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Ray’s Rules
My good friend and fellow Sales Master, Ray Leone, shared some ideas from his new book, Ray’s Rules.
Business Model Analogy
Ray Leone
Always try to use your prospect’s business model to explain the value of your product/service. If I am talking to a prospect that is a Six Sigma company and they are trying to get my price down, I use the value triangle and compare it to the Six Sigma criteria.
If they are number one in their industry and I am number one in mine, but they are considering a small local provider, then I ask them, “Why are you number one?” The answer is always that they are the best at what they do. Then I say, “That is exactly why we are number one.”
If they have low priced competitors that buy business I ask, “Why does the competition feel the need to lower their price when they are competing with you?” The answer always is, “Because we are better and the only way they can sell against us is to lower their price.” Then I say “Why do you think my competitors feel the need to lower their price to compete with me?” I also add “ No one knows the value of their product more than the company selling it. They believe that the price they charge reflects the value of their solution/product.”
You got it! Now use it.
Till next time
Ray
Email us at [email protected]
A few more comments from past attendees of Sales Funnel programs:
The chamber always has great speakers, but Ray is the best I’ve ever seen. – L Tholen- Charlotte Chamber
Not one wasted moment – D Whalen – Lucent
The Million Dollar Round Table should hear this. -Wardlaw Life
PPS – Feel free to forward this to anyone that you feel would benefit. Better yet, tell them to sign up for Ray’s Rules under free e-zine on my website www.salesfunnel.com.
Voted One of the World’s TOP 5 SALES SPEAKERS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Guerrilla Selling author Orvel Ray Wilson earns Prestigious
Top5 Speaker award three years straight
Boulder, Colorado
January 17, 2012
Boulder, Colorado author Orvel Ray Wilson, CSP has been awarded the prestigious “Top5 Speaker” designation in 2012 by Speakers Platform, one of the United States most prominent speakers bureaus. Out of hundreds of nominees, Orvel Ray has risen to become one of the world’s most respected and compelling speakers in the areas of Sales and Customer Service.
Each year, Speakers Platform recognizes five speakers, within ten popular topic areas, based on: expertise, professionalism, presentation skills, original contribution to the field and public votes cast at the Speaking.com Web site. Over 13,000 votes were cast from business leaders, educators, association members and others from around the world for the 2012 nominees.
Orvel Ray, who lives the mountains west of Boulder, is an international keynote speaker, sales trainer and best-selling author on sales, marketing and negotiation. His take-no-prisoners approach is unconventional, entertaining, and devastatingly effective.
A 30 year veteran of the platform, he has addressed audiences large and small in more than 1,000 cities and 42 countries around the world. He’s a coauthor of the legendary Guerrilla Marketing series, with more than 22 million books sold worldwide in 67 languages, including Guerrilla Selling, Guerrilla Trade Show Selling, Guerrilla TeleSelling, Guerrilla Negotiating and Guerrilla Retailing.
In 2001, He was recognized as “Speaker of the Year” by Meeting Professionals International, San Diego. And he was voted one of the world’s TOP 5 SALES SPEAKERS for the past three years running.
Top5 Speaker honorees receive a distinctive crystal award, are highlighted at the Speaking.com Web site and are permitted to use the distinctive Top5 graphics and designation in their marketing. Best of all, most honorees also enjoy a boost in their event bookings.
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If you’d like more information about the Top5 Speaker award and/or to schedule an interview with Orvel Ray Wilson, please call Denise at 800-247-9145 or email [email protected]
Social Media Marketing? DoIt With Care!
Eight Expensive Lessons Learned
DoIt Marketing
With all the buzz about “Social Media Marketing,” you can understand why I was intrigued when a fellow speaker, David Newman who promotes himself as a marketing coach, called with a pitch for his new venture, DoIt Marketing. He had assembled a crack team of experts who, as I understood their promise, could improve my SEO and make my phone ring.
No stranger to social media, I’ve been teaching “Social Media as a Guerrilla Marketing Weapon” for years. I just lack the bandwidth to manage it for myself. So I made a few calls, and his references were for-the-most-part, positive. After meeting for lunch, I was skeptical.
Then, one afternoon David called in a panic; “Can you cover a keynote for a group of financial planners, in Denver, at noon? Tomorrow?” The speaker he had booked for this event was grounded in D.C. by thunderstorms. The fee was less than rack, but I agreed to help him out, delivered the speech, and the client was thrilled.
But then David didn’t want to pay the speaking fee. Instead, he insisted we put it in my “bank” and use it (after deducting a 25% “bureau commission”) to fund his proposed social media campaign. And lucky for me, they had one slot open.
Instead of a check, I got a 10-page questionnaire, asking all about my books, my business, my clients, and the passwords to all of my social media accounts, website, and blog.
