ran newspaper ads, interviewed sales reps, and hired what we thought were the best. We even had a sales manager to train and manage them that we paid even more for.Anyway, around 2012, we were at our wit's end with our phone room, the quality of salespeople we had, and the poor results we were getting. We ended up letting go of the entire sales force and shutting down the phone room.I stumbled on an idea about hiring remote contractors to do sales for us. You have to understand that at the time, in the business world, working remotely was not that common.When we first heard this, we thought, well, that might work for him, but there is no way we can get people we hire over the internet to work for us on a commission only basis for a product that started at $500. However, since it cost us very little to try it and our funds were largely exhausted, we decided to give it a try.We figured if it worked once, it could work again, so we kept going. 8 years later, we have had thousands of sales brought in by outside contractors - all that without a single dime out of our pocket, and just a little time setting up a way for them to report sales, etc.Am I saying you should go out and recruit remote salespeople? No, not necessarily, it depends on how best to reach your dream clients. However, given the changes the coronavirus has made to business - and make no mistake - it's not ever going to go back to the way it was, remote work is going to be much more common.Key Talking Points of the Episode:"The effect that most businesses suffer not from a lack of resources like capital, but a lack of resourcefulness.""Given the changes that Coronavirus has made to the businesses, make no mistake it's not going to go back to the way it was. Remote work is going to be much more common."Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

After the 2008 crash of the economy, our business took a hit like most other businesses. Due to our primary reliance on cold calling and active marketing, we survived the storm while many businesses went under. Even though we survived, this downturn forced us to do some soul searching on our business's direction, and what methods we were using for marketing.In 2009, decided to take a different route in our marketing. We primarily started with the use of Google AdWords, which was the biggest advertiser at the time. Facebook was coming online, but not as powerful as AdWords. We spent a considerable amount of money on building a new website. We tried search engine optimization to increase our ranking on Google, but it wasn't easy since we were in a competitive space.We calculated that we spent over $100,000 between our website upgrades, video, and advertising that year. Unfortunately, we only got about five additional sales from that effort that year. This was a very expansive failure.Here are some of the mistakes we made with online marketing.Not understanding our target audience: This is fairly simple to do with offline traditional cold calling. However, it is not as simple or as easy to do online unless you are a seasoned internet marketer- especially with businesses. We have found the key to online prospecting and marketing in general is to narrowly define your dream clients, and then go to where they are online. They will not come to you just because you have a nice website that is supposedly optimized for search engine optimization. Directing prospects to your website without guiding them on what to do when they get there. We made the mistake of directing all our leads to our website without having a clear call to action. Our bounce rate was high. People would leave our website almost immediately for other sites. To avoid this mistake, always make sure you have a proper sales funnel in place.Failure to delegate. You can do anything, but you can never do everything. I made the mistake of trying to handle most of the technical aspects of our business because I could. I had a good time doing, but the truth is I ended up using too much time and delivering mediocre results. Delegation and outsourcing save you time, money, and allows you to work with people who are better than you.Key Talking Points of the Episode:Our experience with online marketingThe essence of having a clear target audienceSales funnelsDelegation/OutsourcingKey Quotes from the Episode:“A confused mind won't buy.”“When things are going great, we tend to party, and when they are not, we tend to ponder.”Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most. Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook:  https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

