Take me to your leader. If you have one.

Are you a leader? Do you aspire to be one? Are you a true leader or a leader in name (or title) only?

Leadership is the true challenge for the next decade. Entrepreneurial ventures are starting in record numbers, competition is stiffer than ever, customers are demanding more, and profit margins are thinning. All of these trends create leadership opportunities.

Do your people follow you or avoid you? Do your people respond to your assignments? Do your people complete their tasks?  On time? Are the meetings you lead structured, supportive, and encouraging?

Where do leaders come from? Everywhere. Some have natural aptitude and environmental advantages, but all leaders must learn the fundamental skills if they want to gain or maintain their position. If you’re having a hard time following, you might try leading.

Here are a few leadership challenges to ponder:

•   Are you tired of being a follower?
•   If you want to lead, where do you start?
•   Are leaders born or made?
•   What is the best way to become an effective leader?
•   What are the leadership skills you need to develop?
•   Do your people want to listen to you, or do they HAVE to listen to you?

If you are one, or want to be one, check out these 8.5 qualities of “what it takes” to be an effective leader:

1.  Maintain a positive attitude. Be solution oriented-action oriented-people oriented. A leader’s enthusiasm is contagious. If you get too close, you can catch a serious case of success.

2.  See change as an opportunity. Change is certain.  Followers tend to resist change. It is the mark of a leader to welcome change and take advantage of the opportunity it presents.

3.  Deploy courage. Douglas MacArthur said, “Courage is just fear that holds out a little longer.”  Good advice. George Patton said, “I don’t take counsel from my fears.”  Good advice. Leaders choose courage.

4.  Take a risk. The biggest risk is to never take one. One of the hallmarks of success is the willingness to risk. Leaders are determined to win or try again.

5.  Listen. Listen with the intent to understand. Leaders listen to learn. Your prospects know their needs, and they know what’s happening on the front lines of their business. Just listen.

6.  Communicate. Leaders set the example for open communication. They use their heads, say what they feel, and speak from their heart, not from their policy.

7.  Delegate and empower. Leaders share responsibility. They don’t dictate. They set examples for others to follow. Leaders encourage growth in others by challenging them to take new responsibility, encouraging them to succeed, and supporting them if they fail. Leaders understand that mistakes are lessons on the way to success.

8.  Understand others, yourself, and your situation. Leaders understand the importance of an open, inquisitive mind. A constant quest for knowledge brings greater understanding.

8.5 Commitment. Commitment is the catalyst that makes all the other leadership qualities a reality. Daily rededication to commitment is the difference between leaders and would-be leaders.

Rate yourself between one and ten in those 8.5 areas. If your score is under 80 (highest possible 90), you need help.

Whether you lead your company, lead your sales team, or lead your peers-how you employ and implement your leadership skills will determine your leadership success.

If you’re a business owner.You wear many hats. So many owners fail to realize their first job and biggest responsibility is in sales. How you lead the sales team determines how the rest of the business fares.

If you’re a sales manager.Lead, don’t manage. Your hands-on support and encouragement is often the difference between exceeding your sales goal and finding a new job.

If you’re an aspiring leader.Start small. Lead a group or committee. Do whatever is necessary to make it a winner. Do it again, until it begins to feel natural. Respect the power of leadership-and the power of the people you seek to lead.

There is one rule that is universally applicable. This rule, when followed, makes great leaders. Unfortunately, this rule is employed the least: Lead by EXAMPLE.

Want more tips? Find them in my Little Book of Leadership.

Think about the pile of business cards on your desk, of people that you’ve never really connected with, and certainly have never provided value for. Then think about the number of people who you could be adding to your network; people who could really be enlightened by you and discover your depth (or lack of it).

Networking is a non-negotiable in sales. You just aren’t doing it right!

Join me on Tuesday, May 15 at 11am or 3pm EST for my newest webinar, No Fear Networking and learn how to network your way to rich relationships.