As instructed, I sent DoIt Marketing everything they asked for: market analysis, book manuscripts, articles, audios, videos, top-performing keywords, and passwords for my blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and other accounts. I should have known better.
My understanding was that the DoIt Marketing team would take clips from my books and other material, and systematically post them all over the web: multiple daily Twitter tweets, multiple daily Facebook updates, article submissions, new LinkedIn groups, two blogs a week, and more.
I thought it was expensive: $1,500 just to “set it up” (never mind that all these profiles were already set up and optimized, with thousands of fans and followers.) Add another $1,800/month to launch, with a minimum commitment of three months. Just enough in my “bank” to cover the setup and two months in advance.
Maybe my expectations were unsually high, given my background as a Guerrilla Marketing author, but I felt disappointed right away. Like when they couldn’t spell my NAME correctly, let alone, “Guerrilla”. The first (and only) blog they put up was a duplicate of one that had already been published. They signed me up for five article hubs, two of which I was already writing for. I believe I could get this level of work from a college intern! The only results I noticed was a dramatic increase in SPAM.
I sent David an e-mail with detailed feedback and branding standards, and agreed to give his team a chance to prove themselves once the campaign rolled out. I should have known better.
I felt that the work was not only sloppy, but in some cases, downright inappropriate. Most of the Facebook postings were dead-ends with no breadcrumbs. One tweet that I felt was very inappropriate simply read, “24 Reasons Why Sales is Better than Sex.” And the last straw, a book review I hadn’t written, of a book by ANOTHER speaker, with a link back to HIS bookstore. Sorry, but I thought I was paying DoIt Marketing to review MY books and drive traffic to MY website and MY bookstore, thank you.
So, I complained directly to the young woman assigned to my account, pointing out examples from specific posts that I felt were wanting. Within minutes, I got a call from David Newman, not to apologize, but scolding me for being “abusive” and “impossible to please.” Deaf to my complaints, he threatened to just drop the whole project, in effect, chopping down the tree before it could bare fruit.
My response was, “In that case, I want a full refund.”
“That’s not even on the table.” Instead he sent a check for the unspent balance of $1,800. He did NOT, however, keep his scheduled appointment for a reporting call, send the promised written reports, or do any of the setup work for which I had already paid so dearly. When I repeated my demand for a full refund via e-mail, and threatened to take my story public, I got a letter from his lawyer threatening to sue for libel. That’s certainly ONE way to discourage customer complaints.
The Lessons:
- Check references thoroughly. Anything less than glowing isn’t good enough.
- Never agree to trade out. Collect fees for your services, then pay as you go.
- Never pay in advance. You’ll want to cut your losses quickly if they bugger it.
- Understand what social media can, and can’t do for your business. Don’t expect miracles.
- Exhaust more affordable resources like Craig’s List or elance.com before engaging a boutique firm. Smart people are out there, and they’re hungry.
- Vet everything before it goes live. It’s your good name at stake.
- Insist on visible, measure results, reported weekly, in writing; not double-talk.
- File reports on Ripoffreport.com, ScamBook.com, and the Consumerist.com if you’ve been the victim of one of these scams. I did.
Throwing $3,300 bucks away on useless marketing really hurt! And I had to change all my passwords. Social Media, managed correctly, can certainly boost your business. But there are FAR too many vendors making wild claims that they can’t fulfill.
And when they ask you to give them “The Keys to the Kingdom,” just don’t.
If you would like to share your experience with David Newman or DoIt Marketing, I encourage you to comment on this post. You may call me directly at 800-247-9145 with any questions.
This article is not intended to disparage or defame David Newman or DoIt Marketing in any way, but solely to warn readers about the potential pitfalls of working with vendors in general, and Social Media Marketing vendors in particular. The contents of this article merely express my personal opinion and point of view on this topic. Use the links to his website to make your own assessment.
10 Guerrilla Selling Tactics to Sell at Higher Prices
You’ve done it. You buy a can of Coke® from a vending machine for a buck. Order that same Coke in a restaurant and it comes in a glass, with ice, and a straw, and it’s $3.75. Are the glass and the ice and the straw really worth $2.75? Apparently. People do it all the time, and never whine about the price.
Here’s a list of ten ways you can bring more value to your offering. Find three that you can apply right now.
1. Quality
People will pay more for quality. The Maytag repairman isn’t just lonely. He’s old and lonely. Show your prospect that the lifetime value of your offering is far superior to your competitors’.
2. Service
People will pay more for superior service. Why do you think people pay twice as much for a suit at Nordstrom’s then they would at Men’s Wearhouse? They value the service – expert tailoring, multiple fittings, free monogramming – and all this makes up for the additional money they will spend.
3. Authenticity
Authenticity means the real deal – the genuine article. At the Louvre Museum in Paris, you can gaze upon what is perhaps the most famous work of art in the world: Leonardo Da Vinci’s portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, commonly known as the Mona Lisa.
