Author: explosivesales

4 Simple Tips for Converting Open House Leads

Posted on June 5, 2018 by explosivesales - Real Estate

Open Houses have long been a lead generation opportunity in real estate. Agents often tell me that they are better at having conversations in person than on the phone when we discuss prospecting during workshops and training calls. Open Houses are a great opportunity to build relationships quickly since you have a face-to-face interaction.

Prospects attending Open Houses also tend to be further along in the process than an online lead. They are already making the effort to get out there and see properties. You could be writing an offer for them today. That’s the type of immediate business we love to find in real estate. Think about how much time you would save if you din’t have to nurture a lead for six months or a year before they buy something.

However, I hear agents complain all the time that they aren’t getting any leads from their Open Houses that don’t already have agents or they just aren’t getting enough traffic. Below are four tips to improve the results from your Open Houses.

1.) Choose the Right Open Houses

If the Open House is for one of your listings, then hopefully you have executed a pricing strategy and Open House schedule that will attract potential buyers and sellers. You may also be running Open Houses for other agents.

Consider the following in your Open House strategy.
Is the listing new or newly priced?
Was it recently staged or has new photos?
Is it in a common price point where lots of people will be looking?
Would you want to work with buyers and sellers in this location?
Is it in your farm area or where your ideal clients live?
Will the agent let you promote the Open House on your site?
Can you use your own Open House signs around the neighborhood with your name on them?

2.) Market to People Outside MLS

I mentioned earlier that a primary complaint from agents is that everyone who attends their Open Houses already has an agent. I always follow-up with this question: “How are you promoting your Open Houses?”

The most common response: “I post it in MLS and send reverse prospecting emails.”

No wonder everyone has an agent when your primary mode of promoting the Open House is through a system that can only be accessed by prospects through another agent.

Try these marketing methods to drive unrepresented traffic to the Open House:

Post on your personal social media accounts for people to come visit you during your Open House.
Knock on doors or call the neighborhood to personally invite people to the Open House.
Run a Facebook Ad with a landing page collecting email addresses for Open House info.
Place directional signs all over the neighborhood with your name and number.

3.) Don’t Wait till Monday to Follow-Up

This doesn’t mean sign a buyer agreement during the Open House. You may be representing the seller. However, letting a potential buyer walk out the door doesn’t serve them, your client, or you whether they are interested in this particular home or not. Make sure to follow the local real estate laws during your Open House conversations, but I would start building a relationship with prospects while they are in front of you.

Monday follow-up calls will be no more effective than cold calls if you aren’t building relationships during the Open House. Building relationships starts with finding out what is most important to the prospect in their next home. Ask powerful questions that will allow the prospect to comfortably share with you. Questions will keep you in control of the conversation and will help you to gain valuable insight for your follow-up.

4.) Know the Local Market and Follow a Script to Provide Value

If the client loves the house you are standing in then I would use a script to help them move to an offer. However since only one person will be buying this particular home, it is far more likely that you will have some standing in front of you that will be looking for something slightly different in a home. When you know the local listings that are similar to the home you are standing in then you will have an opportunity to add value for this prospect right now.

As people are finishing up walking through the home, run through the following script.

Agent: “I would love to offer some feedback to the sellers. Could you tell me what you liked best about the home?”
Buyers: “We like the layout and the size. We really like the kitchen.”
Agent: “If you could change one thing about the house, what would it be?”
Buyers: “The busy street. It is a lot busier than we expected.”
Agent: “Anything else?”
Buyers: “We would like a flat backyard as well. We want to be able to entertain outdoors.”
Agent: “Have you guys happened to see 123 XYZ Street yet? It has a lot of the same features, only it’s in a quiet little neighborhood and has a nice patio and yard.”
Buyers: “No, we haven’t seen it yet.”

Again be sure to follow the agency laws in your state around Open House rules, but there is no sense trying to sell someone on a home they do not want to buy. People hate to be sold. They love to buy. Help them find the home of their dreams, and they will love you for it.

