How's business? Here are a few thoughts and lessons from the NOW!

Click Here if you are having trouble viewing this email. Issue 429 January 26th, 2010 Publisher: Jeffrey Gitomer Producer: Gill Kilcoyne
How’s business? Here are a few thoughts and lessons from the NOW! As I walked up to the Haagen-Dazs counter at the South Park Mall in Charlotte, a 6 ft. 5 in. tall guy was counting money. After the count, he put on plastic gloves, smiled, said he was the manager, and asked me for our order. We exchanged pleasantries, then I asked for a cake cone with a single scoop of mint chocolate chip, a kid’s cone with chocolate ice cream and lemon sorbet, and my delight, a waffle cone, with a single scoop of chocolate and a little bit of strawberry on top (“Just enough to where I don’t have to pay for it,” I said). The big man laughed out loud. I went to pay with my American Express (three orders of ice cream approaches $15 these days). He looked at my card, looked at me, and said, “It’s on the house.” I said, “What?!” He said, “You look like you’re good for it. It’s on the house.” I challenged him, “You don’t take American Express, do you?” He said, “No, we don’t. That’s why it’s on me.” NOW GET THIS: He didn’t ask me for a MasterCard or Visa. He was willing to give up his revenue in exchange for not being able to take my form of payment. WOW! I gave him a MasterCard and asked his name. “Eugene Mays,” he said as he smiled and shook my hand firmly. I asked for his address so I could send him a couple of autographed books. One on customer loyalty, one on YES! Attitude - both of which would affirm his demeanor and his friendly service. I was never so happy to pay for food in my life. Instead of walking away licking my wounds from ho-hum service, I walked away licking my ice cream cone feeling GREAT! LESSON: When is the last time you did something PROACTIVE in favor of your customer, rather than make an excuse for your own inadequacies? After downing the ice cream, I walked into the Louis Vuitton store to try on a couple pair of shoes. Stephanie, the manager, greeted me like a long-lost friend (I actually first met her at the security line in the airport where I complimented her on her bag - little did I know). I asked her “How’s business?” She said, “Really, pretty good. We haven’t noticed much of a downturn.” Without asking her why, she volunteered, “You know, we never discount our prices. So when people come into our store, they know they’re going to pay the same price no matter what, and no matter when. ECONOMY NOTE: You may think of Louis Vuitton as an upscale (maybe even overpriced), designer luggage and clothing store. I think of it as a top quality manufacturer of handbags, shoes, accessories, and clothing that prices itself like any other high fashion retailer. Whatever you think of them, their strategy and philosophy of “no discounts” and “nothing ever goes on sale” has kept them at high profitability all over the world for more than 100 years. Even in tough times. There may be something you can... Read the rest of this article — CLICK ON THE BEST ANSWER — Your competition underbid your product/service to your best customer. You should: A. Tell your customer your competition has an inferior product/service. B. Call your customer, talk about the situation, and be prepared to renegotiate your deal. C. Meet with your customer face to face and discuss your relationship and their needs again. D. Call your competition, and tell them to 'back off'. Jeffrey Gitomer LIVE! – Sacramento, CA March 31st & April 1st, 2010 Sacramento Managers – Develop your personal plan to find and keep a winning, loyal, well-trained, and self-directed sales team. This seminar will provide strategies and techniques about real-world sales leadership, plus self-evaluation to measure your present level of achievement. Jeffrey Gitomer LIVE! Sacramento, CA – Join the global authority on sales, Jeffrey Gitomer for a seminar on SALES ATTITUDE. Learn how to uncover buying motives, double your sales, get your price without sacrificing profit, and establish a YES! Attitude for a lifetime of success. Click here to Register NOW! Jeffrey Gitomer's Sacramento Managers Event Jeffrey Gitomer LIVE! – Sacramento, CA Jeffrey Gitomer LIVE! – Grand Rapids, MI April 8th & 9th, 2010 Grand Rapids Managers – Develop your personal plan to find and keep a winning, loyal, well-trained, and self-directed sales team. This seminar will provide strategies and techniques about real-world sales leadership, plus self-evaluation to measure your present level of achievement. Jeffrey Gitomer LIVE! Grand Rapids, MI – Join the global authority on sales, Jeffrey Gitomer for a seminar on SALES ATTITUDE. Learn how to uncover buying motives, double your sales, get your price without sacrificing profit, and establish a YES! Attitude for a lifetime of success. Click here to Register NOW! Jeffrey Gitomer's Grand Rapids Managers Event Jeffrey Gitomer LIVE! – Grand Rapids, MI Want to reach my public seminar audiences of 500+ LOCAL business people in your community? Would you like your company to receive additional sales training from me while I’m in your city? Contact Sara or Heather at 800-242-5388 or email publicseminars@gitomer.com for information. Jeffrey, I’m struggling terribly with constant requests by my prospects to “interview” my current subscribers to see if my program works. It’s the old, “Can you give me the names of three references?” question. I struggle with this request because I’m quite sure my existing clients do not want to do my job for me and I honestly