For all the hype, it was quite a disappointment. The painting hangs alone in a large hall in dim light, cloistered behind thick plates of bullet-proof Lexan. And it’s small; only 21 x 39 inches. Mrs.Gherardini has not aged well over the past 500 years. The paint is cracked and the colors are smoky and faded.
However, scientists have analyzed the pigments and digitally recreated this masterpiece just as it would have looked standing wet on Da Vinci’s easel in 1506. The reproduction is ascetically superior in every way, and you can buy the poster-sized print in the museum gift shop for only twenty Euros, while the original, of course, is considered priceless.
4. Stability
Company stability means a company that’s been in business since the landing at Plymouth Rock. Do you tell the story about how your Grandfather came from the Olde Country and started the business with his brother and cousin in the back of their barn? You share that history because people put a high value on stability and longevity in business. No one wants to be a beta test.
5. Reliability
People are busy and when they find a vendor they can count on, they buy from them again and again. How do you demonstrate to your customer that you’re reliable? Does someone answer the phone on a second ring? Do you show up for appointments exactly on time? Everything you do (or don’t do) sends a message about your reliability.
6. Social or Ecological Values
Do you recycle? Do you use recycled paper in all your packaging and correspondence? Are you running alternative fuels in your fleet? These issues have become more and more important in recent years. Seventy-eight percent of consumers said they would pay $2,000 more for a car that gets 35 miles per gallon, even though that only makes economic sense if gasoline is in the range of $4.00 a gallon (that’s more than I pay for wine!). Meanwhile, the Prius was voted Number One Most Ecologically Sensitive Product of the last decade.
People routinely pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for a knick-knack at a silent auction raising money for a scout troop, church group, or political cause. At this year’s Cigar PEG celebrity auction, the three-day elite speaker coaching package I donated raised $22,500.00 for the National Speakers Association Foundation.
7. Delivery
This is why you pay fifteen dollars for FedEx instead of 52 cents for first-class mail. People want the product in their hands immediately. Whether it’s delivering a customized pen in less than the time promised, or completing their project a week ahead of schedule, people don’t just want what they paid for when it’s expected, but BEFORE it’s due.
8. Financing
Even Time Magazine, offers “Three easy payments of $9.95.” So, when you have a good customer who’s shopping for terms, you can say, “Well, we can give you 2% net 30, or 90-days net. Take your pick.” This also proves to the customer that you value them enough to be flexible on terms.
9. Local Sourcing
Eighty-two percent of people surveyed have consciously supported local or neighborhood businesses. People like to be a part of a community, and will pay higher prices to support local vendors. Need proof? Compare prices at your local farmer’s market with those at a big-box store.
There’s a two-pump garage and gas station in the tiny Colorado mountain town where we live called Carl’s Corner. I’ve been buying gas from Carl for more than 20 years, and my wife is always giving me a hard time about it. She says, “Why buy gas at Carl’s when we can get it cheaper at the Conoco in Boulder?”
“Because we need more than just gas,” I remind her. “We need Carl. We need him when we have a flat. We need him when we have a dead battery. We need him when we slide off the snowy road and get stuck in a drift. We even need him when we run out of gas for the grill. And if we don’t keep his garage open, then we won’t have a mechanic in the canyon at all.”
10. Fun
Regardless of what someone is buying, or how much they pay, they want to have FUN and feel good about their purchase. How can you add a fun factor so your buyers enjoy the experience and keep coming back?
You’ve seen this guerrilla tactic in action if you’ve ever bought fish at Seattle’s Pike Street Market.
What can you use from this list to justify your higher price? Many of these are things that you’re ALREADY doing, but not taking the proper credit. Make certain that you explain ALL the aspects of your product or service that makes you more valuable to your customer. Focus on your uniqueness and what you bring to the table that your competitors are ignoring.
This is only part of a list of 31 Reasons Customers Will Pay More. Watch the new seven-part video, “Guerrilla Tactics to Sell at Higher Prices,” at: http://vimeo.com/user6769112/videos
Guerrilla Selling: Attracting the Right Sales Staff
In any business, people are your most important asset. A great location, great name, great merchandise, a great display and great promotion can all be undone by less-than-great people. Your staff is the most expensive item in your budget and the most important business investment you’ll make, so take time to choose them wisely.
The most universal complaint I hear from business owners is, “We just can’t find good people.” Well, let me encourage you. They’re out there, and your mission is to track them down and then persuade them to join your team.
Guerrillas know that their team is the glue that holds their business together – from their sales associates to their cashiers, bookkeepers and delivery drivers. So you have to put the same effort into recruiting a stock clerk as you would when hiring a merchandising manager. Although the specific example we’ll illustrate here refers to sales guerrillas, these techniques will work to help you hire the cream of the crop for any position.
