How to cold call with integrity — the way we’ve always wanted to do cold calling

How to Cold Call With Integrity — the Way We’ve Always Wanted to Do Cold Calling!

You probably never tell potential clients your real goal in calling them, but you don’t need to. They’re already aware, because we’re all sensitive when the phone rings and it turns out to be someone we don’t know.

In the old traditional training, we learned the latest techniques for making a sale. We talk to «prospects» rather than with people. And we «guide» conversations along rather than letting them unfold naturally.

The way we do this sometimes might even be called a bit manipulative. After all, we’re relating to another person while holding an ulterior motive of making a sale.

Where does honesty and integrity fit into this scenario? Well, most of us honestly believe in our product or service. But beyond that, we carry a somewhat artificial persona when we’re cold calling. We talk with people for the primary purpose of making a sale, and we’re not really interested in them or their world.

Doesn’t this make you feel uneasy at times? It does to me.

So let’s discuss some ways we’ve been trained in the traditional sales mindset that feel artificial and dehumanizing, and ways we can overcome them.

1. We intrude upon another person uninvited, with the goal of making a sale

It’s against our nature as human beings to create uncomfortable situations. We have a natural instinct for courtesy and connection It’s usually hard for us as regular people to call uninvited, because on some level it feels discourteous.

We can change that by changing our goal. What if our goal is not to make the sale, but to find out if we can help someone? This shift makes us more relaxed. And it keeps us in harmony with personal integrity.

2. We project ourselves as personable and friendly, while also holding an ulterior motive for securing a sale

There’s an inner conflict with integrity when we find ourselves using our connections with others for self-gain. So we can bring ourselves back into honesty and truthfulness by shedding ulterior motives entirely.

We do this by focusing on whether we can provide something that will benefit another person. We find out if they have a problem we may be able to solve. And if it turns out we can’t help with our product or service, we graciously accept the outcome.

By being honest and not playing a role, we find ourselves really liking what we do. And when our «ulterior motives» are simply non-existent, people are more open to trusting us.

3. When we meet someone new, we immediately talk about ourselves and what we have to offer

It’s actually not normal for us to start an interaction by launching into a self-focused monologue. As regular people, this just goes against our grain. Common courtesy dictates that initial conversations be dialogues, not monologues.

In normal conversations we would feel self-absorbed if we primarily talked about ourselves and what we have to offer. Yet in the traditional cold calling situation, it’s an accepted «norm.» We’ve been trained to read a script, follow a strategy, or give a sales pitch.

This really isn’t the way we’d like to relate to people, but it’s the way we’ve been taught.

We can break out of this artificial game of sorts by just being ourselves. Integrity and truthfulness means being authentic. We begin cold calling conversations with a natural focus on the other person. We find out their needs, and respond with genuine interest.

4. We «rev up» in an artificial way, hoping to carry the potential client along with us into a sales process

When we «pump ourselves up» with enthusiasm, it feels somewhat fake. It’s not our normal way of being, and it throws us out of integrity.

And we also appear artificial to potential clients. They become wary of possibly being maneuvered into a sales situation.

If we can navigate a cold calling conversation without such games, people will sense we’re trustworthy. They react warmly and unhesitatingly to a conversation that feels natural to them, and especially if it revolves around their issues rather than our agenda.

So how do we approach cold calling in the most truthful way? We stop being «salespeople» and become human. We engage in an honest dialogue rather than a monologue. We look for ways to help others, and we’re comfortable knowing that our product or service may not be an honest «fit» for them right now. And we stop playing roles, especially the «high enthusiasm» game.

This is what I mean by bringing integrity back into selling. It’s unbelievable just how rewarding both personally and professionally this can be.

Internet marketing — how to create more value and get more profits

Internet Marketing — How to Create More Value and Get More Profits

Internet Marketers often talk about providing more value to clients to increase your business returns, but seldom do you learn from them how this can be achieved and how it actually helps.

First of all, you have to realise that this has to be developed as a mindset, to truly leverage on its benefits in Internet Marketing. In fact, there is a systematic and logical way to create this mindset in you, such that it becomes second nature and makes it easier for you when coming up with marketing campaigns.