Want to read what others have said about my recent webinars? Here are a few testimonials:

I truly enjoyed the webinar yesterday!  This was my first one and I love the frankness and down to earth way that Jeffrey Gitomer speaks to the audience – no punches – just straight talk!  The hour and the screens flew by fairly quickly and per Jeffrey’s recommendation I do want to watch this several more times.  Where do I go to see this again?   Thanks, —Nancy

So glad I invested  $199 in me ! I was a speaker today at my local leads group and yes, I mentioned the web conf from yesterday and encourage others to jump in head first and invest in themselves too.  I thought I was a positive person, however, the man in the mirror spoke loud and clear and challenged me to  be more do more  and give more.  Looking forward to session 3 next time! Positively,  —David

Thank-you Andy, the webinar was awesome and timely. Although I have had the YES attitude book for several years, I have not been a disciple of it , to my own detriment. As a result I have become a little jaded, sarcastic and cynical. Not only has it affected my business, it has also affected my marriage. After watching the webinar, I am committing myself to the YES ! Attitude.   Once again, thank-you for the “kick in the butt”.   Best regards, —Ken

Click here to sign up!

Looking to keep your present job?
What would you do if you were fired today?
How would you feel?
How would you react?
Where would you go?
What would you do?

Here is my 12.5 step formula to get you from FIRED to ON FIRE.

1. Let your emotions out for 48 hours – not one minute more. Do all your whining, crying, pitying and door slamming until it’s completely out of your system. (Continued negatives will block, even prevent, positive recovery.)

2. Don’t blame others. It’s unproductive and probably not accurate.

3. Analyze exactly what happened and why. Get several perspectives from your boss, co-workers, customers, competitors (may be a source for a lead to a new opportunity), spouse, friends, etc.

4. Put the negatives out of your mind. Try substituting humor (go to a live comedy show, rent funny videos, laugh as often as possible.) If you can’t — seek professional help.

5. Buy yourself a present. Buy something nice, something you’ve always wanted. Buy something to make you feel good.

6. Find a mentor. Find someone who will give you unprejudiced advice.

7. Get the support of others. Now is the time to ask for help.

8. Make a detailed plan for what you really want to do and put a time frame to it.

9. Go away for two or three days. Take your plan with you and revise it.

10. On the way up and back — listen to positive attitude tapes alternated with your favorite music.Sing along.

11. Stay on a diet of only positive things and positive people for 6 months. No news, no violence, no arguments.

12. Change something in your life. New hair, new friends, new exercise program, new diet, new hobby. Divert your mind to think along new paths in order to get out of the old ruts. (The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.)

12.5 Commit yourself to a sane recovery. Commit yourself to success. Discipline yourself to do whatever it takes to get back on the road to success. Make a daily plan and execute it.

Get back into the market slowly. Don’t jump back in until you figure out what you need to change. Make the next step a better step than the last one.

What other tips do you have? Leave them for me in the comments section below. I look forward to hearing from you.

Here are the TOP 6.5 referral EARNING strategies:

1. Deliver memorable service. It’s simple. Be friendly and helpful, and give positive response.

2. Be available. Make it easy to do business with you and anyone else in your company 24/7/365.

3. Be a consistent value provider. Create an email magazine and blog with content that helps customers, and a business Facebook page where you post positive and helpful information and good news, and allow for customer interactions.

4. Give a referral to the customer. This requires work, but it’s a great way to prove your worth.

5. Get them one LinkedIn contact they can benefit from. See if any of your connections could be of value to your customers, and make connections.

6. Develop the relationship slowly over time. Create your long-term value plan, and execute it consistently. Always post a “thank you” for referred business.

6.5 DON’T ASK FOR A REFERRAL IF YOU HAVEN’T EARNED ONE.

There’s an underlying powerful message in what I’m saying here. It’s about having a philosophy of giving, without the expectation of getting anything in return. This philosophy, if adopted, will give you a lifetime of fulfillment without an ounce of regret, remorse, or resentment.

Give to give. Don’t give to get.

Learn more:

Networking takes time. Quality time invested in networking will build your sales, your business, and your career. Done the right way, networking will lead you to make valuable connections that will earn you more than a contact, but a relationship with lasting profit.

I’d like to personally invite you to join me for my upcoming No Fear Networking webinar on May 15th, 2012! Click here to register for this webinar now!

Here’s what you’ll learn when you attend:

• How to make valuable and lasting connections
• Where to network and what to say
• To replace fear with fun to build rich relationships
• Going Social – The new network
• How to capitalize on your friendliness, value, attraction, engagement to ultimately connect for a real meeting

Want to get an idea of how my webinars work? Here’s an excerpt from my “Differentiate or Die” webinar:

Click here to register for this webinar now! ]]> http://www.salesblog.com/sign-up-for-my-no-fear-networking-webinar-tuesday-may-15th/feed/ 0 http://www.salesblog.com/mission-or-promise-is-it-a-statement-or-words-of-hot-air/ http://www.salesblog.com/mission-or-promise-is-it-a-statement-or-words-of-hot-air/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:05:49 +0000 Gitomer http://www.salesblog.com/?p=1075 Tweet

Can you recite your mission statement?