Because the best predictor of future sales behavior is current sales behavior, guerrillas are always on the hunt for good people. You’ll find them serving you in restaurants, shops, hotels, spas, museums and cafes. Whenever someone really impresses you with their sales or customer service skills, ask for their name and number. Let them know that, while you may not have an opening right now, you’re always looking for good people, and you’d like to have permission to call them if something opens up. This way, you’ll always have a backlog of qualified candidates.
This is also a good reason to regularly shop your competitors. We know it sounds a bit mercenary, but you would be appalled at how poorly some companies treat their best people! And when you hire away one of their best, you win twice – you gain a skilled employee at your competitor’s expense.
When screening sales applicants you need to give them an opportunity to showcase their sales skills before putting them in front of customers. By seeing how well they sell themselves to you, you can predict with remarkable accuracy how effective they will be at selling others.
Here’s a simple system that can streamline the screening and ensure that you are getting the best of the best. Set up a voicemail box on a DDE (direct-dial extension that only goes to voice mail; ask your phone company). Then run your classified ad outlining the basic qualifications for the job, but do not mention the name of your business. Instead, in the last sentence of the ad use the phrase, “To schedule an interview call (the DDE phone number).”
The outbound recording should say, “Because of the overwhelming response to or ad, we’ve had to automate our screening process. At the tone, please leave your name, a number where you can be reached, and a brief summary of your qualifications. If your background matches our requirements, we may invite you for an interview.” BEEEEP. Let it run for a day or two to accumulate messages.
When playing the messages back, be prepared with a pad and pen. You’ll want to take notes. Start by really listening to the voice. Is it warm, friendly and intelligent? Is this the voice of someone who you would feel comfortable representing your firm? If not, delete it and move on.
Then listen to the message a second time, and check:
• Did the candidate follow directions?
• Did they in fact leave their name, an after-hours number (or better still, several)
• Did they leave a summary of their qualifications, and in that order?
This will predict how easy (or difficult) they will be to manage. Did they just rattle off their resume, or did they couch their experience in terms of skills? “I’m very good with computers,” or “I’d do a great job because I love working with customers.”
And finally, did this candidate close with some sort of call to action, “asking for the order” (or in this case the interview). If they pass all four of these tests, then call back and interview them initially by phone. You don’t want their physical appearance to bias your choice prematurely.
This process will give you a better idea of each candidate’s strengths before you waste time brining in people who are not a good fit. Implementing some sort of system to streamline the screening will help weed out the lazy and unqualified. This strategy will help you build the best possible retail team that will only improve your team morale and your business as a whole.
“Sculpting” Transends Langage, Race and Culture in Nairobi
Orvel Ray presenting diplomas in Nairobi, Kenya
In September, speaker and consultant Scott “Q” Marcus did a program and workshop for NSA Colorado on an advanced audience-interaction technique called “Sculpting,” in which participants collaborate to build a living model of a problem or situation, then work to solve it. It was outstanding in every respect, and we all left the day eager to give it a try.
The opportunity arose in the opening hour of a two-day Advanced Guerrilla Selling Seminar that I was teaching last week in Nairobi, Kenya. After the opening story and overview, the room was just flat. At first I just chalked it up to my America accent; after all, their first language was Swahili. Or maybe it was a bit of a cultural thing (here’s another White man telling us what to do) but it just wasn’t connecting. Here were 90 Sales VPs and Managers, from three countries, representing the biggest companies in East Africa, sitting quietly and looking skeptical. I was in trouble and I knew it.
So I did a sculpt, based on the “Get through the Day” theme that Scott had demonstrated. I called for a volunteer to represent the role of the Salesman. Mark, who sells big transformers to electrical utilities, stepped forward, and we positioned him far stage left, and gave him the goal of getting across to the far end of the 20-foot stage, which would represent his goal of making the sale.
Then I asked the audience to shout out possible obstacles that could get in the way.
“Competition!”
“Traffic” (Nairobi is notoriously gridlocked)
“Infrastructure” (temperamental at best, or lacking altogether)
“Technology”
“Dead mobile”
“Corruption”
“Time”
“Price”
and so on.
As each participant spoke up, we brought them in turn up onto the stage, asked them to pose in a way that would show us what their obstacle might “look like,” and “where in the day” it should go. After arranging themselves across the stage, we set the sculpt in motion. “OK, Mark, time to go to work.”
It looked like a Rugby scrum as Mark struggled to push his way over, around, under and through one challenger after another. It was hysterical. When he finally made it to far stage right, the room exploded into applause and cheers.
“So, is this what it feels like to do business in Africa?” I asked.
A resounding, “YES!”
“Ok, then. Over the next two days, this seminar is going to teach you strategies and tactics to help overcome all of these obstacles, and more.”
