Six Obstacles Preventing You from Achieving Your Goals in 2022.
As the year begins I want to talk about the “thing” that gets in the way of you achieving your goals.
Over the holiday break for me, it’s a great time to reflect on my past achievements for the year and look towards the next 12 months.
Once I go through the goals I have achieved and assessed where my success came from, I go about setting new goals for the coming year.
I make sure that I pat myself on the back and congratulate myself for the goals I have achieved.
Whenever I do this the question always comes up “How come I achieved some goals, while others were not achieved?”
They were all important to me or I would not have written them down in the first place.
No matter how much I tried to reach those goals for some reason they eluded me.
What did I learn?
The goal might have been too much of a stretch.
I did not give myself a realistic time to achieve it.
I did not allocate the right time and resources to make it happen.
I was not committed emotionally to it.
I did not WORK AT IT WITH THE SAME PASSION AS THE ONES I DID ACHIEVE.
I did not monitor it.
In my next article, I hope to give you some of the solutions to help overcome these obstacles to get you off to a good start in 2022.
Until then
Have fun selling your stuff in 2022.
PLUS: Whenever you’re ready…
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Several years ago, when attending one of Robert Kiyosaki’s courses, he told the group the story of the Black Door.
It was about a young man and a Persian general.
The young man, it is said, was a prisoner of war, and the general was a very fair man. When the day arrived to decide the fate of the prisoner, the general had the prisoner brought before him.
The young man was certain of death, but the general generously gave him two choices.
On the young man’s left was a firing squad, guns poised ready.
On the right was a plain white wall with a large black door in the middle of it.
The young man was given a few moments to determine his fate…the firing squad or the black door.
The young man made his choice and in a short while a volley of shots rang out and the prisoner crumpled to the ground.
The general shook his head and commented to his aide that in all his years he had seen only a few men choose the black door.
“May I ask, sir,” the aide queried- “what lies beyond the black door?” “Freedom.” The general replied.
“The black door leads to freedom, but I have seen only a few men choose it because they are afraid of what horrors may lie beyond.
Most would rather choose a fate that they know, even if it means death, than experience the unknown. The man brave enough to choose the black door deserves to be free.”
Today, in the world of sales we know that change is upon us all the time.
The sad thing is that many salespeople would rather stick with what they know, than what they don’t know.
We experience change in our lives every day, it’s a part of life.
Sales is no different, there will always be an underlying principle to selling, but there is also the unknown.
What does that look like? – It comes in many forms, the approach to selling, discovery, understanding your client’s needs.
These are often driven by them, not you.
The most successful sales people I know are constantly learning; loading up on new information.
Dan Sullivan, at Strategic Coach has a great saying. “Our eyes only see and our ears only hear what our brain is looking for”
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
Showing people how they can personally profit from your product can be one of the more creative parts of the sales process.
Consider the Dream Room at Gardner’s Mattress & More store. The Dream Room is a private mattress-testing room that allows a unique opportunity to try before you buy.
The room is essentially a sleep sanctuary, adjacent to the showroom. The space is totally private and void of salespeople and other customers, so you can snuggle in and get comfortable. Gardner’s is the only mattress store in their area that offers such an experience.
In fact, I have never heard of any other mattress company offering such a service. You make an appointment, pay a $50 deposit, and spend time in the Gardner’s showroom with one of their sleep consultants.
The consultant helps you narrow your mattress options down to the one you feel best suits your sleep needs. Their team encases your mattress in a proper allergy- and bedbug-proof zippered cover and tops it off with extremely high-quality, fresh sheets and pillowcases, all for you.
Once you enter this Dream Room, you quite literally take a nap. This is your opportunity to “try before you buy.” The proprietors encourage you to bring a good book and simply relax. For couples, they encourage cuddling, although they ask that the bedroom activity stop there; out of respect for the room and future sleepers.
You can even bring pyjamas and your own pillow and sheets if you want. This is a very creative example of the lengths that a business can go to in presenting its product.
For them, every sale is well worth it. Gardner’s average mattress costs around $4,000 and prices go up to a staggering $18,000. How do they do that? What they have created in their business is a sleeping experience, not just a price experience.
By now, their system will sound familiar. They know their product, match it up with the client’s needs, offer some advice customised to each client, and make a presentation that clearly shows the customer what’s in it for them.
From here, all they have to do is ask for the business and negotiate a price. If you look at their website, I challenge you to find price anywhere.
The dollar signs are simply not there. Gardner’s whole strategy takes you out of the price war, and into your personal experience.
There are, I am sure, plenty of mattress companies all over that town that sell off the floor at cheaper prices. Make no mistake, those stores have a purpose; what they sell and how they sell it is fine.
Wouldn’t you still want to make the experience a little better and have more chance of building a relationship?
Positioning your business this way tips off the consumer that what you sell might be something special.
Would you not want your client to know you offer an exceptional experience? The customer-savvy company has a better chance of selling their mattresses than the person down the road.
They get a commitment from you the moment you make an appointment in the Dream Room, strengthen it with a small deposit, chat about what you want, and then take a nice cosy nap.
That’s a sales commitment. More importantly, that’s the best presentation you can make.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
In my previous blogs on The Selling Journey, I talked about the importance of having the right mindset, knowing your product, finding out what the clients’ needs are and how you can have a conversation around those needs.
Now it’s time to present your product.
By now, you have learned about your customer’s needs and you are preparing to make your pitch.
You will want to build on the questions you have already asked. Each question, and its answer, will help you clarify your customer’s problems.
Throughout the process, remember that you are not pushing a product; you are matching up the customer’s needs with the right advice, or the problem you can solve for them.
Before you begin to give your advice, you need to be absolutely clear with your customers that the product or service you are going to offer them is the right one.
Getting clear on this is often called qualification. I also call it checking in.
You can use a simple system to “check in” with clients to make sure the advice you are giving is what they need and want to hear.
Checking In
Step 1: After asking your clients several questions about what they want to know about your product or service, you check in.
This means you actually feed back to them your understanding of their problem.
Your queries may include questions like:
“What you are telling me is?”
“I understand that is what you are wanting? Is this correct?”
“So, what you are asking me is?”
“What you are wanting as a result of using this product is? Correct?”
“If I understand you, is what you want to do? Yes?”
As you can see from the prompts above, you are clarifying before you give any advice. Checking in is really an extension of what we have been doing all along, which is asking lots of questions, finding out about a need, and getting clear on the problems and their solutions.
Now the conversation needs to lead to giving the right advice to move the sale forward.
The Presentation
This is where many salespeople fall down. They forget to qualify.
Salespeople tend to think that if a client walks in the door or phones to ask about their service, then this customer must want to buy. These days we know that our consumer is better informed than ever, so it is vital that you check in or qualify your client.
I have seen hundreds of salespeople waste their time simply because they did not ask qualifying questions.
They missed exactly what the client was wanting. We often assume we know what a person wants. Feeling confident, we launch into “sales spiel” mode.
The client hears it and thinks, “Here we go. I sense a salesperson here, and I am being sold.” they shut down, put their defenses up, stuff their wallet back in their pocket, and say things like, “thanks, I want to think it over.”
Then they’re gone. Qualify hard and do it early enough that the sale practically closes itself.
Qualifying a client early in the process makes the closing part super easy because the path has been so well groomed, that you expend little extra effort to travel the last mile. Try the check-in exercise at the end of this chapter to see what I mean.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
