This blog is filled with practical ideas and tips on personal development for individuals and business professionals. I am a master teacher and global traveler. I share my ideas daily to help others improve their lives.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Prospect only qualified Leads
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Prospect only qualified Leads: You can never expect to consistently exceed your sales targets, unless you learn the art of utilising your available time as effectivel...
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Prospect only qualified Leads
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Prospect only qualified Leads: You can never expect to consistently exceed your sales targets, unless you learn the art of utilising your available time as effectivel...
Prospect only qualified Leads
You
can never expect to consistently exceed your sales targets, unless you learn
the art of utilising your available time as effectively as possible every day.
Time is a limited resource, which when invested wisely will allow you to
achieve remarkable results and when wasted, will keep you trapped in average.
Chasing after every possible lead or prospect, without first qualifying them,
is as effective as screaming at an approaching tornado and demanding it go
away. If you do not qualify prospects, you just spend your day spinning your
wheels and may on occasion hit pay dirt, but more often than not, you are going
to just waste time and achieve very little.
Know your value proposition
It
is impossible to qualify a lead or prospect, if you are not 100% clear on what
you offer or how this will benefit your lead or prospect. You can never sort
through viable prospects or leads and chose the ones you will invest time into
winning over as customers, unless you know whether what you offer will serve
them in the first place. Clarify what you offer, become clear on what benefits
it brings to your customers and you will save yourself hours every day sorting
through possible leads and qualifying prospects. The effort you put into
qualifying prospects and leads saves you wasted effort as you will only invest resources
into the right people, who need exactly what you have to offer.
Prospects
are like you; they also have a limited amount of time available and do not want
their time to be wasted by people, who try to sell them something, which cannot
completely satisfy their needs. They only want to know what is in it for them
and whether your value proposition will satisfy this. When you are properly
prepared and you know exactly what your value proposition offers and how this
will serve the prospect, they will very quickly see your competence and this
will turn into confidence and finally they will begin to trust you offer. As
you know people only buy from people they know, like and trust. They can and
never will learn to like or trust anyone, who is unprepared, does not know
their own value proposition and tries to wing it.
Convert Qualified leads into Sales
Qualified
leads and prospects are the fuel, which drives the sales engine and in turn
drives revenue, within any organisation. So any sales professional, who wants
to consistently exceed their sales targets, needs to spend sufficient time
researching every prospect, until they get a crystal clear picture of what the
prospects needs are, how their value proposition will satisfy this and how they
can partner with the prospect and develop a mutually beneficial relationship
with them. The more prepared you are before every sales call and the more clear
you are about the purpose for each call is, the more your prospect will sense
your preparedness and they will quicker they will warm to you and your
offering.
Turning your Qualified Prospect into a Customer
According to Everett Rogers,
who published a book called “Diffusion of Innovation”, turning a prospect into
a customer goes through five distinct phases – awareness, interest, evaluation,
trail and finally adoption. Your knowledge about your value proposition and the
research you have done around the needs of the prospect and the decision maker
put you in a powerful position to start moving your prospect down the path from
a place where they become aware of your value proposition, to a place where
they finally adopt or purchase your product or service.
Creating
Awareness
If you are working with a
targeted prospect, who you have carefully selected, because of their perfect
fit for what you have to offer. There is no better way of connecting with them,
than arranging a face to face call with them, to introduce yourself and your
value proposition. As you know this is not always possible as the decision
makers often have gatekeepers, who make reaching them extremely difficult. This
is where you need to become a little creative and where you must use every
medium at your disposal to get them to become aware of you and your value
proposition.
Action
Idea: Use Social Media
Social media is a really
powerful way of connecting with qualified prospects. The secret to make this
work for you is to never to try to sell them anything via social media. As soon
as you try to introduce your product or service on any social media platform,
people will just block you or ignore you flat. Social media is about giving and
sharing, so to use this medium effectively, first just connect with the person
via Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
Once they have accepted your
connection request, research them and find ways of sharing and giving them
content, which is aligned with their hobbies, interests or anything else, which
will allow you to build connection with them. As they get to know you and see
that you are a trusted connection, ask them what they do for a living. People
love to speak about themselves and so they will share some very valuable
information with you, information, which will serve you later, as you build the
relationship.