It was as if someone had waved a magic wand. What they got from the sculpt was that, first of all, this was going to be a fun, collaborative, participative environment, rather than a formal stuffy lecture. (Kenya was a British Protectorate, and that culture still lingers. It’s subtle, but Kenyans are resentful of white authority figures). It also set their expectations that the content would be practical and street-wise. They could see that, “this guy gets it.” I think it gave them permission to relax, speak out and play along. And it humanized me in a way that bonded me to the group. From that moment on, they were fully engaged, relaxed, chatty and eager to speak out and participate.
Imagine my shock and surprise when this same group gave the program a standing ovation at the end of the second day. Absolutely unheard of for a long seminar; certainly a first in my career.
The sculpt set the stage for a successful learning experience that transcended language, race and culture. Scott, I can’t thank you enough for teaching us this very powerful technique, and I look forward to using it again in my next seminar.
25 Essential Items for a Professional Speaker’s Carry-On Bag
After 30 years as a Professional Speaker, I presented a two-day Guerrilla Selling seminar recently in Nairobi, Kenya, where I was reminded of the importance of being self-sufficient on the road.
Africa is like a whole other country, and it’s hard to find stuff. The same could be said of Lincoln, Nebraska.
Every Professional speaker should take responsibility for their own comfort and equipment, and always be prepared for the inevitable catastrophe.
The Professional Speaker’s Gig bag should contain:
- Your laptop computer
- A dedicated power supply that stays in your bag. (I recommend the universal Targus AC70U.) Leave the factory one at your desk. That way you’ll never make the mistake of forgetting to pack it. And you won’t be too disappointed when you leave the universal one behind at a venue. You can get another at most any office supply box store.
- Your own PowerPoint controller (I highly recommend the Logitech Professional Presenter R800, which includes a green laser and a cool timer that vibrates to tell you when to shut up. )
- A small portable mouse (a cheap one works fine; you won’t be using it that much.)
- Copy of your install disk for Microsoft Office for when you’re sitting in a Kinko’s at 2:00 AM and need that obscure printer driver.
- A 4 gig flash drive for backing up your presentation, and another for using sneakernet to transport it to another platform. Better still, carry a second backup in your pocket or purse. It will save your show when your laptop dies or is stolen out of the meeting room while you pee.
- Portable travel alarm clock with a display that you can read from across the stage. (I also recommend the free iPhone app NightTime for its big red-number display.)
- Portable digital thermometer, to settle the argument between the hotel engineer and the whining guest who insists it’s too cold.
- Fully loaded iPod, with royalty-free music that you can play during walk-in and breaks in your program, plus news podcasts, a movie and a favorite TV show or two.
- iPod/iPhone USB connector cord and AC adapter/charger
- A spare pair of Apple earbuds so you can listen on the plane
- A stereo 1/8″ (mini) phone to 2 mono 1/4″ phone send return (insert) cable so you can plug the iPod directly into the sound system (ask the guy at Radio Shack).
- Noise canceling headphones (I highly recommend the Bose Quiet Comfort 15′s. They sound much better, and are a great comfort when strapped in next to the inconsolable crying baby.)
- Three or four spare AAA batteries to power your remote and headphones.
- Package of 2 spare Duracell 12V batteries for the wireless mics, even when the hotel supplies them. When they go dead, it’s always in the middle of your show.
- Package of Halls Honey Lemon Cough Drops (the Cherry ones make your tongue look weird)
- Pack of chewable Pepto Bismo tablets
- Package of Imodium AD (for when Pepto Bismo doesn’t help)
- Melatonin tablets. The absolute best herbal remedy for jet lag. Take two an hour or two before sleepytime.
- Blindfold (for airplane sleepytime. Also handy for terminating unwanted conversations with annoying seatmates. You can buy them in most airport shops, but they hand these out in first class, so ask the cabin crew for one on your next long haul.
- Copy of your room setup instructions. The hotel will have lost the one you sent ahead. Trust me on this.
- Copy of your standard introduction, printed in 24 point type. Your introducer will have forgotten the one you sent ahead. Trust me on this too.
- Color copy of your passport (and applicable visas)
- Color copy of your drivers license (enlarged 2x)
- A crisp $100 bill (series 2000 or later; some overseas hotels won’t accept the older ones). Hide it in a pocket or fold of your computer bag. This can bail you out of a lot of trouble almost anywhere in the world.
All this, and more, fits neatly in my IBM Thinkpad’s little backback. Not only has it saved my skin, but it’s rescued more than my share of other speakers as well.
Guerrilla Author Getting Better Every Day
“So, how ARE you?”
People often use this greeting without thinking, even when they don’t really want to know.
I didn’t realize exactly HOW often until recently. And lately, I simply say, “Better! Getting better every day.”
