Secrets of the Millionaire Mind Archives - Page 8 of 11

Posted on September 23, 2011 - 3:19 am by 22

Use your imagination to picture the truth of what it really means to sell yourself, to sell what you have to offer to as many people as possible.

You’re the “weirdo” on the street with the megaphone. That’s right, the one that people are aware of but usually pass by. Some can hear you from blocks away, but the message only gets clearer the closer they get to you. And the point is of course to get them closer to get them to do something.

Depending on the content (product) and the presentation (emotional impact), some people will stop and listen, especially if what you’re saying is interesting to them or has imminent, relevant meaning. Of those very few people who stop and listen, even fewer will actually engage you, give you a chance to address objections, or otherwise convince them to take some kind of action.

But everybody’s got somewhere to be, right? Who has time to stop and listen and engage? Plus, you’re kind of weird for putting yourself out there talking all passionately and excitedly into a megaphone anyway. Who does that?

Every business person does, and we have to. The key is to understand that at any given time, you have about 3% of people who are ready to buy something right now, whether it’s a car, a cell phone, furniture, you name it. That’s what drives all commerce.

About the same percentage of people are willing to listen because they’ve been thinking about buying something but aren’t necessarily committed to it. It’s not an immediate concern. If they did by, it would have to be because you gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

What does that mean for the vast majority of others passing you by? It means they’re indifferent, not thinking about it, or flat out uninterested.

But what if we could say something that would get 75% of people passing by to stop and listen, or more? What would make them stay? It always points back to adding information that is above and beyond a particular product or service you’re offering. You generalize, then specify.

If you’re a business coach pitching CEOs and managers to become your clients, who you are as a company should be last in your presentation. Yawn! But starting off with something like, “The 5 Most Dangerous Trends Facing Small Businesses Today” and no business owner can logically or emotionally say they wouldn’t be interested in that subject. It matters to all of them! They’re all business owners or involved in some way, and none of them want anything to do with danger in that business.

In reality, it’s actually much easier to keep prospects near because by the time they’ve reached you, you’ve already narrowed the audience anyway because you’ve got your identity and unique selling proposition nailed down, yes? It’s much easier to pitch to qualified leads than people who thought they were getting one thing but get something else because you weren’t clear on who you’re really trying to reach. So now it’s a simple matter of turning 3% of those who were ready to do something anyway into a much a deeper pool by giving away information that they’d all be interested in.

How do you champion your product or service? What’s your proverbial “megaphone” speech to your prospects? Share your ideas or even experiment. The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!!!

Leverage and Velocity

Posted on September 2, 2011 - 12:56 pm by 13

Leverage and velocity means maximizing your resources—human and material—to make profit as quickly as possible. It means you’ve got to realize you’re big enough now to need help. You’ve got to lead and replace yourself.

Add on more team members. If you had to pick four people to be on your team right now, the starting line-up is an assistant; a bookkeeper to keep track of all your critical revenue model logistics; a tax strategist; and an attorney later. Protection is key!

Utility players include sales and marketing—which you could outsource if that’s an option that would work better. You might get web people or outsource that as well. Whoever else you need that helps the money machine continue to build.

These are the job descriptions that will get the people to do the things that need to be done but can’t possibly be done be you. If you’re saying yes to everything you’re going to be overwhelmed. You need to be so far in front of what you want done that you’ll say no to a lot of things. You’ve got to learn to be very decisive. Committed people make cash!

You got to be committed to literally staying on top of your business, not working in it. Bookkeepers work in your business. Graphic artists and web people work in your business. Tax strategists work on your businesses. You are on your business when you’re strategically creating a marketing calendar that makes it possible for your monthly revenue models to happen because you’ve planned the pipeline to bring in prospects.

The people who are looking on the strategy side are not doing the daily work. Not to say I haven’t broken this “rule” of staying out of your own business. A business is your baby and sometimes we have can’t help but come back inside and get our feet wet.

But you have to make sure that you have days where you are on the outside looking in. It’s a very different thought process and a very different team.

