Our First Guest Editor

wealthinvestingtips — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:03:04 +0000

It’s my pleasure to introduce our first guest editor. His name is Michel Neray and he’s an expert in sales, sales communication and marketing…Now Michel has done work for both major corporations and small businesses including “one man” operations…bottom line he knows what works “where the rubber meets the road.” Nuff said…here’s Michel’s first insightful piece titled, Sales Telepathy…

(By the way, if you don’t think educating yourself about selling is important, think again. Understanding the selling process is critical to your success. Enjoy Michel’s insightful post…)

Sales Telepathy

How to get into your customer’s head and heart without going out of your mind…

Understanding your market is one of the most essential elements of any sales and marketing initiative. You already know that.

‘Know thy prospect’ is the cardinal rule whether you are selling a product or service, cold calling to set up appointments or trying to get bums in seats for your next event.

But how do you get into your prospect’s head and heart without going out of your mind – or spending a fortune on third-party research? It’s easier than you think. All you have to do is ask four key questions — each and every time you speak to a prospect.

The more you ask your prospects these questions, the better you’ll know the answers before you even ask them. And that’s when the person in front of you or the reader on the other side of the cyberworld will feel like you’re reading his or her mind.

Imagine knowing exactly what’s going on inside the head of the person you’re talking to about becoming your next client or event attendee. It’s not magic or extra-sensory perception — its sales 101. And you can learn it…

At the end of this article, I’ll let you in on some other ways you can use this four-question process to improve your telepathic skills and establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Want to know more? Well then, let’s get started.

Question 1: “When you think about your (insert the topic of your event or area of expertise), what are the things you/your company have going for you – what are your strengths?”

By starting the conversation with this question, you focus the conversation around your area of expertise and establish a good rapport that will be key to maintaining honesty later on, when the conversation turns to problems and risks.

But the importance of starting with strengths is not just a psychological ‘trick’ you play on your prospect or audience – it ensures that you maintain a positive, respectful frame of mind. (Always a good thing for good communication, yes?)

Starting with strengths also shows your prospect how your solution or event fits within the context of his or her existing success. Whether in advertising copy or in real dialog, this gets the other person to get their head nodding ‘yes’.

Now you’re ready for question two.

Question 2: “What are some of the weaknesses and challenges that you face going forward (in that same area)?”

Some people may be so ‘primed’ by the positive discussion you started with that he or she may volunteer something like, ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong impression! We’re not perfect!’

Other people might need a little probing to get started on their weaknesses and the challenges they face. Here is where practice helps, especially if you focus on a specific target group or niche.

As soon as you can identify a challenge or pain that your solution helps with, you can move on to question three.

Question 3: “What’s likely to happen if you do nothing about those challenges – what are the risks going forward?”

This invokes what change management experts call, the ‘burning platform’. The premise behind the burning platform is that people don’t change unless there’s an immediate compelling reason. You wouldn’t jump off a 150 foot high platform unless there was a fire licking at your heels.

For the true story behind this; link to:

http://www.essentialmessage.com/essentialmessages/EM084.html

Your prospect may be in the middle of a crisis and already highly motivated to act now. Or they may perceive the problem as something to deal with in the distant future.

By probing the answers to this question, you help the other person to feel the pain of tomorrow – today.

The stronger and more painful they feel it, the more likely they’ll respond to your call to action. Now.

Question 4: “On the other hand, if we could fix those issues, what do you think you’d get or be able to do as a result?”

This is the easy part. If you have guided the conversation in the order described so far, while still allowing the conversation to flow naturally, the person or people in front of you will probably come to their own conclusions of the benefits by themselves.

And that’s the way you want it. Experts in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) talk about ‘away’ people and ‘toward’ people.

If the person is an away person, he or she may be motivated to act based on the conversation around question three because they want to move away from negative experiences.

Toward people are more motivated to move toward positive experiences and results – and that’s where this part of the conversation comes in.

You might need to prompt them a little bit, or interject (where appropriate) how your specific product, service or event will help ensure they get the results they are after, but if you can bite your tongue for a just a few minutes longer, it’s always more compelling for people to come to their own conclusions rather than having someone else try to convince them.

Four Ways To Improve Your Telepathic Skills

Here are four ways you can use this process to improve your sales telepathy and establish yourself as an expert in your field:

Invite your best prospects for coffee individually and have an old-fashioned conversation!
Organize a group meeting of prospects and existing clients. These questions can serve as the agenda.
Write a whitepaper of best practices in the industry you are targeting, using these four questions as the interview questions.
Develop a self-assessment for prospects to fill out online or on paper that takes them through this process themselves.

The more you use these four questions, whether in conversation or using one of the other methods above, the more you’ll understand your market – and the more you’ll improve your sales telepathy skills.

Happy selling!

Michel Neray

www.essentialmessage.com

Leverage Thinking

wealthinvestingtips — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:27:13 +0000

In my previous post (below) I introduced the concept of “leverage thinking”. Here’s a good way to begin practicing it…Whenever you need to obtain a certain outcome, first determine what element in the process you can LEVERAGE to obtain your outcome easier and quicker…

Here are some of the “elements” you can leverage effectively:

TIME

MONEY

LABOR

KNOWLEDGE

Can you think of other things you can leverage? If so, send me a comment and I’ll add them to the list…

Now…here’s the exciting part: To get your desired outcome faster and easier, ask yourself the following powerful question:

How can I leverage my ______________ or other peoples _____________to obtain my ______________(outcome) faster, easier, cheaper?