All people are curious and
after they have described what they do and who they are, they will ask you a
similar question in return. When they ask you the question about what you do,
this is not the time to jump in with both feet and try to sell to them. Gently
introduce yourself and remain a little mysterious, yet offer them sufficient
information to make them curious. Once they start to ask more direct questions
about what you do and offer, then you can ask for a meeting or a telephone
conversation. By this stage they already know you, they have small trust in you
and they are interested in what you have to do. You have effectively moved them
to the third stage towards choosing your product or service, namely they interested
in you have shown an interest in what you do.
How
to do it
I carefully target and
select my prospects based on my value proposition and their needs. Once I find
a perfect fit for what I offer, I then identify the decision makers within the
organisation and I try to make contact with them. If I am unsuccessful in
arranging a meeting, I then find other innovative ways to connect with them via
social media. My first port of call is LinkedIn, as this is more accepted as a
medium for making business connections. I then research the prospect, using
Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and other media, if I am unsuccessful at finding the
information I need via these media. It is seldom necessary to look much further
than these forms of media as in 95 % of the cases these media are sufficient
and you can gather all the information you need.
I then either start to build
the connection by regularly commenting on their posts, or sending them
information related to their hobbies or other interests. This is a gradual
process and does not happen in a day. It is only effective if you are
consistent and persistent. I have set up my CRM system with reminders to help
me stay focused and on track with this process. You need to have a number of
prospects at various stages along the process. As you close one prospect; you
need to refill the pipeline, by adding a new prospect, which you have carefully
selected and targeted.
Evaluation
and Trial
Once you have moved your
prospect from awareness to interest, the next phase is evaluation. This is the
time you need to remove all risk from the mind of your prospect. You obviously
believe in your product or service and you have researched and qualified your
prospect properly, so offering them a 100 % money back guarantee, carries no or
very little risk at all. It does however show your prospect that you believe in
what you offer so much that you are willing to give it to them for free, if it
does not do what you say it will do. This removes the risk from the prospects
mind and gets them to trust you and what you have to offer.
After testing your product
or putting it on trial, they will realise the wonderful value you bring and
will buy from you with confidence. You can only follow this process if you believe
in what you offer and if you trust what you sell. Believing in what you sell is
fundamental to becoming successful in sales, so if you would not buy what you
sell for the price you are selling it, you will obviously never succeed in
sales.
Author: Andrew Horton Sales Training
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Are you Investing Enough Time into Developing your...
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Are you Investing Enough Time into Developing your...: Your mind or should I rather say the captain, who guides you on your journey through life and the thing, which is the sourc...
Are you Investing Enough Time into Developing your Mind?
Your
mind or should I rather say the captain, who guides you on your journey
through life and the thing, which is the source of who you are, is one of the
most misunderstood and underutilised tools available in our success toolkit.
The more you take care of it and work to consistently add new useful
information and skills to your mind, the better equipped you will be to
invite success into your life.
Your
mind is your reservoir, which holds all your potential. All you need to do,
to create the exact life you want to lead, is discover how to unlock its
unlimited capabilities and then to invest sufficient time and energy into
helping it grow and to ensure that you keep it healthy.
Invest
Time and Energy into Developing your mind
The
time you invest into developing your mental muscle and growing your knowledge
and abilities, will empower you to accomplish almost anything you want in
life. Like any worthwhile endeavour, it is going to require some discipline
and effort to continually invest into developing your mental muscle, but the
investment will most certainly be worthwhile.
Developing
your mind is a little like building muscle. You can’t just show up at the
gym, once in a while, without a clue about what you need to do at the gym. If
you are to build muscle, you need to design a program and workout schedule,
which you use daily to guide your training at the gym daily. The same Is true
for developing your mental muscle. You need a plan and a daily commitment to
apply your plan, so that you can gradually develop your mind, into the
incredible machine, which will support your success.
Become your own Mental Manager
Stand
guard at the door of your mind and don’t allow negative information to pass
through into your mind. Avoid reading newspapers or listening to the news on
the radio or TV. As you know all these media, love sensationalism and prefer
telling negative stories. As most editors or producers say “If it Bleeds, it leads”. Wow how much
more negative can you get than that?
When
you read, ensure that you are reading worthwhile, books, which add real value
to your life. Books, which educate, inspire and introduce positivity into
your experience. When commuting in your car, listen to educational,
inspirational or transformational CD’s. This will turn your car into your
mobile university. If you must watch TV. Try to only watch educational or
positive and uplifting programs.
Form Master Mind Groups
Explore
your world and find people or a group of people, who have the same desire,
drive and passion as your own. Invest time with these people to share ideas,
support each other and bask in the positivity, which flows from them. Great
success is created when you surround yourself with other great minds, who
support and uplift each other.