See, last Fall, while helping a neighbor with his roof, I took a nasty fall. Broke my back. Crushed my left foot. Broke my left arm so bad it required surgery. It now has enough hardware in it to set off the airport metal detectors. I spent a month in bed, a month in a power wheelchair, and another month learning how to walk.
Business flatlined. We canceled an eight-city tour for Oracle. That set us back fifty grand. Then there were the medical bills. Denise had just been laid off, so she stayed home and played nurse. I lost my hard-won chair with the Boulder Big Band. We almost lost our house. The pain and financial stress were awful, but the outpouring of concern, support and help from colleagues and friends was astonishing! There were cards and letters (and even checks) from people all over the country, all of them asking, “How ARE you?”
“Better. I have good days and bad days, but today, I’m better.”
The injuries are healing, slowly. It will take several more months to regain my strength and energy. But soon I’ll be back out on the road again, better than ever.
This experience has healed more than just the broken bones. Without realizing it, I had become jaded and bored with my work. I was tired and flabby. I was frustrated and impatient and short-tempered, until a moment of carelessness knocked me flat.
The restricted diet made me drop 20 pounds. Long days in bed gave me time to think. The time with Denise made us closer. As soon as I could type again, I started a new book. As soon as I could pick up a pair of sticks, I started practicing. I soon found ways to coach and help other speakers.
Now I laugh more and complain less. I’m more patient, less driven. Therapy and exercise made me stronger. My body and spirit are both lighter. The experience has deepened the love for my family, friends, colleagues, and even total strangers who were so generous and helpful. The coaching I’ve done has make me a better speaker. Focusing on time and grove has made me a better drummer. Bureaus are calling and bookings are up! I bounce out of bed feeling grateful and eager to greet the day.
The most important lesson in all this is that we must ALL work at getting better, all the time. Every day. Even when we’re not broken. Competition is fierce, and unless we work continuously to improve our products, our service, our marketing, our skills and our relationships, we can lose it all in an eyeblink. Being good, even really good, is not good enough. We have to get better.
So, THANK YOU for asking! I’m better. Better every day. And in more ways than I could have ever imagined.
–Orvel Ray
Guerrilla Selling – TomorrowVision Builds Sales Motivation
We were just about to board the dive boat when I noticed the sign: “NIKONUS 35mm w/strobes, $75/day.” You mean I can rent a pro-grade underwater camera for only $75 bucks? Sign me up! While we motored out to the reef, the dive master gave me a crash course in underwater photography, and when we returned from Nassau and developed the film, I was in for a shock.
Earl Nightingale had it right when he wrote The Strangest Secret. “You become what you think about.” A friend gave me this cassette when I was a sophomore in college, and it changed my life. It made me aware of the internal chatter in my head, and all of the negative, discouraging things I had been saying to myself. That’s because I grew up in an abusive, dysfunctional family where I was told I’d never amount to nuthin’. My mother mocked me for wanting to go to college, and she was shocked when I won a scholarship.
My dorm roommate thought I was nuts. I started reading affirmations from a deck of 3×5 cards. Out loud. After nearly flunking out my freshman year, The Power of Positive Thinking turned me into a deans-list scholar. Then one day the psychology professor was lecturing about a study that suggested that most of our thinking takes the form of pictures, and that memories are stored and retrieved as pictures. That got me thinking.
A speed reading course had already taught a technique for remembering lists by turning them into pictures. For example, let’s say I needed to go to the store and buy toothpaste, beans, rice, coffee, sugar, bread, cereal, and bananas, I could conjure up a picture of a chimp with bad teeth, wearing a baker’s hat and eating a banana, while holding a mug full of corn flakes heaped with sugar, sitting on two burlap bags stenciled “RICE” and “BEANS.” You get the picture.
Our debate coach taught a variation of this technique, called the “loci method,” to organize important facts by visualizing a walk through the rooms of a house. This trick was popular in ancient Greece for memorizing long speeches and texts. It worked for Aristotle.
One afternoon, Denise, my wife-to-be, was working on a collage for an art class, and it occurred to me that I could put pictures together to represent my affirmations, and this might even be more effective than just words. So we each started building a scrapbook of things we’d like to have, places we’d like to go, and things we wanted to achieve in our lives. The format was simple: a cheep ring binder filled with plastic sleeves where you can slide in the pages. We cut photos from magazines and pasted them together into pages that represented our dreams and goals. We were too poor to afford a television, so we jokingly called our project “TomorrowVision.” We kept these books on the night table, and we’d review them together just before going to sleep when our subconscious mind would be most impressionable.
Years passed, and after a time we fell out of the picture-book-on-the-night-table habit. So much for applied psychology. We both had busy professional lives, then a son, and then another. We still followed the discipline of writing down our goals each month, and keeping a To-Do list in a DayTimer. But I completely forgot about TomorrowVision until I developed the film from Nassau.