don’t trust that they will actually answer the call or return a message. Am I off my rocker in not wanting to provide references outside of the written testimonials that are posted on my website? If so, what can you tell me about the best way to go about providing references. And if not, how can I move beyond this part of the sale quickly and effectively without losing the prospect altogether? Heath Heath, Try it! Shoot a few informal video conversations with current clients that love you and your service. See how that goes - ask them if you can have an occasional prospective customer call them for a reference. And, before you ever give a reference to be called let them know what you'll be doing - followed up by an email "expect a call from..." IMPORTANT: Every time you give out a reference, make certain you also return the favor by giving your customer a referral as a "thank you for helping me" - do that enough and he or she will look forward to you giving them as a reference Best regards, Jeffrey Jeffrey, I am a contemporary artist working with all medias including glass, metal, and fabrics. I have my own website (www.garyhallart.com) to showcase my art. What is the best way to attract buyers and commission deals? I have tried to work with art galleries but my biggest obstacle is convincing them that a 55-year-old artist with no formal training is worth the investment over a bright young art graduate. Gary Gary, The key to art is not the opinion of a gallery - rather, it’s the acceptance of the buyer. There is an art group in your city, join it. Begin to blog about art and the appreciation of art using other artists as examples. They will link to your blog once you link to them, and that will begin the exposure process at virtually no cost. Wherever you can exhibit for any weekend show, invest in that. The public will tell you how good you are - and if they love you, they will buy you. Best regards, Jeffrey The Year of the Connector: Three Ways to Make More Meaningful Business Connections in 2010 By Maribeth Kuzmeski, MBA, Red Zone Marketing It’s official: We survived 2009. But you’re probably not spinning around in your office chair, throwing confetti in the air to celebrate. The major business casualty in the last year was customer-business trust. But the new year offers an opportunity for a fresh start. And while updating your marketing plan might help get the job done, 2010 is the year of the connector. And in the year of the connector, the connections you make and the relationships you build will be the true game changers. So while everyone else is devoting their attention to the social media craze, it’s time for you to slow down and consider what really brings success. Is it tweeting 100 times per day or having 500 businesspeople in your LinkedIn network? Possibly. But those who are able to master impactful connections with others will be the ones to triumph in 2010. Improve your social networking skills. Just like your real-life relationships, you should be picky about who you make connections with online. Remember: It’s quality, not just quantity. While the connections you make through social media are important—especially when you can transform those connections into relationships—you have to be careful not to get caught up in a more, more, more mentality. Yes, it can be fun to see how many friends you can get on Facebook or followers on Twitter, concentrate your efforts on turning your connections into more personal relationships. Your goal should be to make connections that you actually see outside of your computer screen. And since sales conversions are more likely face-to-face, consider hosting an event for your followers. This year, make a concerted effort to focus on the quality and depth of your relationships. Build your own “Harvard Network.” People who have gone to Ivy League schools like Harvard typically look out for one another, connect with each other, hire each other, and refer clients. It may even be true that these alumni networks are more valuable and important to the success of graduates than the education they received. So what do you do if you didn’t go to a prestigious school? Create your own advocate network! The principles are the same for any tight network. Join a community group, alumni group, or industry group and get involved. You will find that those with similar interests, backgrounds, commonality, and relationships will look out for each other, just like at Harvard. Leverage your connections. Thankfully, for salespeople everywhere, strategies for leveraging themselves exist! It takes a plan, but leveraging current relationships can be the miracle answer to the typical grind of prospecting. Advocates, centers of influence, and your clients will give you referrals and introductions that are critical to expanding your reach and generating incremental sales growth. Contact your current connections and find reasons to meet face-to-face. Sure, social networking is great, and when used the right way, it can be a great tool for you and your business. However, if you want to really connect with people and get them connected to you, make it a priority to schedule face time. No matter what method you choose to use to make connections this year, the important thing is that you keep connecting. Your ability to connect will separate you from the rest of the pack, and is a surefire way for you to take your business to the next level in 2010! Maribeth Kuzmeski, MBA is author of the bestseller, The Connectors: How the World's Most Successful Businesspeople Build