If the objective of marketing your business is to generate a consistent flow of prospects, your sales process must be a progression in which you convert qualified prospects into lifetime clients for your services and products.

Even though sales processes vary depending on your type of business and industry, here are four important steps to consider when developing your own:

1)      Free Demonstration: Offer your qualified prospects an opportunity – free of charge – to experience some of the benefits, value and transformations that you help your clients achieve.

2)      Irresistible Offer: Once they have sampled the value of your service for free, make them a special, irresistible offer to become your clients. Do it with complete confidence!

3)     Additional Services: You have been hired. Can you identify additional wants / needs to be fulfilled? Do you see other opportunities to offer your new client additional services?  If the answer is yes, make them another irresistible offer.

4)     Bring Them Back. Never take your clients for granted. Always provide exceptional service and added value. Give them as many reasons as possible to return.

In the world of the small business owner and independent professional, developing an effective sales process is often times overlooked. Creating a process, implementing it, measuring the results and improving it as necessary can make an enormous difference in the revenue you generate.

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Great Selling!

Take immediate and purposeful action by continuing with your marketing plan to grow your business. And if you don’t happen to have a plan, don’t feel bad. Create one.

Nothing, really, can take the place of purposeful action when it comes to attaining your business objectives and becoming more successful.

Remember, that during your business journey – and in the course of meeting prospects who will not hire you for your services– you are accumulating invaluable knowledge and experiences.  Most importantly, you are getting mentally stronger  as you are moving closer to the right prospects that will become your clients.

The forth and final step in turning rejection into business opportunity:

Take immediate and purposeful action!

To your success!

Cheers!

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Once you go through the exercise outlined in Step 2 – and if it feels right – you might want to ask your prospect for feedback. It may really be worth it!

How I turned a “No” to a long term happy client.

During my early years in corporate sales, I remember loosing a great prospect to one of my competitors. A few weeks later, I decided to call back Mr. John G. I always do what I can “to not burn bridges.”  This is roughly how the conversation went:

“Hello Mr. G, this is George “H”. I appreciate the opportunity you gave me to work with you and respect your decision to go with a different company.

We always try to improve the quality of our service and I was wondering if I could ask you a question. Is there something I could have done better, differently to earn your business?  If so, I would appreciate your feedback.”

Mr. John G. took considerable time and gave me invaluable feedback.

Besides the lesson I learned that day, Mr. G. valued my initiative so much, that he ended up becoming a loyal client after all. That one phone call sure was worth it!

Remember the third step:

If it feels right, why not call back your prospect and ask for feedback?

As always, I welcome your comments.

Look for the lesson – if there is one.

Although prospects may choose to conduct business with one of your competitors for reasons that you cannot control, it is always a good idea to ask yourself if there is something that you could have done better or differently during your interactions with your prospect.

Here is a simple idea. Take a few days to clear your mind. Mentally replay your experience. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left column write down all the things you felt you did well, and on the right column things that perhaps you could have done better. You may find it helpful if you go though this exercise with an associate, mentor, or coach as they may be able to give you a different perspective.

If you feel that you could have done certain things better, simply learn from the experience, and move on with your action plan to grow your business.

Remember the second step for turning rejection into business opportunity:

Look for the lesson – if there is one.

Retain Your Personal Power -

In the business arena, facing rejection is normal. It means that we are out in the world connecting with people, beginning conversations, and offering our services. Although I don’t believe that anyone would admit to enjoying it, there are business owners and professionals who have learned how to effectively manage it. They have developed the ability to often turn it into business opportunity, and use it as a stepping stone to attain their broader goals, and realize their greater vision.

What is the first stepping stone?

Retaining your personal power, and remembering NOT to take business rejection personally.

This may be very difficult to reconcile. How can we possibly not take it, personally?

The reality is that prospects make decisions based on their own reasons. These reasons frequently have nothing to do with you at all. Long standing personal relationships, preferences in different products and services, and wrong timing may be reasons why your prospects decide to conduct business with one of your competitors.

Here is the important realization:

When your prospect says “no thank you”, direct their lack of interest to your business proposition. At that particular moment in time, your prospect is simply not interested in your services, plain and simple. Try to remember that they are not rejecting you as a person. Although people can say no to your business proposition, no one can reject you as a person, unless you allow this to happen.

You are the one with that personal power. Don’t give it away!  

Rejection is a tough pill to swallow. Having said that – and speaking from the experience of a tested entrepreneur — it can be turned into business opportunity. Remember The First Step:

Retain your personal power, and DO NOT take it personally.

I Wish You All the Best!

George Haralampopoulos

Sign up! “How to achieve business breakthroughs even in a challenging market”  Free at:  www.unconditionallysuccessfulbiz.com

If you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, an independent professional, you have faced it. We all have. I’m referring to the often dreaded “R” word:  Rejection – business rejection.

It comes in different forms, doesn’t it? From the high quality lead that you’ve been working with for a while, you know, the one you’re “sure” will hire you for your services, but decides differently;  to the prospect that says “no” to meeting with you even for a quick conversation. How about the one that has made a “commitment” to follow up with you, but doesn’t “for whatever reason,” or the one that simply will not respond to your messages and communications?

Does any of this sound familiar?

During my 17-year professional career in this great country, as an entrepreneur, business owner, mentor, strategist, I have generally seen three types of business professionals when it comes to handling, reacting, responding to rejection:

The first group: The Give-ups 

These are talented individuals, smart, and  often brilliant minds. They are working in markets were there is still demand for their services, but they just give up.  Promising careers have been ended, in large part because the individuals could not handle the “R” word. Or, at least manage it.