Have you heard of the term call reluctance? Well, it is where salespeople are afraid of making a sales call. Cold calling is a nightmare to many people because of the fear of rejection. Even for the most seasoned salespeople, the fear of the phone is common. The truth about prospecting via cold calling on the phone is that it requires a different skillset from selling. If you're a great salesperson, or even if you aren't, and have salespeople working for you, this is a great activity to have specialized, skilled people do in-house or outsource.In the 90s, when we started a website design company, I was the primary cold caller and lead generator because it was just my business partner and myself. We were starting and living on a small number of clients we were bringing in. We couldn't afford most advertising because we called local businesses in the Phoenix area, and then went out in person on appointments. It quickly became challenging to do enough cold calls to close enough deals for the business.We decided try to outsource the cold calling and lead generation. We took what was pretty much the last money we had in the bank at the time. It was about $6,000, and we hired two different telemarketing companies. What we got for our $6000 was about 10 quote leads full of misspellings and bad grammar. Talk about disappointment! I went back to cold calling myself. After a few months of getting some more clients and revenue in, we had the idea of hiring someone to work directly with us that we could rely on to do calls.We ran an ad in the newspaper and found the girl named Mary. Since email on the internet was kind of a new thing and many people did not even have it, I dropped off call sheets on her doorstep on Friday afternoons for the following week. We used lists that were printed off from the library that info USA provided free to libraries at the time. Mary started booking appointments for me, and I started closing more clients. A year or so later, a client approached us and asked if he could use our callers to set appointments for him as well.We had such success with his calls, we started soliciting other businesses in that industry - business brokerage - and soon that outsourcing service overtook our website business, and became SalesDouble, which today is a multimillion-dollar company.A few years ago, I attended a Tony Robbins' business mastery seminar, and one of the speakers declared that cold calling does not work, and nobody dared to contest it. I disagree with his point of view. Our company is proof that it still works in B2B. We've made over 30 million B2B calls in the last decade alone, generated hundreds of thousands of leads and appointments. It does work for the right industries.For online marketing, regardless of whether it's Facebook or Google ads, you need to know marketing fundamentals. Algorithms change, but the fundamentals of marketing remain.Key Talking Points of the Episode:How we got into cold calling and our frustrating experienceHow we finally got cold calling working for usAlternative online prospectingKey Quotes from the Episode:"When things get ugly, and it seems like you're not going to make it hold on, keep trying and refuse to quit. You'll figure it out eventually.""Cold calling and B2B were effective then, and still effective now.""The truth is prospecting via cold calling on the phone or in-person is a completely different skill set than selling."Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble 

As a business owner, how can you get new clients for your business? Well, you can do things like run ads and industry publications, run online ads that point your website, send out physical mailers and fliers, or email general information on your product or service to your email list. These methods belong to the passive marketing category.Active marketing involves proactively approaching very specific potential customers. This can be done in person, which is the best-case scenario for b2b, in my opinion, over the phone, and via video call. It can also be done online, but it has to be done in a very specific way. The key to active marketing is it has to be measurable. If it isn't measured, it's not active; it's passive.In the last 20 years, 90% of our clients have come from cold calling and referrals. That said, it doesn't mean cold calling is the Holy Grail for every business. What works for my business might not work for your business. We'll be looking at specific active marketing techniques that you can employ in your business to get results faster.Key Talking Points of the Episode:The difference between active methods and passive methods of marketingHow I grew my businessHow cold call calling and referrals can grow your businessStandout Quotes from the Episode:“Feeling good and being proud of your image doesn't pay your mortgage.”“Branding certainly has its place, but generally, it's not a revenue generator.”“The key to active marketing is it has to be measurable. If it isn't measured, it's not active; it's passive.”Next Episode:In the next episode, we will talk about more specific active methods and how you can implement them in your business or tweak them if you're already doing them. Make sure you listen in.Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

We're going gear this podcast to businesses who sell other businesses, and not to consumers. Again, it doesn't mean many lessons aren't relevant to B2C, but most interviews and topics will be geared toward b2b. So what are we going to be covering? My goal is to give you the best tips, strategies, resources, and tactics you can implement to grow your business quickly. This will come in the form of my personal experience and thoughts, bringing on subject area experts for interviews on specific topics and give you real-time insight into strategies we're trying as a business, both work and what fails miserably.Since this is the first episode of the podcast, I'm going to quickly share my background story and my entrepreneurial journey. I'm looking forward to serving you and expanding our tribe. Welcome home!Key Talking Points of the Episode:Welcome to the podcastMy Background StoryHow I joined the entrepreneurship wagonThe loss of my partner and changing my role at our companyThe goal of the podcastPlease subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.Resources Mentioned: Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.Book: The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunninghamhttps://www.amazon.com/Road-Less-Stupid-Keith-Cunningham/dp/0984659269Website: https://www.salesdouble.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble

