The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [7]
This company refined its sales process to near perfection within the mentioned six months. Everyone reading this will be able to do the same. But sales is just one piece of the pie. In order to be the Ultimate Sales Machine, you actually have to be great at leading, managing, and marketing. This book lays it out in straightforward language with practical examples spelled out from every angle. And the best part is that you’re not going to work harder; you’re only going to work smarter.
You can profoundly improve your company or department if you absolutely commit to one hour per week in which you do nothing else but work on making the business much more effective. In the course of this book, you will learn exactly how to spend that hour.
It’s not going to be hard to apply the strategies in this book or to transform your business into the Ultimate Sales Machine. The key is learning and practicing the pigheaded discipline and determination you need to constantly address and readdress the 12 areas I’ll outline. In order to make this process easy, I’ve broken this book down into 12 chapters, each focusing on one of the 12 strategies with examples and exercises that will make your business great and grow your sales and profits like mad.
One of my clients is a great learner and is always buying the latest book or program. He heard my presentation at a seminar, liked what I had to say, and retained me to do an audit of his business. When I interviewed his employees, they were practically laughing at me. To them, I was just the latest flash in the pan. They told me that their boss had used 100 different training programs but never made any of them stick.
The missing ingredient for this client and nearly all of the 1,000-plus clients I have worked with directly to improve their businesses is pigheaded discipline and determination. We all get good ideas at seminars and from books, radio talk shows, and business-building gurus. The problem is that most companies do not know how to identify and adapt the best ideas to their businesses. Implementation, not ideas, is the key to real success.
This book is packed with excellent ideas developed on the front lines of capitalism, but more important, this book helps you learn the ways to see these ideas manifest throughout your organization, especially in your bottom line. Once you begin working on the strategies in each chapter, you will see that it’s not just about implementing the ideas in this book. Your ability to implement any idea you learn anywhere will benefit dramatically from the learning curve presented here.
For example, in Chapter One you’ll learn how to maximize productivity through time management at every level of your organization. How well you manage your time and the level of productivity and performance you require from your staff are specific competencies that few businesses ever fully capitalize upon. Let’s say you take a great time management course today. You go back to your office and apply the principles and see that they actually work. But when we check back with you three months later, we find you using very little, if any, of the information you learned from taking that one-time course. This is called “event training.” You go to an event. You get some training. You come back to your office. You may even try some of the concepts. You may even see them work, but you quickly abandon them because you are missing the pigheaded discipline and determination that make a truly great company or department.
Working Smarter, Not Harder
At seminars and lectures, I’ve asked my audience, “How many people in this room would like to grow their company or department 10 times larger than it is right now?” Typically, 99 percent of the audience raises their hands. Then I say, “Leave your hands up