Mentors
Discover
what you want to achieve and then find someone, who has travelled a similar
path to the one you want to travel and find an innovative way to get them to
mentor you. The way to get the most from any mentor is to discover a way to
ensure that there is always fair exchange, where both parties get something
from the relationship. Open your mind and be willing to learn all you can
from you mentor; they truly are an incredible source of support, valuable
information and knowledge.
Your
mind is all you have, so invest wisely into growing and expanding it. The
more dedicated you are to continually grow your mind, the greater will be
your success in the long-run. You most certainly will attract success, by the
person you become. As you become more, you will definitely attract more and
more and more. Come on dare to get off your butt and finally create that
someone, you can be proud of.
http://www.andrewhorton.co.za |
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Motivational Speakers - Now we have started the be...
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Motivational Speakers - Now we have started the be...: I have studied a number of very successful people around the world and based on my research I have discovered an effective formula for invi...
Motivational Speakers - Now we have started the believing – It is time to start the achieving
I have studied a number of very successful people around the world and based on my research I have discovered an effective formula for inviting similar levels of success into your own life. The first thing which stood out for me amongst the super achievers I studied was their 100 % acceptance, of the fact that, if they were to be successful it was completely up to them.
They then turned this acceptance of full responsibility into commitment, drive and passion, where they believed completely in their ability to achieve the outcome they wanted to achieve in their future. This belief then drove their expectations, which in turn created their crystal clear vision for the future. Their vision was then converted into a plan or a set of goals and action plans, which they acted on daily with patience and persistence.
I have described the process in more detail below. If you follow this formula and apply the ideas presented in your life, I am certain that you can achieve anything you desire.
Getting Started
Success is an Inside Job
Firstly remember that anything you pursue will always elude you. So remove the thought of pursuing success from your mind altogether. The way to invite any level of SUCCESS into your experience is by accepting that “If it is to be then, it is up to me” and adopting this as your new adage. Secondly you must decide what success actually means to you and why achieving it is important to you. Once you have clarified these in your mind, you will be certain that what you are trying to achieve is actually aligned with what you really want and you will have the resilience and drive to overcome the inevitable obstacles, which will be placed in your path.
Take Responsibility and you will Succeed
As I said before adapt the adage of “If it is to be, it is up to me”. Accept 100 % responsibility for everything in your life and commit to take inspired goal specific action daily and nothing will be able to stop you from achieving what you desire.
Finally, always remember that no one else’s expectations or opinions really matter; even the people who you trust to offer you reliable feedback, are ultimately only giving you their opinion. How you choose to use the information is always up to you. Learn to trust and believe in yourself and always allow your opinion to take precedence over anyone else’s and success is inevitable.
What Does Success Mean to you?
The way to achieve the level of satisfaction and fulfilment you desire is unique to you. So the best way to begin this journey, toward living the ultimate expression of your life, is to first define what “Living a Great Life” means to you specifically and then go about the business of making, just that possible for you.
Action Idea: Explore all the areas of your life and examine each one individually, then build a crystal clear picture in your mind, around exactly what you need to achieve in each to ensure that you are living a harmonious, life, filled with meaning.
Know why you want to Succeed
Discover your deep rooted reason why you want to succeed and nothing can or will stop you from succeeding.
If I placed a plank on the ground, which was about 30 cm wide and I offered you R 1000 if you would walk over the plank. I am certain that you would jump at the opportunity to take my money, away from me so easily. If I however suspended the same plank between two high-rise buildings and now offered you the same prize to walk over the plank, I am certain that most people would see the increased risk of injury and would refuse to go anywhere near the plank.
Based on the changed circumstances, could you think of any reason why you would even consider walking over the plank? What if I said that your child was on the other building and that building was on fire? The flames were licking at the feet of your child. Would you now not run over the plank, not once, but twice to rescue your child?
What changed?
All that changed was your reason why you needed to cross the plank. The same is true about your dreams. Once you have discovered that deep rooted reason why you want to succeed, nothing can or will stop you.
Why is your Vision and Goals Important to you?
When you have discovered your burning child on the building or rather when you have discovered why achieving your goal is really important to you, no obstacles, roadblocks or challenges will ever be able to stop you. You will consistently keep taking inspired goal specific action daily and the momentum of these consistent actions will grow. Your awareness of why achieving any desired outcome is the catalyst, which will drive you to keep following through until you succeed and this understanding and belief will ensure that nothing can or will stop you from succeeding.
