I’ve discovered the
magic secret to getting companies to perform like a champion
racehorse. It took me my entire career to really figure it out,
but boy do I have it down and boy does it work. The following is a
chronicle of exactly what I learned and how I learned it. You will
learn a great deal about running your sales organization with much
greater results.
The secret to having a fantastic sales team is in getting every
one in your office to perform like a top producer might perform.
When I was a top producing sales rep, selling advertising, I
instinctively did all the things you’d want every rep to do. I
went after only the biggest possible clients. I wrote effective
sales letters. I followed up with a vengeance. I sent constant
promotional pieces depicting more and more sales points. I offered
fantastic and stimulating insights about how to succeed in my
market and never, ever, ever let rejection even slow me down. In
fact, when rejected, I became even more aggressive, more
determined that they understand why they HAD to have my product.
Then I had the good fortune of working for billionaire
businessman, Charlie Munger. I doubled the sales of the first
company given to me in just 15 months and then doubled the sales
of eight other divisions, most within that time frame or shorter.
The first company he gave me, I doubled three years in a row. How?
Remarkably simple, but 99.9% of companies don’t do it: I put into
place the policies and procedures that made every single person
perform like a top producer and I worked ON the business at least
one hour per week, without fail. You can get profound results in
your business if you work ON it (rather than just IN it) only one
hour per week. As long as that one hour is designed to be
proactive and you’re committed to improving the process
incrementally. If today, you started working on how you get
appointments, for example, and you looked to, once per week, make
that skill just a little better, within ten sessions (ten weeks)
you can have a profound improvement.
In most sales organizations, the sales are ad-hoc, with everyone
running around doing what THEY think is best and the management
setting very little or no minimum standards of performance. For
example, what is your standard for what type of account your
salespeople should go after? Have you worked “on” this aspect of
proper targeting? What are they going to present? What are the top
five strategic objectives you want to achieve from every
interaction with every buyer (seriously, have you sat down and
talked about that, planned that out? Practiced it, role-played it
and polished it to a fine luster?) It goes on, I just kept setting
higher and higher standards – raising the bar on what I now call:
“the minimum acceptable level of performance.”
And though I went on with my career as a trainer (with now more
than sixty Fortune 500 clients) to TELL these stories, to TEACH
these concepts, to build many different training products that
INSTRUCT on this kind of thing, I never realized how to transfer
that directly to another company in the most effective way. Until
now. Certainly, my products are going to make you a more effective
leader, trainer and manager. Certainly, they make your sales reps
more effective in every area from selling to presenting to cold
calling to even time management. But if you’re the right size
company, I have a proposition for you.
I have mastered the art of becoming a virtual sales manager. For
the next six months, just long enough to get your organization
running like a finely tuned machine, one hour per week, I become
your sales leader. - I literally run the sales meetings, weekly,
and every week I raise the bar in some area of competency. It only
takes one hour per week, but the results are profound.
Let’s take “getting appointments.” I have a client that was
getting maybe one or two appointments per week, even though they
have four salespeople. Every week, I worked with the sales reps,
just one hour per week, like all my training teaches (work ON the
business at least one hour per week and you can have profound
results.) In this case, I drilled down further and further on
EXACTLY what the reps were doing. What was the activity level, who
were they targeting, what were they saying, what tools did they
have, etc...
Each week the sales reps would go out and do the assignments I’d
give and then come back the following week and report in, telling
me of what went on, where they failed, where they were struggling.
I would then tune-up each subtle nuance of getting around the
gatekeeper and how to use voicemail as a valuable weapon rather
than a closed drawbridge.
Next, I meticulously worked on the exact telephone pitch. Exactly.
What were the five to seven elements of what would make someone
want to meet with them? When the person was trying to turn you
down or get off the phone, what were the three to five ways to not
let that happen? You wouldn’t believe how much I had to work on
“the close” of a telephone pitch. When do you shut up and what do
you say to actually set that appointment.
Then I would role-play the heck out of the reps, constantly
improving every little word, every sentence. Within about ten
weeks, the meetings started to pop left and right. A client that
was getting a few lousy appointments per week, were now getting 30
appointments per week with the exact same sales team.
And here’s the kicker, ALL of the meetings are with “Dream”
prospects. Where the sales reps once went willy nilly after
whatever company they thought of at the time, I had them ONLY work
on the “Dream” prospects. So the results have been staggering.