There are 3 simple ways to do this:

1. Create a «Wealthy Mind»

Very often, people in business wonder how to maximise and squeeze out every last bit of profit from clients, without realising that most people, including their clients, think the same way. As a result, this leaves them stumped when their clients ask them — “What’s in it for me?”.

Creating a “Wealthy Mind” is to first understand people and their needs, and then to come up with free solutions that provide them with value. Make them feel that you are in fact looking out for their best interests. You might even want to provide solutions that do not actually relate to your products but really solve their problems. You will be surprised the bond that can result between you and the client, which will lead them to return to you in the future. Credibility will also be formed.

And when they do return, that is when you can leverage on the past value provided to receive your returns.

2. Do Not Be Selfish

By creating a ‘Wealthy Mind’, you will also need to think less of yourself and more for your clients.

I cannot stress this more, you will need to make this your mission. And an effort to give first before receiving will in the long run give you an edge over any other competing businesses.

3. Share Your Best Ideas or Secrets

In fact, give them out free!

Sharing your best products or ideas not only provides value to people, but it also shows them what you have got to offer, which makes them pay more attention to you. This not only creates credibility, it can also create word-of-mouth and that is viral marketing that you would want, wouldn’t you?

Ok, some of you might be wondering “Hey, my best products are the most expensive and provide the most profits”. But they also provide the most value! You might not give them all out, but remember the fact that if you are in this business, new and better ideas will come along, and new products can be leveraged on from those.

Go over these 3 methods like a mantra and practice them. When you eventually embody them, you will develop relationships with clients or potential leads that not only include credibility and value, they might even view you as their trusted advisor and friend. And that is the true value for both parties that will improve your business, profits and wealth in the long run.

How to maintain long term employees

How To Maintain Long Term Employees

Copyright (c) 2009 Alan Gillies

Training has become an indispensable activity for every business, and no one can deny the incredible benefits that businesses can reap from it. Some of us might ponder on the need for investing in training our existing employees when we have the option of hiring new employees that are already highly skilled. The easiest and most logical counter to this question is that the cost of hiring a new employee is much higher than the cost of training your existing workforce. So, what would you do now?

Training may be considered to be a major investment in the beginning, but the variety of benefits it delivers to the company is incredible. To stay competitive, and for sustained growth in our ever-changing market, a business needs to keep its workforce trained and highly motivated. Such essential employees are considered to be important assets — playing crucial roles in the long term success of businesses everywhere.

Let’s have a look at the benefits that come from training the workforce:

1. Increase Productivity — Effective training will eventually result in an increase in the productivity of the staff in any business. Trained employees can utilise new techniques and systems when dealing with their day-to-day work, thereby enhancing their accuracy and efficiency. Increased accuracy and efficiency will — by definition, automatically increase the overall productivity of all business operations.

2. Increase Morale of Employees — Training boosts the attitude and morale of the staff. Training will, over time, minimise the reluctance of employees towards future changes in the organization. People will form a positive attitude towards training if they can clearly see its relevance and the benefits it brings.

3. Decrease Staff Turnover — It has been observed that trained and motivated employees are the ones that serve a business for a longer period of time — as compared to others. As a trained employee is content with his job, he is far more able to coordinate his ambitions with those of the company.

4. Workforce Flexibility — Training aims at developing different sets of specific skills in employees with the goal of making them more flexible, so that they can be engaged in a wider variety of activities. The idea is not only to make the workforce effective and efficient, but also to make it multi-tasking or specialist in nature.

5. Decrease Costs — Does it really? Yes, training can definitely lead to a decrease in various business costs. Training saves money through limiting waste — whether in time or material, limiting the supervision expense and reducing the number of workplace accidents. Trained employees can perform diversified sets of activities single-handedly.

So, irrespective of what sort of business you’re in, the number of employees you have, or the size of your business — Train to Gain!