Your Reason Why, Will Drive You to Succeed
My experience has shown me that, the success of your efforts does not depend on the efforts themselves, but rather on your motive for carrying out the actions in the first place. Super achievement, where individuals have excelled or where they have built great personal or business success, has in most cases, been driven by an unfathomable desire to express themselves, by solving a problem using their skills and knowledge as best they could. They felt compelled and driven to express their inner vision and nothing could stop them. Discover that deep rooted reason why you want to succeed at anything, take action daily and no obstacle or challenge will ever stop you from realising your dreams.
Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers
Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Motivational Speakers – Do you Believe that your P...
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Motivational Speakers – Do you Believe that your P...: Motivational Speakers It is mistakenly believed that your potential is limited by your current abilities, knowledge, skills or even your ...
Motivational Speakers – Do you Believe that your Potential is Limited in any way?
Motivational Speakers
It is mistakenly believed that your potential is limited by your current abilities, knowledge, skills or even your current circumstances, whereas, in reality, your limits only exist within your own self-imposed comfort zone and restrictive beliefs. You can completely remove any perceived limits and swim in the sea of abundance, which flows all around you, if you are able to believe in yourself and build a crystal clear picture in your mind about all the possibility, which exists all around you.
Your Mind Does not come with a user’s Manual
Napoleon Hill once said:
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve”
Your mind is the most incredible and powerful tool available to you as you travel down the path towards the success you desire. If understood and used correctly, it will deliver literally everything you can imagine to you. All that you need to do is believe with absolute conviction that it is possible for you and then you must commit to take inspired goal specific action daily and a world of possibility opens up to you.
Henry Ford said:
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, both ways you are correct”
A great example of the power of the mind is shown in this story.
Doctors in Texas, studying the effectiveness of arthroscopic knee surgery, assigned patients with damaged, painful or worn-out knees, who agreed to participate in the test, one of three different surgical procedures. They either scraped the knee joint, just washed it out with saline or did nothing. During the procedure, where the doctors did nothing, they actually made an incision and pretended to have carried out the procedure on the patients.
Two years later the patients who never received any treatment at all, or who just had their knees washed out with saline, but believed that they had been operated on, showed exactly the same improvement as the patients, who had actually had their knees operated on. The patient’s brains expected the surgery to have helped and to have improved their condition and so it did. This process shows the existence of expectancy theory. If you really believe that you can do something, you believe it is possible and you expect it to happen, it is very likely that it will.
What do you see as possible in your future right now? It is very unlikely that you will ever exceed your own expectations about what you believe is possible for you to achieve. So if you want to begin the journey towards super achievement, it starts right now, by you allowing yourself to dream once again and to give yourself permission to have huge expectations about what is possible for you. You are truly magnificent, now it is up to you to believe it and you will finally start to achieve it. Create an expectation about what you believe is possible for you and according to the expectancy theory, your mind will eventually make it possible for you.
Dare to Dream Big
Bruce Lee was arguably one of the greatest martial artists of all time. He understood the value of dreaming big and having huge expectations. When I visited Planet Hollywood in New York City a few years ago, I saw a letter written by Bruce Lee in 1970. In the letter Bruce wrote, as follows: “By 1980 I will be the best known oriental movie star in the United States and will have secured $ 10 million dollars. In return I will give the best acting I could ever give, every single time I am in front of the cameras and I will live in peace and harmony”. Despite his life being cut short, he managed to realise all his goals in far less than the ten years he thought it would take. Are you dreaming really big dreams and taking inspired action every day to make them real for you?
It is seldom, if ever, that anyone exceeds their own belief in their potential or their own vision of possibility. You will never rise above the image you hold in your mind about what is possible for you. So in reality you can and will only ever live the vision you have of what is possible for you.
In fact the life you are living right now is exactly what you have envisioned in the past, as being possible for you. The subconscious belief and picture, which you hold in your mind right now, has shaped who you are and will continue shaping who you will become. How you see yourself or the vision you hold of your potential is exactly what will turn up in your life. Don’t you think it is time you stopped leaving this to chance and you finally made the conscious decision and put in the effort to picture the actual future you want?
Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers
Author: Andrew Horton Motivational Speakers
Monday, March 4, 2013
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Are you Confusing Motion, with Inspired Action?
Andrew Horton Inspirational Speakers: Are you Confusing Motion, with Inspired Action?: I see people all around me every day, who arrive home after yet another really long day at work, exhausted, yet they never seem to get ...