One of those early life goals was to learn to scuba dive. This was represented in my scrapbook by a half-page underwater shot, torn from a magazine, of a diver with a big colorful fish on a reef.
When a client asked me to teach a series of seminars in Hawaii, we seized the opportunity and registered for pool classes, and finished our open-water certification in Kona. It was many trips, and many, many dives later that I rented that underwater camera on a whim.
As I was flipping through the dive pictures, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was the fish, the SAME fish (which I now recognized as Holocanthus ciliarus, the Queen Angel). I called out to Denise, “Darling, do you know whatever happened to those old visualization notebooks we used to have?”
“Look in the pile of books under the bed.”
There it was. The picture in the TomorrowVision book looked as if it had been shot on the same roll of film.
Shock and surprise faded into deep satisfaction as I flipped through these pages. These images that had once represented life-long goals had already been realized: our home in the mountains in Colorado; writing a book; sailing the tropics; skiing with our boys; kayaking in Alaska; teaching at the University; cycling around Ireland; speaking in Mexico, Europe and Australia. I held in my hands a virtual scrapbook of the past ten years of our lives. The music from “Twilight Zone” started playing in my head.
Dr. Maxwell Maltz taught us that, “Your subconscious mind can not tell the difference between an actual experience and one that is vividly imagined.” By looking into our future through our TomorrowVision, we were programming our brains to seek out and recognize opportunities, large and small, that would bring us closer to those goals. Looking back, it seems as if those events were inevitable, because even our most incidental daily decisions were informed by deep, subconscious intent.
Over the past 30 years, leading experts like Louise Hay, Anthony Robbins and Depak Chopra have spoken passionately about the power of creative visualization. It’s no longer viewed as a mystical phenomenon. Today you can even buy an affirmation app for your iPhone. Psychologists and neuroscientists are looking deep into the brain, and can explain in scientific terms exactly how this seemingly magical process works.
I recently read how competitors in the World Memory Championships use variations on these same visual imagery tricks to perform mind-boggling feats, recanting long strings of numbers, like the mathematical constant pi (the record now stands at more than 80,000 digits) or memorizing the sequence of a shuffled deck of playing cards in less than a minute (30 seconds is the new Four-Minute-Mile). MRI scans of the brains of these mental heavyweights shows them lighting up areas normally used for visual recall and spatial navigation. The evolutionary explanation is simple. Presumably our ancestors found it particularly useful to recall where they found their last meal, or the way back to the cave.
The same mechanism allows us to remember our future, and then automatically steer around life’s obstacles until we arrive. The life we’ve lead has been extraordinary beyond my wildest dreams. I have only one regret; what if I had kept up the discipline by changing out my TomorrowVision pages as each goal was realized, replacing them with new images and loftier goals? What more might I have done?
Today that old ring binder is sitting on my desk, awaiting a new set of pages, and I’ve included these two extraordinary photographs for your review. This simple technique can help you achieve your goals and live your dreams as well. Here’s proof that when we give our lives a roadmap, our deep intellect will eventually navigate a course to it, even if it’s hidden away on a reef, deep beneath some distant sea.
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Guerrilla Selling – How Performance-based Compensation Drives Sales Through the Roof
How to Manage and Motivate Your Sales Team
Any behavior which gets rewarded will tend to be repeated. So we advocate paying close attention to how employees are rewarded for performing (or not performing) the various aspects of their jobs.
Performance-based compensation is nothing new. Commission plans for salespeople are common because their productivity is so easy to measure. But small business tends to eschew these compensation plans thinking that “we’re just a mom & pop store. We’re different.” In the competitive environment you’re faced with today, you have no choice. You must use every management tool available to maximize your marketing firepower.
Guerrillas are not only intolerant of non-performers, they lavishly reward their stars, setting ever-higher standards for the whole organization. The problem is how to reward your people appropriately, particularly if they’re not directly responsible for easy-to-measure activities like sales revenue. Some simple guidelines can put this powerful management tool to work for you.
The foundation of an effective performance-based compensation plan is a set of clear and specific goals for your organization as a whole, for each functional department, and for each individual employee. These goals must be objective and quantifiable. For example, “Increase walk-in traffic by ten percent, or to 650 shoppers per month, by the end of the year” or “achieve an average rating of 4.5 of 5 on monthly customer satisfaction surveys.” Subjective factors, like attitude or good work habits might be included in review criteria, but if you can’t measure them statistically, you can’t use them as a standard for performance-based compensation. Then devise methods for gathering data to measure progress (or lack of it) toward these goals. What you measure is what you get, so inspect what you expect.
Salary
The advantage is that it’s easy to calculate: punch in, punch out, so much per hour. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t motivate.