The second group: The Rising Stars

Business people in this group have experienced the rejections, frustrations, fears, even heartbreaks of the first group, and almost gave up. But somehow along the way they experience that BREAKTHROUGH moment -that inspiration! They discover that “inner strength” that propels them to Superstar status.

The third group­­: The Superstars

These business professionals are the ones – who no matter what – keep on pushing. All though they may be working in highly competitive markets, they simply claim their share of the business. They pursue their aspirations with vigor in some cases achieving phenomenal results.

For this group, rejections, recessions, downturns, really don’t matter. At least they don’t matter a lot. And if they do get temporarily derailed – “thrown off course” – due to unforeseen circumstances, somehow they jump back on the path to success. They understand, or have made the commitment to learn, how to channel rejections, roadblocks and challenges into opportunities for development, growth, and expansion.

“Give ups” have the potential to become “Rising Stars” and “Superstars”

What does it take to achieve these transformations?

Is it skill development, business acumen, and better support systems? This is part of it. 

Speaking from experience, the most important factor is developing the right mindset. It is learning –all though this may be difficult to reconcile - not to take rejection personally. It is having clarity about the vision of the business that they desire to create, an unshakeable sense of purpose, and a deep desire to pursue their goals, dreams and aspirations despite the number of rejections they may face along the way.   And of course, it takes a very strong commitment to take intentional ACTION no matter what.

In following blogs, I will be sharing some specific ideas and steps on how to develop your mindset in overcoming rejection, and even turning it into opportunity.

Your comments are welcomed.

This is your Most Valuable Market (MVM),  for a simple reason. You have already conducted business with people in this market, and most likely you have established the three essential connections:

            A Personal Relationship, Trust, and Credibility.

Creating multiple earning opportunities for your business will be less expensive; it will require less effort, and a smaller investment in time and energy than paying for advertising and searching for new target markets. Searching for new markets to broaden your client base, however, should also be a part of your ongoing business development strategy.

How to best cultivate your MVM is a focal point of my Unconditionally Successful Business Growth Program.  Creating multiple earning opportunities for ourselves and our businesses takes planning,  consistency, and empathy.

Establishing trust, credibility and a personal relationship is fundamental. Staying connected, learning more about our clients, their families their special interests, providing “added value”, asking for introductions and recommmendations, should be part of our daily business habits.

Aside from consistently serving it’s clients at the HIGHEST LEVEL, the # 1 priority of a business is to generate revenue, and be profitable. Often times however, business owners tend to focus on activities that give them the false sense of “being busy” but do nothing to contribute to their revenue, and profits.

They get side-tracked.  It’s easy to get side-tracked. We are living in a busy world.

So, the question is..

How can you close strong in your business – every month? By focusing on what is most important, every single day. Here are four steps that can help you stay on track:

Step One: Set a challenging revenue goal  that you want to achieve every month. Be clear and specific.

Step Two: Define the most important – business growth – action steps that you need to take in order to make your goal happen. Take action!

Step Three: Put your goal and action steps in writing immediately, and post them everywhere. Track your progress daily.

Step Four: Celebrate the achievement of your goal. You deserve it!

You can FINISH STRONG in your business - every month!  Focus on what is most important, every single day.

They begin relationships, friendships, business opportunities, war and peace. A few simple words can make an enormous difference in the way you’re perceived by the world, in the way you promote yourself, your services, your ideas, and ultimately in the results that you achieve in your business.

Be Prepared to Market Yourself

In conversation, being the first to ask what the other person does for a living can lead to business opportunities. Typically, when you ask about someone’s line of work,  the same question is asked of you. This might be a nice opportunity to begin marketing yourself by talking about your business and how you serve the world.

It’s a good idea, to always be prepared.

Your Professional Introduction Speech

When someone asks what you do for a living, do you simply state your job title? Most small business owners limit their response to their job title, or, line of work. You also may find it challenging to describe your business briefly, and in simple terms so that the person you’re speaking with can immediately understand the inherent “benefit” of your services.

Enter, your Professional Introduction Speech: a simple way for quickly describing what your business is about, so that the average person can understand the benefits, results, transformations your clients are likely to achieve.

The purpose of developing your professional introduction speech – isn’t so that you can “sell” your services on the spot during a meeting with someone you have just met (even though this might happen on some occasions). The goal should be to stimulate enough interest and begin a conversation – a dialogue – about your services. This dialogue may lead to a sale soon, some time in the future, or it could mark the beginning of a long-term business relationship that could benefit you in many other ways beyond the scope of making one sale.

Many times the true opportunity may be yet to come.

Business promotion and growth begins  with every single contact you make with the outside world.

It’s a good idea, to always be prepared!

Promptness in responding to client inquiries.

I have been amazed with the number of times I’ve called professional service providers to inquire about their services and received a call back a week later, or not at all. I find this very surprising especially in a challenging economic environment.

Here is more opportunity for the rest of us!

When you receive a call from a prospect or a client, make every effort to respond ASAP. This can be done by you, or someone in your support staff. If you can’t talk extensively at that particular moment, it’s okay. Simply make the connection. Make this a business priority.

Here is what you could do:

“Hello John: This is George “H” of GS4U. Thanks for your call! I wanted to connect with you right away but I’m currently in between appointments. Can I call you back later? What would be the best time to reach you?”

People today, more than ever, are impatient, pressed for time and run low on energy. They are looking for quick access to smart business owners who can provide them with answers to their challenges, and solutions to their problems.

A smart, quick and easy way for you to position yourself as a valuable business resource and distinguish yourself from your competition is simple: respond quickly to client inquiries.

Your new job interview begins at that moment.