Do you Believe you Deserve to be Successful?
You will only ever achieve the level
of success you believe you deserve and that you believe you have the skill and
ability to achieve. The reason for this is that your beliefs are what
ultimately drive your behaviour and the actions you take or fail to take each
day. What you believe to be true about your potential, abilities and level of
skill, sends powerful messages to your brain, which either positively or
negatively affects your actions and obviously the results you are able to
achieve.
Your beliefs will cause you to act in
one of two ways:
You will either believe in your
capabilities and have the drive and determination to take goal specific action
daily or you will feel insecure, unsure about yourself and even feel fearful
about what you can achieve, resulting in you retreating or remaining trapped
and immobile, where you do nothing.
What are your Beliefs about Risk
Taking, Failure and Success?
Your beliefs about how capable you are
and how likely you are to succeed will drive you daily actions or lack thereof.
If you believe you are very skilled and capable of achieving greatness, it is
very likely that you will be driven to take action daily. On the other hand if
you are filled with doubt and unsure about any outcome, you will procrastinate
and avoid taking the action you need to take to succeed. Your beliefs about
what you are capable of achieving will obviously make you more or less likely
to take risks and will either cause you to repel or attract success.
Belief and Time are the Ingredients
for Success
The greater the belief you hold about
your ability to succeed, the shorter will be the time required to achieve that
level of success. Remember that the more you believe in yourself, the more
likely it is that you will take goal specific action daily, as your positive
belief in yourself, will drive your behaviour and encourage you to take the
action you need to take to achieve the outcome you want.
Attracting Success
Create a set of positive affirmations,
to help you to replace those negative dream killing beliefs, which are
restricting your performance and holding you away from your dreams. Every time
you start to think any negative thoughts, repeat one of your positive
affirmations, until the negative thought goes away. When you repeat your
positive affirmations every time you have a negative thought about what you are
capable of achieving, you will eventually replace the negative belief, with a
more positive one.
Explore the
negative thoughts, which are restricting you and try to create affirmations
which are the exact opposite of the negative thoughts you have.
Create Positive affirmations like
these below:
·
I am a genius and use my wisdom daily.
·
Each Day in every way I am better and
better.
·
I have a perfect memory and can recall
things as and when I need them.
I have
developed a positive affirmation CD. It is a recording, which repeats different
positive affirmations for seven minutes. By listening to this CD daily, you
gradually start to become more positive and to believe in yourself. Focus on
thinking empowering thoughts and beliefs about the success you can enjoy and
over time you will retrain your mind and you will start to believe far more in
yourself and your abilities.
Filter the
Information you Expose yourself to Daily
Start to
filter the information you allow into your world. The less you are exposed to
the negative information contained in newspapers, songs, TV etc. The easier it
will be for you remain positive and for you to believe in yourself.
Competence = Confidence
Commit to lifelong learning and
growth. As you grow your knowledge and abilities, you will gradually feel more
competent too. With competence, comes confidence. As you grow and you knowledge
and abilities expand, so too will your belief in what you are capable of
achieving.
Create a Crystal Clear Picture of
Possibility
Allow yourself to walk into the future
and bring back a crystal clear picture of what you want to achieve. Use this
picture of possibility, which you have borrowed from the future and to craft a
vision for where you want your life to go. Write this vision down on a card,
which you carry around with you. Read it as often as possible throughout your
day. The habit of reading your vision and reminding yourself about what you
will achieve will put a smile on your face and will drive you to take goal
specific action daily.
Your vision can be thought of as
potential energy
Remember when you conducted
experiments in your physical science class at school. You would place an object
on an incline. Whilst it was at rest and you did not take any action, nothing
would happen. It only had the potential to roll down the slope, where it would turn
its potential energy into movement or kinetic energy. Potential energy is saved
up energy, waiting to happen or in other words it is energy, which is waiting
to be converted into motion or action. So whilst you are observing the object,
about to roll down the slope, nothing happens. It is only once you take action
and give it a gentle push, that you observe potential energy, being converted
into movement or kinetic energy.
The same is true for your vision. It
is only a picture of what is possible. Only once you start to take action and
act on it will it eventually change from possibility to probability and finally
your reality. You create possibility or potential energy with your thoughts and
beliefs and then you convert these into reality or kinetic energy with your
actions. Change your beliefs and thoughts about what is possible for you and
you will change your behaviour. Once you positively change your behaviour, you
will over time change your life.
Author: Andrew Horton Motivational
Speakers in South Africa
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