Come on! You’ve seen it a hundred times, maybe a thousand times. It’s some drivel about being number one, exceeding expectations, and building shareholder value that contains other nonsensical words that mean nothing to anyone except the marketing people who dreamed it up one afternoon.

I often wonder if there is anyone actually in charge of implementing the mission statement. I think you could find such a person over at Disney World heading up the “Fantasyland” department.

REALITY: Why is your mission statement always put in terms of you, rather than what you might do for others?

As a customer, or potential customer, I don’t really care about you unless you can do something of perceived value for me.

Which brings me to my prime question of the day, maybe of the decade: Is it a mission or a promise? And in the end, which is more powerful?

Several years ago I created a list of customer promises for my seminar company, my book publishing company, and my online training company. The promises revolved around what would be done in favor of our customers. I would ask each of my employees to apply the promises in their daily interactions with customers.

And all of the sudden, I didn’t need a mission statement because the promises, when enacted, automatically created achievement, memorability, WOW!, and loyalty.

Click the image below to read the full article and to find out what I promise:

Sales Truth: Salespeople become known by the questions they ask.

Knowing this truth, you’d think all salespeople would ask smart questions. You’d be thinking wrong. It never ceases to amaze me, that with all the options salespeople have, they choose to alienate, anger or cause doubt in the mind of the prospect by setting the wrong tone with their questions.

Here are the dumbest questions salespeople ask — and why they’re dumb:

• Who are you currently using…? Pre-call research should tell you that. And maybe the prospect feels that’s none of your business. Good start.
• Are you satisfied with your present…? Everyone will tell you they’re satisfied. So what? Well, OK, if you’re satisfied, I’ll just leave and quit.
• How much are you currently paying for…? None of your business #2. Let’s get down to the price as fast as you can.
• Can I quote you on…? Why send a quote — the next person who quotes 2 cents cheaper gets the business. What about the value?
• Can I bid on…? Same as a “quote” only worse. This is a 100% price driven sale. Low margin. Low profit. Low commission. Low percentage of success. How long do you want to go?
• Tell me a little bit about your business? No. It’s a waste of the prospect’s time. Find out a little bit about the prospect’s business so you can go into the sales call with answers and ideas that may get the prospect excited enough to buy.
• Are you the person who decides about…? Come on. This is THE question that breeds the most lies. The answer is most often “yes”, and the answer is most often false. Why ask a question that breeds misleading information? The correct question to ask is: How will the decision be made?
• If I could save you some money, would you…? Every salesperson thinks that the customer will jump at the hint of saving money. This tactic actually has a negative effect on the buyer and makes the salesperson work twice as hard to prove himself and usually at a lower price (and a lower commission).

And the worst question of them all:

• What would it take to get (earn) your business? This question literally is saying to the prospect: “Look, I don’t have much time here. Could you just tell me the quickest way to get this order, and make me do the least amount of work possible to get it.”

The secret of good (smart) questions are those that make the prospect stop and think, and answer in terms of you. If you ask people questions that you could have found out the answer by some means as simple as looking up the information on their website, how intelligent or hard working does that make you look? Not very.

1. Do everything you said you would do on time or sooner. To have any prayer for a testimonial you must be known as a person who does and delivers what you promise.  Without this fundamental element, don’t bother to read the rest.

2.  Be easy to do business with, and be friendly while you are doing it. Customers expect everything and they expect it when they need it.  Not just when you can offer it.  You have to be friendly when you are there and friendly when you are not there.  This means easy telephone access and easy internet access.

3.  Be proactively remarkable. When you stand out from other vendors you will be talked about and earning a testimonial will be simple.  Being remarkable means going the extra mile and making service the forefront of your business not an add on.

4.  Provide consistent help. If you get my weekly email magazine sales caffeine, you know it is all about sales help.  Each week I provide my customers an ability to help them learn and grow and I do it for free.  As a result they are loyal, they think of me often in a positive way, and will proactively send me testimonials on a regular basis.