The faster you get your team together and put a plan in place, the quicker you will grow. Growth is the number one priority for any business, so the need for speed will sort of naturally accelerate the critical functions responsible for creating and growing revenue—namely, marketing and sales. Then we protect that growth and profit with our starting lineup of bookkeepers and “law-people.”

Velocity impacts a number of areas and further dictates leveraging. With social networking and online communities, prospects’ expectations and prior knowledge speeds things up even more, which means we have to keep up.

Having already done their research online, prospects are well armed with the information they need to get the answers they want. If you can’t respond quickly with the request, your competitor’s site is just a click away. And it shouldn’t take a week or a day to get back to her or him. How about five minutes?

Leverage and velocity. They’re just words until you see them in action in your business, and the impact they can have on your financial growth.

What do you think? Have you noticed acceleration in your business or market? In what ways? How has that impacted you, your business, or your potential business? The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!!!

The Rich are Different—and So are You

Posted on August 26, 2011 - 4:35 am by 39

In an article called “The rich are different—and not in a good way,” psychologist Dacher Keltner argues that the rich really are a different breed of people. He says that based on his research, the life experiences of rich people make them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” the article quoted Keltner as saying. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more pro-social behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

Great. Just as I’m on a mission to help people re-draw their money blueprints, one of the biggest perpetuated ideas about having a lot of money gets re-enforced by research—that being rich is bad because it makes you a bad person. “I don’t want to be that way; I don’t want to be rich. I just want to be ‘comfortable.’”

On the flip side, Keltner states that unlike the rich, poor people have to depend on others for survival so they learn “pro-social behaviors.” They empathize more with others and they give more to those in need.

I’m not a scientist or a sociologist, so this isn’t about affirming or denying his findings. Even if you were to just think about it for a second, you can imagine some character like the guy from the game “Monopoly” pinching his curled mustache, glossing over the ways family connections, money and access to top education give his children much more of advantage than what a guy like me had growing up.

The fact is that in teaching thousands of people, it’s one of the main hang-ups that people unconsciously associate with having money: becoming a selfish, unlikable a-hole in the process. And like all stereotypes, they usually come with a sliver of something recognizably true; of course there are rich A-holes in the world, yes?

But not all of us! I certainly wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. The research didn’t make much of a distinction between those who were born into wealth and those who created wealth by learning how to do it. Don’t you think that would make a difference?

And this is what ultimately brings me to what I got out of this article—rich and poor people are not inherently anything! Are there going to be tendencies? Sure, but there are plenty of poor people who are selfish just as there are rich that are generous.

The fact remains most of us who strive for wealth aren’t going to get there without empathy, good communication skills, honesty, integrity; the very same reasons that Keltner states poor people relate better to others. We weren’t given anything on our road to millions. We don’t have any choice but to develop the best characteristics of people and not the worst.

In the end, there’s nothing—absolutely nothing—that says you can’t be rich and empathetic, rich and caring, rich and fulfilled by a sense of connection to anyone and everyone whether they’re rich or not. If that’s who you are now, you’re just going to be more of that with a bigger bank account.

What do you think? What do you find in the connection between wealth and charity? Are rich people just automatically more selfish? Are poor people automatically more “human”? We want your opinion!!!

Funnel Into The Market Of Success

Posted on July 29, 2011 - 5:47 am by 13

Beyond the funhouse mirrors of what people think it means to run a successful business, at the end of the day there’s a science to it, like most everything else.

The definition of a scientific formula is something that has been developed, tested, then tested again and again by geniuses compared to most of us. The benefit we get is those formulas can now be used successfully by just about anybody who applies them. We’re surrounded by formulas that we can simply follow. It may have taken them years to develop, but now we can use them with just a little effort.

There are formulas for business success. Some of them need to be applied before you invest your first dollar into any enterprise. The businesses that fail are the ones that fail to specialize, differentiate, and segment their core customers.

Specialization means you specialize in a particular product or service; a particular market area; a particular industry or geographical area. You target this like a marksman. What do you specialize in? What is your focus?