Ask yourself the above question four times. Each time you ask the question plug-in one of the terms we listed above in the first two spaces in the sentence…For example, for the term TIME you would write:

How can I leverage my TIME or other peoples TIME to obtain my (put your desired outcome in the last space) faster and easier?

Do this for each of the terms listed. You will be stunned at the ideas this exercise will generate.
But there is a catch…
You actually must DO THIS PROCESS…In fact, for maximum effectiveness read your questions out loud to yourself…And yes, you can do this when you’re alone.

When you actually take action on the ideas that flow from this process you will free-up an unbelievable amount of time and your productivity will soar…

And you and I know, “Time is Money”, right?

Raymond

The Three Rules of “Rich”

wealthinvestingtips — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:46:04 +0000

Welcome to my new blog. My intention is to make this piece of real estate in cyberspace one of the best repositories of wealth building information available on the web. And I want it to be a resource that you come back to again and again…So here’s my plan:

In the days and months to come I will be inviting several guest experts and mentors of mine to submit articles to this site…Each hand-picked expert will address different subjects…So at any given time you can come here and review articles or comments from experts in many different fields…from copy writing to marketing…business start-ups…real estate…the stock market and more…

Last but not least, I want you to comment on the information you’ll find here…
Query the experts, ask me a question…in other words, get involved in the discussion…because when you do you’ll end up being better equipped to move your life of your enterprise forward faster…

Take advantage of the expertise that will appear on these pages…

And prosper…

Love,

Raymond

The Three Rules of “Rich”

Often I receive emails from clients who want me to hand them the complete guide for getting rich…Yet if I were to sit down with each client and map out an individual plan for them I wonder whether they would be pleased with the results…Here’s what I mean:

You see, when people ask me how to get rich what they’re really saying is “Show me the magic bullet that will suddenly turn my life completely around.” What they think they want is all the money and material things…the big car…the vacations…etcetera

And, of course, they want it ALL NOW…with as little effort as possible…

But the reality is that most people have not thought deeply enough about what they truly want out of life…And if they did I think they’d find that their definition of “rich” would expand immensely…

For one thing, they’d discover that what they’re passionate about and what makes them happy is where they must start…I mean, do you think you’ll get rich in real estate if you’re not the least bit interested in it? (You’ll be surprised how many people get into something they haven’t the least bit of interest in yet expect to make a lot of money.)
So that’s rule #1…Discover what makes you “rich” by immersing yourself in your passions…

A lot of folks wonder here if they can earn a good income doing what they love and my answer is always a resounding YES…Now, granted, if you insist on becoming a recluse artist who paints pictures no one wants to buy, you are not going to succeed financially. (Although you may be very “rich” and happy within)
Remember though, what you do is always by choice…And in this case, our artist can choose to do her own “work” and support herself by delivering artistic products and services that people want to own (I.e. pay money for).

For example, I once knew a struggling graphic designer of children’s books who took a trip to Italy and discovered that…lo and behold…they paid designers four or five times the money to do work similar to what she was doing in North America…Needless to say, she immediately moved to Italy…

Another individual who always wanted to “work with wood” (his passion) quit the corporate world and started selling plant pots made from split-rail fencing…He sold these plant pots at craft shows throughout Canada and the United States…And amazingly his income tripled…

Rule #2 is: You can’t do it all by yourself, so “get over it”…

Anybody I know who has achieved a higher level of success has learned-some the hard way-that they cannot do it all by themselves…
The reason most folks start thinking they can do it all is that’s the way they have been conditioned over the years to think about how to reach goals…WE THINK WE HAVE TO DO IT ALL OURSELVES….yet nothing could be farther from the truth…

Every successful person I know has a team around them…and every one of them has learned to delegate their way to success…
Moreover, all of them at some stage have sought out the advice of “those that have been there before”. In other words, they have mentors…experts who can help you realize your goals by showing you how to avoid common mistakes and pitfalls along the way and by showing you “what works”.
Learning how to delegate properly and securing mentors then are two things you absolutely must do…

Rule #3 is: Become an expert at using “leverage”.

This rule, if you look closely, is embedded-in Rule #2…but at its core…it’s really more about how you should think. Here’s what I mean: You must always be looking for ways to get things done faster and easier…In other words, if you want to reach a certain goal you should be asking yourself the following question: ” What resources can I acquire or use that will help me achieve my goal easier and faster…”
I think an example here will help:

Let’s say you want to make money by selling a gardening book on the internet. Maybe you know a lot about gardening, yet you no little about marketing products on the internet…how then should you proceed???

I want you to think for a minute…What’s THE FASTEST WAY to get a successful result??

Read a book? Maybe…Surf the Web looking for advice? Perhaps…Letting another person or company sell your book for you??…Close (but you might not make very much money after you’ve paid the other person or company).

Give up?

The answer is you should look for somebody who is already a successful internet marketer and seek their advice…Find out how they did it…then all you have to do is “rinse and repeat” exactly what they have done…Simple, right? (You, in effect, use or leverage another person’s knowledge and experience to obtain a successful outcome for yourself.)

(You’d be surprised at the number of people who insist on doing it the hard way and try to figure everything out on their own, making the same mistakes others have made…taking too long…and ultimately failing miserably…)

This is but one example about how to use “leverage thinking” to get what you want…

And I’ll be expanding on this fascinating topic in my next post…