Relationships and Win Clients for Life (Wiley, 2009). In this book, Maribeth shares the relationship-building secrets proven effective by some of the world’s most successful professionals. She is the founder of Red Zone Marketing, LLC, which consults to Fortune 500 firms on strategic marketing planning and business growth. She personally consults with some of the world’s most successful CEOs, entrepreneurs, and professionals. She is an internationally recognized speaker and regular media contributor appearing on FoxNews, ABC News, The New York Times, Business Week, Entrepreneur and Forbes. To sign up for Maribeth’s highly acclaimed FREE ezine, go to RedZoneMarketing.com. To purchase The Connectors you can go to Amazon.com. The Classic Approaches to Customer Loyalty Trump Objections Every Time. This week's deal focuses on the manner in which you carry yourself and promote your product. Learn how to give your customers what they want, and how to keep them doing business with you. The Best of Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless Customer Loyalty Is Priceless audio CD gives you the key elements to achieve loyal customers. To gain insight into how value influences the sale, this deal includes Jeffrey’s How Not To Lose The Sale To Price teleseminar CD. These classic audio training programs demonstrate how extraordinary character paired with customer loyalty succeeds above all else. All for $49.00 (a $92.00 value)! Click here to order now “I listen to you daily and you fire me UP! Saw this display while looking for what you had new out on the shelves at Barnes & Noble in Bowling Green, KY. Good Selling!!” - Mark If you see Jeffrey or Jeffrey’s books SEND YOUR PHOTO to ezine@gitomer.com. If it’s posted, you’ll receive an e-book! Edison failed 10,000 times before perfecting the incandescent electric light bulb. Don’t worry if you fail 9,999 times. Arguably America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison had an extraordinarily positive perception of life that greatly enhanced his ability as an inventor. When others might have been hopelessly discouraged after failing thousands of times in an attempt to develop an electric light, the great Edison simply viewed each unsuccessful experiment as the elimination of a solution that wouldn’t work, thereby moving him that much closer to a successful solution. We could all take a lesson from Edison. Stories abound about inventors who quit trying and gave up too soon or miners who struck gold just a few feet beyond where someone else quit digging. There are few obstacles in life that will not succumb to consistent, sustained, intelligent, positive action. When you are discouraged after you’ve failed at something, remember Edison’s 10,000 failures before he arrived at the solution that forever changed the world. To subscribe to Napoleon Hill Yesterday and Today click here	“Maribeth’s book, The Connectors, is a classic example of the superior talent and wisdom that she possesses. Her down-to-earth style and her pragmatic approach to the process of building a relationship will show you how to do it and how to bank it. All you have to do is buy it now.” Jeffrey Gitomer author of The Little Red Book of Selling Jeffrey's Sales Rant is a clip from his online training video library. watch the rant now (you need it) Requires Flash player “The Challenge is not just serving customers… • It's understanding customers. • It's being prepared to serve customers. • It's helping an angry customer immediately. • It's asking customers for information. • It's listening to customers. • It's being responsible for your actions when a customer calls. • It's living up to your commitments. • It's being memorable. • It's surprising customers. • It's striving to keep customers for life. • It's getting unsolicited referrals from customers…regularly!” -Jeffrey Gitomer Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless Customer Loyalty Is Priceless Speaking and training worldwide more than 150 times a year, Jeffrey provides answers, informs, challenges, and inspires sales forces and upper management for hundreds of the largest and most successful companies. You and your people want someone who can make a difference. The difference is Gitomer. Click here to hire Jeffrey for your next event. “TrainOne was initiated about six weeks ago and we are very pleased with the ease of use and convenience of the training. The modules are ‘on target’ and we have experienced no technical difficulties. Different members of our team are using the training at different rates and we like that the program is structured to allow for this. Thanks for a great product with nearly instant support.” -Phil Lessons From The Back Of The Pack By Patrick Henry Had you been standing next to me the morning of July 26th, 2008, you would have been standing on the shore of North Carolina's Lake Cammack watching the sunrise. Surrounded by 500 people preparing to compete in the Mission Man Triathlon, and had you listened closely on that thick morning in July you may have heard me whisper and possibly whimper quietly to myself... "What in the heck have I gotten myself into?" For almost ten years, I have been an avid practitioner of Mixed Martial Arts. One afternoon my brother and I were having a conversation when I told him that I was looking for a new challenge. I wanted an extreme sport with minimal bodily harm. I wanted to reduce the risk of getting hit and/or kicked in the face. He said why not compete in a triathlon? I have never considered myself the "triathlon type", but he then