To register for our full Open House Script and our Open House Door-Knocking Script click here.

For all the scripts and eleven methods of lead generation, get your copy of Explosive Sales Growth in Real Estate on Amazon!

Is Your Compensation Plan Driving Sales Results?

Posted on April 30, 2018 by explosivesales - Goal-Setting, Sales

When building a winning sales team and strategy there are a few principles that are sometimes overlooked. Let’s take a look at five questions that when answered properly should help youth build a compensation plan that inspires your sales team to thrive and keeps your company on track for revenue and profit goals.

1.) What will it take for my salespeople to survive on their income based on our cost-of-living?

While it is true that salespeople should be paid for their performance and that the top salespeople will earn the highest income, you do not want your salespeople worrying about how they will pay their basic expenditures. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs makes it pretty clear the physiological and safety needs are requirements for people to perform at a basic level. Fearing how you will pay rent or buy food is not likely motivating your salespeople to sell more. It is likely hurting them and causing them to question their abilities, lowering their confidence, and may be impeding their ability to close.

A base salary should allow someone to at least survive their basic expenses during a difficult month or quarter. If performance issues last longer than a quarter and are not team wide, then we should be working on coaching to a standard or coaching to a new opportunity.

While I suggest a base salary that allows for survival, be careful that the base is not so large that it impedes the company from offering a strong compensation plan for outstanding results while maintaining a comfortable profit margin.

2.) What is most important to my people? What drives the people on my sales team?

This has nothing to do with your compensation plan, but it is the most important question in determining how the compensation plan is promoted to your sales team on an individual basis.

Most people are not driven only by money. People are driven by security, travel, ability to provide for their family, and freedom. These are often afforded through income. The income alone though is not usually the driving factor.

It’s important to spend the time to get to know the driving factor for your sales team. When you are promoting the compensation plan structure and how it will impact their lives, they will be more likely to hit higher goals that will keep your company on track for your revenue and profit goals. Keep your team in mind and ask from their perspective, “What’s in it for me?”.

If I sell $4 Million in product a year, and I earn $X. Pushing me to sell $5 Million to earn $Y will require an understanding of what I would have to give up in order to hit that higher number – training, travel, hours worked, more calls and rejection and comparing that to what I will gain in return – income, freedom, recognition, promotion, significance, etc. If I, as a member of the team, believe the trade-off is worthwhile I will hit the higher goal. If I don’t, why would I put in the extra effort.

When building your compensation plan, consider whether or not you know enough about the people on your sales team to understand what drives them. Then coach them consistently on how to take advantage of the compensation plan to help them achieve their dreams. You will have happy salespeople which will consequently increase your results.

One of my favorite books on this topic is The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. If you are looking for a new level of connecting with your team by helping them achieve what is important to them then you should grab a copy of this book right now.

Hitting Your Goals with The 5 G’s of Goal Setting

Posted on April 16, 2018 by explosivesales - Goal-Setting, Real Estate, Sales

As a sales manager, team leader, coach, sales consultant, and even as a teacher the majority of my career has been spent in conversations with people around goal achievement. There are lots of different ideas about how to be an effective goal-setter and goal-achiever, and these are the 5 concepts that I share in helping people to develop and achieve their goals. I have found that when one of these ingredients are missing then people are far more likely to fall short of their goals, yet when they have all five of them, you may not want to stand in their way.

Listen to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast – The 5G’s of Goal-Setting

1.) Grand Vision –

Sort of like Simon Sinek’s Start With Why, grand vision has more to do with the underlying theme of what is most important in your life and your business than it does with the actual goals. When we talk about grand vision, I am talking about giving yourself permission to dream as big as you possibly can. In all likelihood if you knew exactly how you were going to achieve your grand vision at this point then you probably are not thinking big enough.

The is an exercise we teach in our 1-Day Workshop for The Miracle Morning for Salespeople called Your Greatest Potential which asks the participants to write down what their life and business would look like if everything unfolded perfectly over the next five years. We then ask them to expand on that to determine their greatest potential in the next ten years. The idea behind the exercise is that it gets people to expand their thinking and not be limited by the thought that they have to have everything mapped out as to exactly how it will all unfold. We want to commit to a grand vision that excites us, and we need to leave enough time to let that vision come true.