Growing a small business requires you to think like an entrepreneur, and we can avoid reinventing the wheel if we engage with experienced entrepreneurs to learn more about hyper-growing small businesses. The Florida State Minority Supply Development Council connects us with successful entrepreneurs from a variety of industries, and many of them are using the council to grow their businesses. Every business, regardless of size, struggles with some kind of difficulty. Today, we'll hear from Ebony and Abdullah about how they've overcome the big challenges of entrepreneurship. Accidental entrepreneur Ebony started her career in oil and gas until she found herself facing an ultimatum from her management team. She was being moved to an office that she didn't want to occupy. She took it as a sign to take time for herself. And because of a non-compete clause built into her contract, she took a year off from work and went to coaching school to improve herself and become a better leader. She quickly realized that the idea of coaching had some legs when a friend of hers called her in need of a coach. Although she only had a weekend of training under her belt, the friend recognized that Ebony had more coaching experience than she did. She helped her friend return to the workforce after maternity leave and then moved forward from there. The transition was difficult but she made the decision to invest in herself. She had great savings and knew how to be frugal. She also sold her house in a hot market, which gave her a cushion and time to learn her new profession. Next level She found herself at a business development conference trying to figure out how to get to the next level. Ebony knew that she wouldn't make the same money she had made in her trading career until she became a great coach. She focused on becoming a good practitioner rather than scaling the business. She said she needed to know what she didn't know. She wanted to become the coach that she needed when she was in corporate America. She and other women at the conference decided to create a mastermind, and through that relationship, she discovered the value of certifications for coaches. Ebony also discovered that there were corporations out there that wanted to spend more than a billion dollars annually with small business. Since then, she acquired all the necessary certifications for coaching and she said that people recognize her at events now. The key is to tell people what you do. And then tell them again and again. Eventually, they'll hire you for a small contract and then they'll get bigger. Community Ebony points to her mastermind as one of the drivers of her growth and success. She also said that her four years with the NMSDC have helped her learn things she didn't know she didn't know. [Tweet "Business owners are resourced beyond their imaginations, and it's up to them to have a seat at the table with other people who want to share knowledge. #BuildCommunity"] Change of trade Abdullah Tharoo operates in the credit card payment processing technology industry and he helps companies protect against the credit card breaches that often occur. People often assume that companies like his gained their success overnight. He said he doesn't have a scientific answer to explain his growth, but rather he keeps things simple. About four years ago, he discovered a need to move into a different trade that would allow him to spend more time with his kids and his wife. He stepped back from the family business operating high-end jewelry stores. He had previously thought that he wanted to really find a way to make a difference in people's lives and save them money and help them grow. Abdullah recognized that technology was where everything was headed. Great support He knew he wanted to be involved in technology, so he did research and he engaged mentors. His family's support played a huge role in his move forward, as did the mentors. You need intelligent people outside your situation who can guide you to where you want to go. He said that although he has been attending the NMSDC since he launched his business, there are some deals he hasn't been able to close. Despite that, many of those companies have referred him to other people. Your network decides your net worth. You must have a strong network because the people you walk with are the ones you're going to become. NMSDC Abdullah said he continually returns to the NMSDC to do community service because he meets people there. He meets people who may not be able to directly give him business but who can guide him to the companies that need his service. Warm introductions are so much better than cold calls. He said he doesn't make cold calls anymore because he doesn't have to. He consciously makes the decision to give something back to the community that gives so much to him. He said people go out of their way to help each other. A lot of people don't want to join the NMSDC because they think they can't reach these big corporations like Disney, NBA, NFL. But if you don't aim high, you'll never get where you're trying to be. The NMSDC is the perfect instrument to get in front of these companies. Network He invests most of his time building relationships. Every day, he sets out to meet 10 new people before he goes to bed. On days when he's behind in his meetings, he'll sit on the sidewalk and shake hands with people because he hasn't yet met the 10.  Then, he decides who he wants to keep in touch with.  Make friends who can help you grow emotionally, spiritually, and financially.  "Hyper-Growing Small Businesses" episode resources You can connect with Ebony at her website, www.ebenumequationcoaching.com, or on LinkedIn @EbonySmithCoach. You can connect with Abdullah at tharooa@paykoncept.com. Connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. Tools for sellers This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.