uttered the "I dare you". "you dare me?" "you daRE ME??!!?? ..don't dare me Bubba, I'll do it. When is it?" He said "there's one in three weeks"......... "DONE" !!!! For the next three weeks I trained like a mad man. I ran every day. I swam every day and I borrowed a bike that I rode everyday. When the morning of the triathlon arrived, I was up before the sun. I packed my gear and headed out to the race site. I looked like a super hero five years past his prime. When the horn sounded we took off like a school of grunion. I was paddling as fast and furious as my arms would allow. Fifty yards into the swim I began to tire. 60 yards into the swim, my freestyle turned into a breast-stroke, and by the time I reached the first buoy, I was doggy paddling. Half way through the swim as I was being passed by the competitors wearing pink swim caps, (women over 40), I made eye contact with a grandmotherly woman who could not have been day under 65. In a cosmic moment of irony and humiliation, she overtook me, passed me by, and then KICKED me right in the face. LESSON..... IT TAKES LONGER THAN THREE WEEKS TO TRAIN FOR A TRIATHLON !! My friend and fellow speaker Theo Andros is a real triathlete. Theo is an Iron Man, he completed a 2.5 mile swim, 116 mile bike ride and a marathon in the Coeur d' Alene, Idaho Iron Man Triathlon. I asked Theo "what does it take to become an Iron Man?" He told me that it all came down to commitment. Do you have the time, patience and discipline to focus your efforts on the process of training to become great? He said the roadmap to becoming an Iron man is finite, measurable and tested. All it takes from you is a commitment to work the process. What is your commitment to the process of becoming an Iron Sales Man? Are you working a process or slinging it up against the wall hoping something sticks. Martial arts legend Gene Lebel said "the more you train the luckier you get". The same is true for sales. Here are three simple tips to incorporate into your sales workout: 1. WAKE UP EARLY. By the time your competition's feet hit the floor in the morning, you should be on step three of your daily to do list. "The early bird gets the worm"...I love worm..tastes like chicken. 2. READ TWENTY MINUTES OF POSITIVE MATERIAL DAILY. Before you log on to Fox News, CNN, or enter the blogosphere and get the latest dose of negative headlines, start with twenty minutes of uplifting material. It is like waking up and chugging a glass of water. (ever done it ?...you'll feel amazing) 3. PRACTICE. Having trouble on the phone? Practice with a mirror on your desk or the camera on your computer...smile and create friendly facial expressions and it will come through in your voice. Create scripts and practice them until you don't sound rehearsed. Roll play with friends or co-workers until walking into a brand new office feels exciting. Patrick Henry is a songwriter, author, and Gitomer certified speaker. He teaches clients how to create distinction in the market place and blow away the competition with the four keys to becoming a "ROCKSTAR IN A ROOM FULL OF KARAOKE SINGERS". Patrick's entertaining programs show audiences what happens when Keynotes, Comedy, and Concerts Collide. To book Patrick Henry for your next event, visit www.GitomerCertified.com or contact the friendly folks at Buy Gitomer via email or by calling 704-333-1112. Your Success Strategies. I was working with one of our Territory Managers and we had an appointment with a contractor's office in Florida to introduce them to our metal roofing and wall panel systems. While waiting in their lobby for the owner to come out and meet with us, I noticed that hanging on the wall was a framed article from the local business journal about that contractor's company. I also noticed that the owner was originally from Bloomsburg, PA, which is not far from our company headquarters. When the owner met with us, we told him about the monthly contractor training seminar that we hold at our headquarters in Allentown, PA, and mentioned that it was not far from Bloomsburg, where I noticed from the article that he was originally from. He was very excited to hear that, and he looks forward to pairing up a business trip to attend our seminar to learn more about our metal building products, along with being able to see his family members in PA during the same visit. It pays to be observant in your customers' lobbies and conference rooms! - Lee Ann Each week, we feature a salesperson's success story. Please send your stories to gill@gitomer.com. If your story is published, we'll send you a free e-Book! Jeffrey's Upcoming Public Seminar Schedule West Palm Beach Managers 01/21/10 West Palm Beach, FL 01/22/10 Atlanta Managers 02/11/10 Atlanta, GA 02/12/10 Charleston Managers 03/11/10 Charleston, WV 03/12/10 Sacramento Managers 03/31/10 Sacramento, CA 04/01/10 Grand Rapids Managers 04/08/10 Grand Rapids, MI 04/09/10 Pittsburgh Managers 04/22/10 Pittsburgh, PA 04/23/10 Houston Managers 04/28/10 Houston, TX 04/29/10 Hartford Managers 05/13/10 Hartford, CT 05/14/10 Philadelphia Managers 06/09/10 Philadelphia 06/10/10 Cleveland Managers 06/17/10 Cleveland, OH 06/18/10 Reno Managers 09/01/10 Reno, NV 09/02/10 Minneapolis Managers 09/09/10 Minneapolis, MN 09/10/10 Harrisburg Managers 09/16/10 Harrisburg, PA 09/17/10 San Jose Managers 09/30/10 San Jose, CA 10/01/10 Murfreesboro Managers 10/07/10 Murfreesboro, TN 10/08/10 Birmingham Managers 11/11/10 Birmingham, AL 11/12/10 Albuquerque Managers 11/18/10 Albuquerque, NM 11/19/10
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