You would be amazed at how difficult this exercise is for most people. It usually takes a long time for most participants to write down anything of substance. We always have a small percentage in the room who have thought this answer through prior to the workshop, but for most we will get one or two lines that lack clarity in the vision. We hear lots of generalized goals like being a millionaire, being retired on a beach with a frozen drink, or having $X in the bank, but I am looking for people to dig deeper in their grand vision.

What do they want?
How will they spend their time?
What will their relationships look like?
Where will they live?
What will their finances look like?
What will their business look like?
Who’s on their team?
What impact will they make?
How will they give back?

We are looking for this grand vision to provide the energy, passion, enthusiasm and drive to make the outcomes come true. Clarity is a must. The clearer the vision the greater the chance of success.

In his book The Road Ahead, Bill Gates says “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”

He is speaking to the idea of grand vision. When we leave ourselves five or ten years of growth to build towards our greatest potential we are capable of far more than we can even imagine. If you were to look back five or ten years ago, could you even imagine how you got to be where you are right now? Did you ever think you would be doing what your doing? Did you think you would be this successful? Did you think you would have travelled all the places you have been? Met all the people you have met? And achieved all that you have achieved? For most people the answer is no.

The reason is that it’s hard for us to fathom how much we will change, learn, and grow over the course of the next two, three, five, and ten years. We only see what we are capable of based on who we are today, not who we are going to become. If you are focused on personal and professional growth, then you will likely grow exponentially over the next five or ten years. Most people when laying out short-term goals will fall short when they challenge themselves, yet they will often surpass their five-year vision by year three.

2.) Goals (Annual and Quarterly) –

Having a grand vision and having shorter-term goals are not mutually exclusive. We must have both. Most of the people that I work with have goals. They have written down things that they would like to achieve in the next week, month, quarter, or year. The shorter-term goals are important because this is where we can break down the steps to achieve the goal. Knowing the end destination allows us to reverse engineer the plan to move from where we are currently to where we would like to be. I think this is where most people’s strength lies in writing down the goals. There are a couple key weaknesses though that stop people from achieving these goals.

Arbitrary Goals

Most of the short-term business, financial, and health goals I have heard from people appear to be solely based on what they think they should do rather than what is important to them. If they spent a little more time on their grand visions they could build goals that would help them take the next step this year towards achieving their greatest potential. Often people look at goal achievement as though it were linear, but when people achieve at the highest levels the exponential growth pattern is more like that of a hockey stick. The majority of the growth happens at the end because of consistent and disciplined action over time.

The Need for Immediate Results

Because people in our society want everything yesterday, we fall into the trap of overestimating what we can achieve in one month or one year. With a little patience and some focus on the key tasks to achieving our goals over the next three to five years instead of all at once we may experience more success, have higher confidence, and live with a stronger sense of fulfillment. The process and the journey should be enjoyable, not just the results.

Too Many Goals

Having too many goals dilutes the priority placed on the most important items. The dog that chases two foxes catches neither. The book The ONE Thing is probably one of the best resources on this topic. You can have more than one goal in the different areas of your life, but there has to be ONE thing at any given time that ‘makes everything else easier or unnecessary.’ When you have too many priorities, then nothing is a priority.

3.) Game Plan –

This is the reverse engineering of the shorter-term goals. The reason for the game plan is to take larger goals that may seem daunting at first glance and break them into a list of smaller, more manageable tasks that can be done each day or week in order to stay on track for achieving your goal.

There are three keys to a game plan will work.

1.) Priorities must be scheduled as daily, weekly, and monthly activities that will be completed consistently to stay on track for the goal. The activities should also be assigned, so that one person is responsible for ensuring that the task is completed.