The next part of successful marketing is differentiation. Every act of professional selling is differentiation; that is, identifying your area of excellence. Specialization focuses on who you’re targeting and what the product is going to be. Differentiation takes it a step further—how are you going to deliver that product and/or service differently than the other businesses your customers could be going to? What are you going to be excellent at? What is it about your product or service that makes it better or superior to anything or anyone else?

If you want to earn the highest possible income, it’s worth taking a week, a month, a year—as long as it takes—to excel in a particular area because that’s where all the money is. Real money is not for the average, the mediocre, the well meaning or the hopeful. It’s for people who are really good at what they do.

Segmentation is deciding who your best customers are based on what you sell, what you specialize in, what you’re already good, and who can most benefit the fastest from what it is you sell. These are the customers that are the easiest to sell to. You focus single-mindedly on them. You identify the 20% of customers who can account for 80% of your sales.

Wave a magic wand and imagine your perfect customer. As silly as it may sound, it is actually the most appropriate analogy to make. Your perfect customer is literally on the verge of buying, all you have to do is meet them, and they’ll take it right out of your hand. Who is that person?

Now by the time they are arriving at your door, you already know what they need because you’ve focused on your specialization, differentiation, and segmentation. You begin talking about your product or service, showing them that all things considered yours is the best choice. You answer their objections or hesitations, close the sale, and get re-sales and referrals from them. Marketing Success 101.

You do this prospecting so you don’t spend a single minute talking with people who are not good prospects. Your job is to identify the people who are most likely to buy, and then connect with them immediately with a benefit that they want now. All you have to do is prove that you can deliver.

What Exactly Do You Do Again?

Posted on July 22, 2011 - 3:45 am by 32

Imagine that you’re on an airplane next to somebody. You know how it is—sometimes you can tell whether someone is open to conversation or whether a polite ‘hello’ will do. But if you get into a conversation, of course the question comes up: “So what do you do?

Most people will try to narrow it down into a few words: a manager at such and such a place; salesperson; lawyer, etc. In short, the answer, as impressive as it may be, is usually something that elicits, at best, an “Oh, that’s interesting,” unless it’s something like Sea World animal trainer or something really out of there.

Do most people fare any better at networking events where the answer to what you do is actually, really important? I don’t know, but if you’re giving “airplane” kinds of answers, I’d be surprised if anything beneficial would come out of that kind of networking.

In sales, in business, you have to be able to clearly articulate what you do in such a way as to make the person you’re communicating with say, “Wow, how do you do that?” Your ability to summarize the benefit of your product or service is the key to success in selling. If you can do that, you can make all the sales you want to make for the rest of your life.

If you can’t summarize what you do that way, it means that you don’t understand what you’re selling. If you don’t understand what you’re selling, it’s impossible for your customer to understand.

All people are concerned about is what your product or service does. How can it change lives? How does it improve someone’s work or family life? What does it do? What’s the before and after difference? That’s what people want to know.

Successful businesses know exactly what they specialize in and then become absolutely excellent in their area of specialization. A rule in business and in selling is that you never take on more than you can do with excellence. You don’t try to be all things to all people.

Companies that go under start off with one area of specialization, become successful, and then think they can walk on water. They start to offer everything in a mediocre way, and then mediocrity becomes everything they do.

Unsuccessful people try to do all kinds of things, but that’s like trying to ride three bicycles at once. Successful people pick a single focus, and they concentrate on that. The only way that you can succeed in life is by becoming an expert in what you do: an expert not only in your own mind, but in the minds of others. They must know that you are very good at what you do.

One of the big frustrations we have in life is when we waste so much time on low probability prospects who turn us off, turn us down, reject us, and we start to think we’re no good, or the product is no good, or life sucks, when that’s not the case, yes? We’re just talking to the wrong people. And much of the time, we’re talking to the wrong people because we haven’t really focused in on what we have to offer.

What are your stories of turning a business—or anything—around from trying to do too many things with little success to finding success in a single focus? Was it business? Career? Relationships? The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!

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