Huge meetings with huge prospects, every deal a monster - as
compared to the previous year where they got only a few monster
prospects in play, now they’re in play with 20 to 30 monster
prospects every single week. In this case study I’m talking about,
I doubled their sales over last year and I’ve only been helping
them for five months, just one hour per week.
But it doesn’t stop there. I got everyone so good at closing
prospects for a meeting that many would cool off and cancel once
they were out from under the white-hot heat I had perfected in the
sales pitch. So then I put into place three separate steps to make
sure that no one cancelled and that has worked really well. They
went from a 25% cancellation rate to only one in 30 canceling.
What next? Now let’s work on the client sale call itself. What’s
the first thing you do when you walk in? What’s the second? What
are the exact questions you’re going to ask and why are you going
to ask each one of them? What are you looking to do for every
question you ask? Then the presentation. If you know my material,
you know how devoted I am to a great presentation. “Set the buying
criteria” in that meeting. Set it righteous, make yourself the
absolute most logical choice and dis-empowered ALL of your
competitors completely while you’re at it.
What are ALL the strategic objectives you are looking to
accomplish in every interaction with a possible client? How will
they be met? What do you want the next move to be? What would be
ideal and then what are the five layers of alternatives below if
you can’t get the “ideal” thing to happen?
With or without me, this is what you have to do to have a
fantastic sales organization. Work ON the business, once every
week, for just an hour, but work ON that sales process and perfect
it. Another example. What do you do when someone hangs up on you?
What do you do when someone says “Call me back in a month”? What
would a top producer do in each of those situations? Or if you
sell electronically, how many ways do you maximize every
interaction?
Okay. All that said, time to talk about the new service I’ve
perfected: The Virtual Top Producing Sales Executive!
Everything I’ve described you can do on your own and you can
improve every aspect of your sales process. But here’s where I
might be of assistance. If you know my material, you know how
critical a “psychological profile” is. Only .001% of salespeople
have an ideal psychological profile.
Allow me to use myself as a “case study” on psychological profile.
I was always fascinated with finding these types and when I
couldn’t find them, that’s what forced me to become more and more
systematic about the processes of selling within an organization.
The more you can systematize the sales process, the more you can
rely on excellent selling going on in your organization.
The reason I was able to double sales for Charlie Munger was
because I was SURE of what a top producer would do because I was
one. I KNEW what systems and procedures to develop because my
instincts in this area are all natural, all part of my innate
psychological profile. A top producer responds perfectly to
rejection by becoming more effective. A top producer becomes more
aggressive when someone is brushing them off, more persuasive if
someone isn’t buying and always comes from the place of serving
THEM.
These “steps” can be honed into every aspect of your sales process
and you CAN get regular salespeople operating more and more like
top producers. You just have to drill down like a scientist into
each and every aspect of the sales process.
I’ve found that when I take on a client, I become emotionally
attached to their success, and my particular skills become
invaluable on their behalf. I become better at selling and
pitching their product each and every week, applying all that to a
systematized selling process that works like a machine.
So it’s not just that I really understand the process of
constantly improving your efforts, raising the bar every week,
improving performance constantly, it’s that I have, myself, this
mutant-like sales mind that becomes totally attached to YOUR
success.
I become devoted to getting higher and higher levels of
performance in EACH area that counts; Getting you more
appointments; Getting you BETTER appointments; Engaging your
prospects more effectively; Finding more ways to serve them, while
building an automatic and more powerful bond in the process;
Making every meeting count. Presenting ten times better than any
of your competitors, etc…
How to qualify to be considered:
I have had 60 Fortune 500 clients and have received fees in excess
of a million dollars from a single client. This means that the
average company would be unlikely to retain me. However, with
smaller companies, if you have outstanding potential, I actually
have a relationship where I take the majority of my fees based
upon performance. What would you pay me if I could double your
sales?
This is all done by telephone: Today, conference calling has
become so inexpensive that virtually anyone can have this service.
You could have five or 500 people on the phone with me once per
week while I tweak and polish every little corner of your
organization. And the other beauty is that this makes the meeting
something no one ever has to miss. Your staff can call in from
anywhere.
(BIG BONUS!) And the calls can
be recorded, so as I figure out the best ways to represent and
sell your products, you can have it all on CD: You can have an
entire course, customized to YOUR company, on CD forever, all by a
Fortune 500-level sales executive who temporarily upgrades every
aspect of your sales process. So all NEW sales reps or mgmt coming
into your company later can get the same training that everyone
else has had.