2.) The activities must be measurable. For instance, when training for a half marathon the game plan for this week can not be running. The game plan should be run 3 miles on Monday, run 4 miles on Thursday, and complete a long run of 8 miles on Saturday. There is no question as to whether or not I fully completed those actions. I either did them or I did not.

3.) We must have faith that plan works. If we have no evidence or no belief that the plan will work, then we will likely not follow through with the activities over the long haul. Why would we commit to a plan if we did not really believe that it would help us to achieve our goal. We would not. This is similar to the idea of Hal Elrod’s Miracle Equation at the end of our book The Miracle Morning for Salespeople. You must have the faith to conjure the energy to complete the tasks.

I am believer in making sure that when you break down the goals into a plan that you must ask yourself three questions to ensure you will follow through. Does it align with my grand vision? Do the activities fit in my calendar? Do the activities fit in my budget?

Just as when we discussed goals a few paragraphs ago, if your game plan is not in alignment with your grand vision and the things that you have deemed as your top priorities then it will be difficult to find the energy, capacity, enthusiasm, passion, or willpower to complete them. If you add up all the hours to complete the tasks in your schedule on a daily or weekly basis, and they are not physically possible then we are setting ourselves up for failure. If we consistently over-schedule ourselves to hit our business goals or health goals, to the point where we neglect our relationship with our spouse or time with our family, then we may find ourselves burnt out on the journey. We must either find leverage or lengthen the timeline. Lastly, if we have leveraged tasks then they often come at a price and we must ensure that they fit in our budget over the long-haul so we can maintain consistency in those tasks as well. This leverage may come in the form of vendors, coaches, or employees, and if we suddenly cannot afford them in our budget then it will leave us short of our goal and our previous spending may be for nothing.

I wrote about an example of this with real estate agents in my newest book, Explosive Sales Growth in Real Estate, and this could be related to anyone using direct mail. Farming is a long-term direct mail strategy targeting specific people. A common mistake agents make is that they choose a larger farm than they can afford to sustain. Since it’s a long-term strategy they should be planning to follow through with the activities consistently for at least a year or two before expecting typical results. Most agents do not take this into consideration, so they burn their budget in six months and decide that farming is not working for them, so they either decrease the farm, decrease the frequency of direct mail, or they stop altogether. By not reverse engineering the budget for the plan, they set themselves up for failure or at least a lesser return on investment. If they slowly built the farm as they began to see the results, the results would fund the continued activity.

4.) Guidance –

We can either learn from the successes and mistakes of others or from our own. I have found that learning from my own mistakes is a lot more costly than learning from the mistakes of others. Guidance could come from any number of resources: a book, a webinar, a workshop, a training, an online course, a mentor, or a coach. Some offer a higher level of learning than others because of their on-going nature and your ability to interact and ask questions to get help specified to your own goals and obstacles.

You can certainly accomplish just about any goal on your own. After all someone had to be the first person to do everything the first time it was done. However, in most cases the goals we seek to achieve have already been accomplished by someone else. Their success leaves clues for us along the way. The easiest way to achieve any goal is to find out exactly how someone else already accomplished what you have set out to do. You may have your own little nuances, personality, and strengths that impact your final plan on achieving your goal, but having an understanding of how others have already achieved your goal will substantially shorten the learning curve.

Accountability is the second component one should look from coaches, mentors, or accountability partners when setting out to accomplish significant goals. There are bound to be obstacles along the way. There will likely be times when we need to be reminded of why we have set out on the journey in the first place. And there will be times when we need someone to remind us of our small wins along the way, so we remain committed even in the face of adversity. It’s far easier to be accountable to someone else than to ourselves. It is far too easy to let ourselves off the hook and tell ourselves stories about why it’s okay that we didn’t achieve the goal.

5.) Get It Done –

We can do all the planning and goal-setting in the world, but in the end it comes down to taking action. If we do not follow through with our commitments through disciplined and consistent action then we will always fall short of our goals. In coaching salespeople I will often work through prospecting plans that involve a certain number of calls or handwritten notes that need to be completed per day or per week. The easiest way to tell if someone is going to succeed at hitting their goal is whether or not they know exactly how many they completed and that they are consistently hitting their activity goal. While measuring results is important, sometimes results lie. The person with consistent action according to their plan will continue to improve over time and hard work will beat out talent most of the time, unless the talent is also working hard. The difference between goals and achievement is discipline and consistency.