Commission
Commissions can be computed on the gross sale price (good), or the gross profit margin (better). One important factor to consider when designing a compensation plan is that it must be simple. Paying commissions on straight gross sales is easy, and if you put the table below up on the wall in the break room, everyone can quickly estimate what they’re earning if they know the overall gross margin of the store.
Do not pay commission on any gross margins below 13%. If they’re selling at less than 13% margin, they’re giving away the stock and putting you out of business.
Generally, the lower the gross margin, the easier the product is to sell. So guerrillas recommend paying commissions based on gross margin, to reward your sales people for working harder to maintain higher profits, not just sales.
Commission Based on Gross Sales:
| Overall Gross Margin | % of Gross Sales |
| on Sales for the Month | Paid as Commission |
All above 27%…………………………………………… 2.8%
26.0 – 26.99……………………………………………… 2.6
25.0 – 25.99……………………………………………… 2.4
24.0 – 24.99……………………………………………… 2.2
23.0 – 23.99……………………………………………… 2.0
22.0 – 22.99……………………………………………… 1.9
21.0 – 21.99……………………………………………… 1.8
20.0 – 20.99……………………………………………… 1.7
19.0 – 19.99……………………………………………… 1.6
18.0 – 18.99……………………………………………… 1.5
17.0 – 17.99……………………………………………… 1.4
16.0 – 16.99……………………………………………… 1.3
15.0 – 15.99……………………………………………… 1.2
14.0 – 14.99……………………………………………… 1.1
13.0 – 13.99……………………………………………… 1.0
Less than 13.0%………………………………………… none
Basing commissions on gross margin rather than gross sales is harder to track, but it motivates salespeople to sell higher-priced and higher-profit items, accessories and extended service contracts, as well as to follow up with prospects and customers for referrals.
Commission based on gross profit discourages discounting. It can also produce competitive rivalries between salespeople, (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
Commission based on Gross Margin:
| Overall Gross Margin | % of Gross Profit |
| on Sales for the Month | Paid as Commission |
All above 27%…………………………………………… 15.5%
26.0 – 26.99……………………………………………… 15.0
25.0 – 25.99……………………………………………… 14.5
24.0 – 24.99……………………………………………… 14.0
23.0 – 23.99……………………………………………… 13.5
22.0 – 22.99……………………………………………… 13.0
21.0 – 21.99……………………………………………… 12.5
20.0 – 20.99……………………………………………… 12.0
19.0 – 19.99……………………………………………… 11.5
18.0 – 18.99……………………………………………… 11.0
17.0 – 17.99……………………………………………… 10.5
16.0 – 16.99……………………………………………… 10.0
Less than 16.0%…………………………………………… none
Of course, you have to adjust these percentages to your business and your market.
Bonus
Bonuses can be paid on a monthly sales quota, or on reaching a target profit margin. The whole sales team can qualify for a bonus for reaching a collective goal. Managers often receive a bonus for exceeding key performance targets. Some retailers offer year-end bonuses, but these are not really very motivating. Bonuses are more effective if they cover shorter cycles. People need to be able to envision their progress, either on a regular report, a reader board, or a United-Way-style thermometer.
Spiffs
An acronym for “sales promotional incentive funds,” spiffs are paid for specific sales events. Some spiffs are funded by manufacturers to move specific SKUs. Or they can be paid by the store for selling an unwanted, obsolete or damaged item.
Guerrillas never allow the manufacturer to pay spiffs directly to their salespeople because you want the credit for paying the reward. Also, you don’t want the manufacturers to control what products sell on your floor. You need to manage that mix based on your niche, your identity and your business model.
Sales Contests
It’s important to include all the support people, the back office, the warehouse, cashiers and delivery.
You can run a sales contest on any number of metrics. First Sale of the day, Biggest Ticket of the day, Most Line Items in an order, Most Orders written in a day, Order with Highest Gross Margin.
You can also run contests on product knowledge. Devise a simple test and give a certain sum for every question they get right.
The best sales contests combine performance with an element of chance. For example, every qualifying sale wins a ticket dropped into the hat, then a weekly drawing determines the winner of a cash prize, a merchandise prize, or the trip for two to Hawaii. The more you sell, the better your odds of winning.
An effective variation is every qualifying sale gets to draw a playing card from a deck. The best poker hand at the end of the contest wins all.
Wiltshire TV, in Thousand Oaks, California, has developed an unusual variant of Bingo. Each month, each square on the bingo is assigned a different product. Instead of letters and numbers, their Bingo card is laid out with brands across the top and model numbers down the side. Sell a qualifying product and you mark that square on the card. Sell any five qualifying items in a row, and BINGO!
LOTS more Guerrilla Retailing strategies in our book, Guerrilla Retailing – How to Make Big Profits from your Retail Business. Order it today on Amazon.
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How to Select the Right Speaker for Your Next Sales Meeting, Conference or Convention