How to turn mistakes into personal profit

How to Turn Mistakes Into Personal Profit

Copyright (c) 2009 Alan Gillies

All of us make mistakes, don’t we? Whether these mistakes are huge or little, we still have no option but to make all sorts of decisions in our life every day, and it’s very probable that some of these decisions — not being ideal, won’t result in what we desire. It’s a part of human nature to make mistakes, but the best aspect of this is that all of these mistakes will at some point in time lead to a massive step forward toward success.

Success isn’t just a matter of being perfect in everything you do — as perfection comes only from time and experience. How can you differentiate a wrong decision from a right one without knowing what is right and what is wrong? As rightly said by Fred Shero, «Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire».

If you are not making mistakes, it may be that you’re playing on the safe side and not taking any risks. In every mistake you make, there’s a hidden lesson. You’ll end up learning many things from those mistakes, and the next time you arrive at a similar situation or problem — you won’t repeat the earlier actions, and perhaps you’ll even make a perfect decision which will lead to extraordinarily fruitful results.

It is a famous saying that those who have not experienced failure can never know how sweet the taste of success is. If you always succeed easily, then you will never be able to prepare yourself to face the inevitable mistakes and failures. Your strength in overcoming mistakes can make you a role model in the eyes of others who want to learn from your experience, so they can then deal with situations in the same successful manner.

In previous times, there have been quite a few successful inventions which were much more than brief thoughts. Those inventions appeared after considering a great many alternatives and choosing the best from all of them. Many experiments have been done to verify the viability of each of the alternatives, and quite a bit of money and effort was spent to figure out the best solutions, but that doesn’t mean that the expense invested into the experiments got wasted. A great deal of knowledge and experience was gained from those experiments, and all of this was then utilised in the refinement of the final experiments done at later stages.

So, now what do you think, aren’t mistakes an essential aspect of success? Mistakes can happen anywhere and at any time, and it’s a fundamental part of human behaviour to make mistakes. The key here is to strive to deal with the mistakes in a positive manner and always try to learn something new from each one of them.

How business continuity can help your company

How business continuity can help your company

Business continuity means to continue your business normally even if there have been natural disruptions, crisis or even natural calamity. It simply means planning a system that greatly helps your business continue and grow even after the toughest of conditions which further prevents any probable disaster. Now-a-days our life and the environmental conditions in which we live is just unpredictable and due to natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, tsunami etc, or man-made disasters like terrorists attacks, bombing etc. are ruining and destroying our Mother Nature. These problems have become quite common and after a period when everything returns back to normal we often wonder if we can successfully continue our business operations as before. Due to these enormous natural and man-made calamities, the first thing that is seriously affected is the Internet and our connection across the world due to Internet. This causes terrible loss to businesses and humankind. In order to prevent such a situation where you really become helpless and start loosing hopes, it is sensible to schedule a perfect and effective business plan. You need to plan the resources wisely and take proactive measures so as to help your business survive and flourish as ever before and this can be done by having a lot of communication channels for establishing communication as soon as possible after the disaster. Secondly, the company should plan sensibly to save and secure the important data that may be lost during such crisis, for this you need to have an effective data backup that collects, compresses and encrypts the information and other important files from your computers and servers and sends it to some other remote server of the backup provider companies. The encrypted data can be restored by you any time you need and your information is not only saved but also secured to the extent that even the company employees can not access it. And if your business continuity plans are really clear and effective, it helps you to cope up even in the worst of cases like death and this actually helps to decrease potential losses if any. Always remember, a perfect business continuity plan not only saves your business from huge financial losses but also helps your family to survive whom you might leave behind. If you face a business crisis it is not only you who has to suffer the losses but it also affects your customers too as you are unable to meet their requirements on time. Otherwise think of an alternative supplier who can satisfy your customers’ till your business settles down after the disaster. This is not the end, your suppliers also face a tremendous loss as you could be one of their largest customers. Thus, it affects the entire business chain so it is necessary to think and plan an effective business continuity system. By creating an effective business continuity plan, the manager will analyze some critical portions of your business and come out with an amazing solution. Both proactive as well as reactive plans and help you to prevent any predictable disasters that may arise due to natural or man-made reasons. A successful business is the one that is able to survive and prosper even after passing through difficult situations and the success lies in a perfect business continuity plans and procedures.