4.5 Get business for them. While this is not always possible I can assure you it is the single most valuable thing you can do to secure loyal relationships and testimonials that will flow like Niagara Falls.  Figure out a way to help your customer by providing them leads and networking opportunities, so that they have an opportunity to get new business, and I promise you the most incredible testimonials will come your way.

Here is a video testimonial I recently received from an Ace of Sales customer:

Melissa from Hard Target Mixed Martial Arts in Charlotte, NC uses Ace of Sales to build relationships and keep them. They’ve tried email marketing products like iContact and Constant Contact in the past but didn’t find them easy enough to use or a good fit for the day-to-day needs of a small business.

With Ace of Sales, they love how simple and how great looking their emails and customer communications are. For Hard Target, it’s not about sales – it’s about developing their business community and representing themselves like the pros they are.

Click here to sign up for Ace of Sales today!

Social media has changed the world.

Let me clarify that statement. Social media has changed YOUR world. Whatever you’re doing online, whether it’s tweeting, LinkedIning, Facebooking, or YouTubing, Social Media has changed your way of communicating one-on-one, one-on-customer base, and one-to-the-world.

Facebook is the easiest phenomenon to understand. It has changed the way you communicate with your friends and your family, and has opened the freedom door to anyone that you come in contact with either business or personal. You have found old friends, schoolmates, and co-workers – and they have found you. And in the same way, you can find customers and prospective customers – and they can find you.

Because of Social Media and the Internet, big companies no longer have a big advantage. Anyone can create a news blog that can immediately compete with the New York Times. The music industry has been leveled by groups performing their own videos and selling them on iTunes. Groups are creating free videos on YouTube, and they have done it far more efficiently, at far less cost, than records or CDs since they have been invented.

LinkedIn has created a new way to cold call and a much more sophisticated way for businesses to connect. You can go on LinkedIn and search by job title and find prospective customers at no cost. It’s also the employment agency of the future.

Twitter allows you to gain a following of people interested in your thoughts, your information, or the information of others that they perceive as valuable.

YouTube is the new movie theater and you have about one billion choices. Millions of new movies are added every day. If you have heard that expression “to the cloud,” YouTube currently occupies half of heaven.

Someone interviewing for a job completely exposes themselves through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube the same way a company is exposed in the same social media.

NOTE: Job hunting and job placement are the second largest activity on LinkedIn.

And yet there are people who discount social media, avoid it, and even bad mouth it. Those people are fools and you know some of them.

REALITY: Social media and business social media have created new sales, new marketing, new exposure, new branding, new communication, new networking, and new business opportunities, the likes of which have never been seen or known before. And the revolution is just starting.

Want help with your business social media strategies? Follow my posts on this blog.

What is WOW?

Maybe the easiest way to describe it is: Who WOW’ed you? If you can recall that story – and recall how many times you re-told it – you’re on your way to understanding the process of WOW.

Here are the elements that can set the stage for WOW in your business:

• Everyone is friendly. It seems too simple to just say, “Everyone needs to be friendly.” What it really means is there is good enough morale inside the company to make friendly possible. If attitudes are down, friendly is impossible. If customers are angry, attitude is challenged. If you are not training attitude proactively, then attitude will be sporadic and friendly will follow suit. If you teach your people to be defensive and allow them to hang up on an angry customer (rather than learn from an angry customer), your reputation will suffer. For the past decade I have proclaimed, “It costs no extra money to be friendly.” It’s still true.
• Everyone is helpful. Here’s the help strategy that will work 100% of the time: “Tell me what you can do, not what you can’t do.” Most companies take pleasure in telling you what is NOT possible, telling you what their policy is, and giving some lame excuse for what cannot be done. Every time you tell a customer what you can’t do, it drives them closer to the competition. Eventually they will jump. It’s important to understand that just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean they no longer need it. When I’m in a hotel and I call room service at 10:30 in the evening because I’m working on my next day’s project and I’m a little hungry, and they say room service closes at 10, I respond with, “Oh, I guess that means I’m not hungry anymore.” It’s no different with your customers. Get them what they want, when they want it. That’s help.
• Everyone is available. My company has no voicemail, on purpose. If someone is on a call, someone else helps the customer. No one in my company or in your company is too busy to help a customer, including you. No one in my company is either on their phone or away from their desk, and no one in your company should be either. Having a voicemail message that says, “Your call is important to me” is an oxymoron. If it’s so damn important, pick up the phone!

There are six more elements that I want you to know about. Click here to read on.

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