Visit our homepage to download the FREE 15-Page Guide: Hitting Your 1-Year Goals

How Exercise Helps You Hit Your Business Goals

Posted on January 25, 2018 by explosivesales - Goal-Setting, SAVERS

I am not a fan of going to the gym. I mean, I love the feeling afterwards. I love the way I look when I do it regularly. I love the burst of energy. It’s just the physical act of working out that I could do without. In fact, I know that even if I joined a gym I wouldn’t actually go. I know because I have had countless gym memberships. I may have had more gym memberships than consecutive days working out in the past. The problem is that even though I hate going to the gym, my health is important to me. I have exercise and health goals. Being around for my kids is important. Having the energy to take them on adventures is important. Being alive and full of energy is important to me.

As important as those things are, I knew that they still wouldn’t inspire me. They still were not going to make me wake up and want to get to the gym. I knew that I needed to do something drastic.

Inspiration vs Desperation

I had a conversation in an interview with one of my mentors, Rock Thomas, the other day. Rock is the author of Your Epic Life Blueprint: Quit the Rat Race and Create a Happier Life! We were discussing that there are really two opportunities for motivation, and they are desperation and inspiration. Typically I find that I have the ability to get inspired by setting goals in alignment with my values and beliefs. I can find outside inspiration through other leaders who have gone before me. I can set a reward that inspires me. However, when it comes to the gym, inspiration does not quite seem to work for me. I need desperation.

So, I had to ask myself what level of desperation would make me get to the gym? I came up with different answers. Like if I knew I was going to die in 6 months if I didn’t lose 25 pounds that would probably work. Or if I was not going to be able to walk again if I didn’t get in better shape, I would likely value my mobility enough to make the decision to exercise. As I thought about it though, thankfully these dire situations do not exist for me and hopefully never will. Instead I needed something that would pull desperation close. What could I do to put my back against the wall?

So, here it is. On May 20, I will be running a half-marathon, 13.1 miles. The event pulls the deadline close enough to inspire action. The real kicker though would be my next step. I registered for the event and then invited some friends to run with me. Those friends are in far better shape than me. I knew that once I made the commitment to someone else, I would not allow myself to fail. I would not let them down. Often I find that people are better at having integrity for the things they promise others than they are for commitments they make to themselves. I put myself in a position of desperation to inspire action in a positive way.

For some of my friends who have done Ultra-Marathons and Ironman Competitions, a half-marathon may seem like a small feat. However, I am not them, and I only need to compare myself to me. In order to become healthier, I simply need to get a little better each day. Committing to this training will get me there.

My Last Half-Marathon

Ten years ago, I ran a half-marathon, and it changed everything. I could barely run a mile when I started. I remember that first run all too well. I decided to lace up my sneakers and run as far as I could and then walk back to my house. After what seemed like an eternity I remember gasping for air, trying not to vomit, hunched over on the sidewalk. With each shallow breath in an attempt to quickly fill my lungs as sweat poured off my face I began to gain a little composure. After a few minutes of recovery I started the walk back home. By the time I reached my house I was excited to drive the route and find out just how far I had made it on my first attempt. As I rounded the final corner in the last stretch of my route I looked down at the trip odometer in shocking disbelief. More like astonishing disappointment. .9 miles (yep, not a typo, less than 1 mile). I was partying too much with friends, and I was not a runner. I am still not a runner. I doubted whether I could actually complete the race. However, I had already committed in front of other people. I couldn’t back down now.

