Greetings!
Happy Tuesday and welcome to 2010! I'm excited and looking forward to this year and the opportunities to provide a better newsletter with valuable articles you can use in business and in life.
Last week I asked for some feedback and received a great response. As a result, one area that I am switching up a bit is including the entire article in each newsletter rather than clicking through to the website to continue reading it. The reason for clicking to continue reading was to gauge how many people were interested in each article or topic.
However, 89% of the people that responded said they would be willing to make a click to indicate whether or not they enjoyed the article or if it provided some sort of value to them. This feedback is very important in continued improvement for the newsletter and its content.
With that, I hope you enjoy 2010's first article!
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2010: The Year of Opportunity
A Perspective Shot in the Arm to Launch the New Year!
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Welcome to 2010!
The past couple weeks I have been pondering this new year we have just begun and
the recurring theme to my thoughts was - Opportunities. As such, many of the
newsletter articles I have planned throughout the year will have an "Opportunities"
theme in them starting with this New Year kick-off article that was going to
focus on various aspects of seizing opportunities. Throughout the year we'll
then look at Opportunities in networking, sales, marketing, positive attitude,
community and many other topics.
And then something happened. Divine?
Maybe. Timely? Definitely! Whatever it was, it created a prelude to the "seizing
opportunities" topic. Before seizing opportunities, let's first look at the
perspective in which we will focus on opportunities. Let's take a walk together
here for a minute to set the stage...
Over the holidays I watched the movie Evan
Almighty where the main character, a newly elected U.S. congressman named Evan,
is asked by God to build an ark - right in the middle of present day Washington
DC. It was a cute movie with a good message, but there was one thing in
particular that really stuck with me.
There is a scene where God, working as a
waiter in a restaurant, is talking to Evan's wife about what her crazy husband
is doing building this ark. After explaining the situation, she asks the
"waiter" what he thinks of it. His reply is "it sounds like an opportunity!" He
then goes on to offer the following analogy.
"If someone prays for patience, you think God
gives them patience? Or does He give them the opportunities to be patient? If
they pray for courage, does God give them courage or does He give them
opportunities to be courageous? If someone prays for a family to be closer, do
you think God zaps with warm, fuzzy feelings? Or does He give them
opportunities to love each other?"
That scene could offer a different
perspective on the opportunities we look for in business and sales. We have
budgets, forecasts, goals, quotas, funnels and strategies. If planned carefully
and executed diligently, they may provide the road map for us and our
businesses to be successful. However, without the proper focus, the best laid
plan can fail.
Quite often, focus is on the bottom line,
the quota, the commission or any other sales metric used to define a person or
business' success. When focus to serve your customer is lost, no amount of
budgeting, forecasting or strategizing can save your ultimate game plan.
When your written goal or sales quota is
driving your efforts, your service is laid at the foot of the wrong person -
you. Rather, serve you customer with all your might and all your focus and
you'll surpass your forecasts, quotas and goals.
So let's shift the perspective a bit. For
example, when working your plan this year, rather than focusing on how many ad
spots you can sell, focus on the unique opportunities you have to work with each
business and the opportunities to help them increase their visibility and
increased resultant opportunities to serve their customers better. Or, rather
than focus on how many furnaces you can install, focus on each opportunity you
have to help a family efficiently stay warm this year.
Taken one step further, rather than focus
on what your customers can do for you, focus on how you can better serve your
customers with every opportunity they provide. In doing so, when you make your
goal to sell 100 units, you'll look for enough opportunities to serve more
people in a manner they've never experienced. Your focus will be on serving
rather than selling. Your focus will be on people rather than numbers. Keep
this focus and watch your sales cup runneth over!
Now, Go Get
'Em! (Better yet, Go "Serve" Them!)
Did this article provide some personal or professional value?
Click here if it did
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Reader Feedback
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My friends of Selling U are great with an incredible response to last week's request to provide feedback on the quality and content of this newsletter.
If you did not respond yet, but would like to, please click here to answer a few questions and provide a comment or suggestion as well if you'd like.
So far, here are the results of your responses:
1. The most requested type of article topic is Positive Attitude followed closely by Marketing. Other topics that were requested include Community Leadership, Training Employees and Thinking Outside the Box.
2. An overwhelming response to have a good mix of both detail oriented and big picture types of articles.
3. Most people said they didn't mind clicking through to continue reading the featured article and all but one person was willing to make a single click to indicate if the article provided some value to them.
4. And the two most requested items to include in the newsletter along with the featured article are Reader's Questions and Guest Contributors. As such, I will keep an eye out for the special guests but will rely on you to e-mail me your burning questions.
I also really appreciated the kind words and comments. So if you did respond, thank you! If not, please take a couple minutes to help me help you!
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Wrapping Up
Well, I hope you picked up a few good ideas today and I look forward to being with you again next week. In the meantime, if you have a burning question, shoot me an e-mail and I'll shoot you a reply. Also, why not forward this newsletter to a few friends that may also like what you've read.
Helping You Sell You,
Scott Gillespie
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Copyright (C) 2009 Selling U, LLC - All rights reserved.
Would you like to reproduce this document?
Please call us at 989.546.7355 for written permission by Scott Gillespie before doing so.
However, go ahead and forward this to as many people as you want!
Selling U, LLC ~ 9825 E. Broomfield Rd. ~ Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858
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