Another important tip for you: Make your weekly meetings
mandatory. That’s how you get real progress. Since each session
takes you deeper and incrementally builds upon the previous
session, you must be on every session. I will teach you how to
make the meetings mandatory. How to make sure no one ever misses
them. Even if a rep is sick, they can LISTEN. Just call into the
conference.
What is this worth? The last job that I had where I worked for
someone else (which is now 18 years ago), I was earning in the mid
six figures. My first year in business for myself, I earned over a
million dollars. I’ve had single clients pay over a million
dollars and one paid me nearly two million dollars. So what is it
worth to get a superb expert selling for you and working ON the
nitty gritty of making your sales process stunning?
The good news is that I only need to spend one hour per week
working ON your business. So this makes my otherwise
six-figures-per-month fees much more affordable. And the rate
varies depending upon the potential and the share of that
potential you’re willing to give to have me double your sales.
One more major benefit, CEO Training.
Where do you get CEO training? Most CEO’s don’t know
how to hold a highly effective meeting. They don’t know how to
structure their organizations or even themselves for maximum
productivity. They don’t know how to change, adapt and re-organize
for new stages of growth. Each phase of growth requires
adjustments that most CEO’s never notice or understand. I’ve been
through every phase of growth (I’ve helped three companies grow to
$100 million) and reported to billionaires and CEO’s of the best
companies in the world. I’ve helped many a CEO become a MUCH more
effective CEO and I’ll help you do the same as well.
And unless you’re not a nice person, we’ll bond. I’ll care about
you. That’s my psychological profile. I’ll become your greatest
ally and asset, the one person you tell anything to because I’m
not an employee, yet I’ll know your organization intimately (I
begin my relationships with a comprehensive audit where I learn
every detail about your company).
TO QUALIFY: In order to get
you a free session with me, to determine if we should work
together, you need to have activities and resources for me to work
with. Meaning, this offer is not available for someone who just
has a good idea and no actual company in place. You have to have
processes in place, resources with which to begin your Dream
Selling effort, and at least a few salespeople for me to work
with.
If you need help hiring the right type of salesperson and you have
the resources with which to do so, I have perfected the methods to
help you hire top producer types.
So if you are an active company with great potential that merely
needs the finest management available today, you should send an
email to:
sherry4chet@comcast.net. My assistant will open a dialogue
with you and then if you qualify, she will get you on the
telephone with me for a preliminary and exploratory conversation.
Success Stories:
• Doubled the sales of a magazine in 15 months, using everything I
told you about here.
• Took a telecom company from $3 million in sales last year to a
$9.5 million pipeline for new business within only three months.
• Took another company with one salesperson and showed them how to
hire five more on straight commission. The company went from $60K
per month, to $250K per month in six months.
• A benefits broker was getting a handful of meetings per month
(mostly with small companies) and now they are getting 20-30
meetings per week and ALL with large companies.
• Took a $5 million services company that was at break-even, and
added a million in increased sales, from their current clients,
and the only additional expense increase was $35,000 – So it was
more than 90% profit.
• Took a newspaper with falling circulation and increased their
circulation by 350% in one year flat.
• Took another magazine that was declining in sales and had been
for years, and got them a 67% increase in one year.
• Took a carpet cleaning company that was getting 6% increases
every year and got them an 87% increase in sales in just one year.
Virtually quadrupling the sales per rep.
• Took a company selling training products and developed a $6
million revenue stream from scratch. It saved this company’s butt.
• Took a billion dollar conglomerate that was falling into the red
at 10% per year and got them $100 million in the black in a single
year.
• Took a manufacturing company in deep trouble (three years of
increasing red ink) and got them into the black in a single year.
If you qualify, I’d love to talk to you. If not, I hope you’ve
thoroughly enjoyed the education about how to incrementally make
your sales effort great!
Chet Holmes has worked with over 60 of the Fortune 500
companies as America’s top marketing executive, trainer, and
strategic consultant. Chet is the author of the best selling book,
The Ultimate Sales Machine (#1 business book on Amazon, #1 Sales
and Marketing book on Amazon, and also on NY Times best seller
list). Chet has identified and developed the 12 core competencies
that are proven to provide the main structure of truly great
companies and he has developed more than fifty proprietary methods
to implement them. To learn more about how to double the sales of
your company, go to
www.howtodoublesales.com or if you’d like to potentially have
a conversation with Chet Holmes, email his asst at
sherry4chet@comcast.net.