After 13 weeks of training, I was in the best shape of my life. I followed a training program that had worked for thousands of other runners to prepare, and it’s no real surprise that it worked for me as well. I completed 13 straight 10-minute miles and ran the half-marathon in a little over 2 hours and 10 minutes. That single accomplishment created all sorts of momentum in other areas of my life. I met my wife a few months later. I started looking for ways to build on my career. I kicked my personal development journey into high gear. I worked closely with Hal Elrod, with whom I would later co-author the best-seller, The Miracle Morning for Salespeople: The Fastest Way to Take Your SELF and Your SALES to the Next Level.

Why am I telling you all this? How will this help your business? Stick with me. I am getting there.

This year I quit my job as the Team Leader of a large real estate brokerage. The job paid well, but it didn’t support my long-term goals of freedom and the ability to travel in order to speak and train salespeople. In order to turn 2018 into the launching pad for reaching my personal and business goals, I knew that I needed to start with something tangible that would create a ripple affect in all areas of my life. Therefore, I decided it was time to run the half-marathon again. And, I wanted to share the 5 ways I believe this will carry over into my business goals as well.

5 Ways Hitting this One Goal Will Impact My Business Goals

1.) Goal Achievement Creates the Pattern for Hitting Other Goals

Goal-Setting and Goal Achievement doesn’t change much across all arenas. It works much like a GPS which most of us have all come to know and love. We love the GPS because we know that with just a couple pieces of information and by following the directions (the plan) it will take us exactly where we want to go, and it will typically even be able to tell us when we will get there. In order to move from couch to half-marathon, marathon to ironman, or five-figure earner to six or seven-figure earner we need the same pieces of information.

A.) We need a very clear picture of where we currently stand. We must be honest with ourselves.

B.) We need a clear destination that is measurable and has a timeline.

C.) We need a plan that is proven to work, and that we believe in.

Learning to find these three pieces of information and follow the plan will create the belief and discipline required to achieve any of these goals. Here is the link to the half-marathon plan I will follow for my training.

https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/Half-Marathon-Training-Schedule-Beginners-2845222

D.) The last and most vital component of the GPS is that it lets us know as soon as we go off track. One wrong turn and you will inevitably see the word ‘Recalculating’. We must constantly measure our progress and determine the next step to get back on track as soon as we fall behind. The more frequently we measure, the easier it is to get back on track.

2.) Positive Daily Habits Will Form

By training for this half-marathon I will be doing some form of training 5-6 days a week. That level of commitment creates a habit. After a few weeks, I barely even need to think about my training calendar. About six weeks in, and I know I will be craving the exercise. The endorphins released will far outweigh the pain of the exercise when will-power is no longer required.

Consider how many areas where this applies in your business. How many times have you been held back because you did not consistently do the things you knew you needed to do to hit your goals? How many calls didn’t you make? How many times did you drop the ball on follow-up? What would happen if you had a consistent system and set of habits to ensure these behaviors happened regularly?

Imagine the energy and momentum that would be created through those consistent actions. That positive energy will attract things into your life. It will attract clients, mentors, capital etc. We attract what we become.

To learn more about forming habits and focusing on the activities that knock down the first domino, I highly recommend checking out The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papason.

3.) Physical Energy Increases

The last time I trained for a half-marathon I finished at a weight of around 155 lbs. I currently weigh in at 185 lbs. While I may never hit 155 lbs again (I have little desire to), I will likely lose 10-15 lbs during my training. Shedding this unneeded weight will likely lower my blood pressure, increase my oxygen levels, and create several other physical changes that will impact my overall level of physical energy. Strengthening my core through the training improves posture. All of these combined will allow me to apply more energy and focused effort to my business goals.

Since many of my readers and followers either fall into some sales role, small business, or entrepreneurship we know that our physical energy shows up in our interactions with team members, prospects, and clients alike. Positive energy creates attraction and ‘Yes’ responses. People want to work with people they like, and people tend to like positive people who raise their vibration not people who bring them down whenever they talk.

4.) Improved Mental Fortitude

This is the one area that I wonder if it will have the same effect on the second time around. The first time I trained for this run, I remember thinking that there was nothing I was incapable of conquering. No goal I couldn’t accomplish. Remember that I started by barely completing a one mile run on my first attempt. Then, over only a few months, I completed 13 ten-minute miles. I learned that my body was seldom what was holding me back. It was almost always my mind telling me that I was tired, or that I can’t do it, or I’m not in good enough shape, or I am not strong enough.

These limiting beliefs creep up in our businesses all the time and stop us from achieving our goals. By training our minds to overcome adversity in one area it overflows into other areas where the subconscious mind has roamed free and thwarted our plans to achieve great things. Once we change the pattern, those subconscious thoughts start to shift. It’s hard to believe you can’t do something, when you’re sub-conscious is shouting, “You can do anything you set your mind to. You just ran 13 miles. You didn’t think you could run a mile, and you ran 13. What else can you do that you don’t think you can?” Affirmations can help you reprogram this subconscious thought as well.

5.) Unintentional Overlap

For some reason when I make good decisions about exercise, I automatically make better decisions in other areas of my life as well. Maybe I don’t want to sabotage my efforts. Maybe it’s just the endorphins from the exercise, but I notice that I eat better, drink less, sleep better, and a whole list of other things that are impacted by my training. All of these decisions build on one another. They create a domino effect. Each of them has a bigger and bigger impact as they all start to work together.

In business, when we make a commitment to improve in one area, it will often impact other areas as well. For instance, when we commit to a plan of lead generation, adding new clients, and growing revenue we cannot help but affect other areas. When done well the new business growth will force us to make our systems more efficient, hire quality people or add technology that creates leverage. Each new positive habit we build creates an avalanche effect.

So for 2018, I have committed to my training calendar, knowing that it will infuse my body, mind, and spirit with the mental, physical, and emotional energy I need to crush my business and personal goals this year. It may not be a Half-Marathon for you, but consider what one thing you could commit to that will create tremendous momentum for the rest of your life this year. Here’s to building off that momentum.

Improve Productivity and Focus with these 3 Lists

Posted on June 6, 2017 by explosivesales - Sales, Time Management

Does it ever seem like no matter how much you accomplish in a day, a week, or a month that your business always seems to require more of your time? Productivity and focus are the key to success when the list gets unbearably long.

In our current age of endless information and access we have reached a point where it is quite possible to never be done. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I went to bed with nothing left on the to-do list. As an entrepreneur and salesperson who thrives on getting things done this created a huge hurdle for me. Just being able to accept the fact that there will always be something left to do allowed me to start sleeping again.

Beyond just letting go of some of the tasks, however, there are some exercises we can use to focus our energy on the things that matter most. Creating the following three lists will make it easier to focus on the key areas that grow your business and increase productivity. Crushing these key areas, or top dollar producing activities, should create opportunities to hire leverage to complete more menial tasks that may be equally as important but not quite as significant.

3 lists to improve focus and productivity

Things to Keep Doing

The first list stems from celebrating our victories and rewarding the actions that we would like to see repeated. This list is a list of things to keep doing. The questions to answer here include things like: What am I currently doing that is driving the most new clients to my business? What am I doing that is moving my clients to refer me to their friends, family, or business associates? If I had to account for each dollar of revenue for the last 6 months, where did they come from and what did I do to help drive them?

Whatever you come up with for actions on this list you should take steps to ensure that there is enough time in your calendar for these activities on a daily or weekly basis. Remember, we just determined that these are currently the highest and best use of your time. Do not fill the whole calendar as we will have more to add in a moment. Also, set some measurable goals around these activities each day or week and create a reward system each time you hit your activity goal. This will solidify the habit by rewarding the proper activity.

Things to Start Doing

Lack of knowledge or education is not typically the issue for most people. Most people have attended training seminars, read books, listened to podcasts, paid for coaching, etc. All of these educational pieces play a critical role in one’s success. I urge you to ask yourself whether you have actually implemented the things you have learned. Many of us have extremely intelligent book shelves. We may have even read the books, but I find in most cases our level of implementation leaves something to be desired.

I have read countless books with great ideas or exercises that I couldn’t wait to try, but then life and business go in the way. Fires started popping up, and I ran to put them out. Maybe when I have a little more time I will implement some new strategies. Here’s the deal. You make the time. This list is a list of things you know you should be doing. You have heard experts talk about how this key step helped their business explode. You have read books on the topic. You know what to do or who to call. You just need to start. This list is about what you know you need to start doing, but just haven’t yet.

Things to Stop Doing

This is often the toughest. The final list should create the time for us to start implementing the new activities that we know we are supposed to be doing, but haven’t started. Often times we didn’t start because we just didn’t have the time. Well, I am calling BS. I know because I would make the same excuses in the past. I have 3 kids, coach Little League, a wife, a job, a business, and side hustle or two as well as friends and extended family. Even with all these areas vying for my attention, I still had opportunities to eliminate things from my calendar that were decreasing productivity.

For some this is as simple as not checking email or Facebook posts first thing in the morning. Imagine those first couple hours spent on something more productive, like writing this blog post, organizing your list of contacts for the day, practicing your scripts or presentation. It may be that going out for a beer to unwind with some friends on a Friday is perfectly acceptable and a reward for hitting your goals for the week. At the same time, closing the bar at 1 am is probably not increasing productivity for the week. Maybe it’s just getting sucked into the television that’s slowing you down. Whatever your vice, this is an area to find some much needed time to implement new high level activities to drive your business.

Keys to Productivity – Putting It All Together

These lists work together to create a road map to success in your business. Use the results of this exercise to develop a foundational calendar for a productive week. This time-blocking should incorporate all the success habits that are currently allowing your business to flourish as well as time to implement the new activities that are sure to take your business to the next level.

Review these lists quarterly as you may find that your activities need to change as your business increases. You may need to find ways to leverage some of the key activities as you further narrow your focus. This is a sure sign of success as you can begin to hire people who are even better than you in these certain areas. It may even be that you hire someone to implement the things you should start doing, essentially doubling productivity.

The key is spending a little time to assess what activities are the lifeblood of your business and ask yourself whether you are spending enough time on them. I challenge you to stop an complete this exercise right now before it just becomes another thing you know you should do, but you just didn’t implement.

For more exercises to create explosive sales results get your copy of The Miracle Morning for Salespeople Companion Guide on Amazon.

Are Your Sales Goals Big Enough? How to Create Results through Goal-Setting

Posted on May 24, 2017 by explosivesales - Sales

Long-Term Goals Allow You to Dream

Most people are simply not thinking big enough when setting goals. Let’s see if I can walk you through what I mean. Take a moment now to think back to what your life was like ten years ago. Really STOP! Think back. How different is your life now? How many amazing things have you accomplished in the past ten years? Think of all the obstacles you have overcome. Review all the new things you have learned. Think of all the trips you have been on. Consider all the people you have met. Imagine all the new clients. If you were asked ten years ago if you would be where you are today, would you have even thought most of those things possible or even imaginable at this point in your life?

The thing is that, in sales, we focus so much on the short-term goals. What’s our goal for the year? Are we hitting our quarterly numbers? Did we do enough top dollar producing activities this week? All of these are extremely important to us growing our business, and I am not saying that we should stop doing any of them.

In fact, we offer a free report specifically for Hitting Your One Year Goals.

The Problem With Short Term Goals

There is, however, a problem with only thinking about our growth in the short-term. It can be hugely discouraging, and it can literally stop us from taking the required action to grow. When we fall behind on our short-term goals it is very easy to lose the commitment to the very activities that create results. Often our short-term goals are extremely high, yet our long-term vision lacks clarity and focus.

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”

–Bill Gates- Author of The Road Ahead

Having taught this as part of our Miracle Morning for Salespeople Live Seminar, I have watched a great number of people struggle to articulate their five-year and ten-year dreams and goals. This exercise and several others will provide fuel for your mind and spirit when you are falling short on this week’s goal and need some additional willpower. Often the one-year goal does not muster enough excitement to pull us back into action.

You can find several of these activities on Amazon in The Miracle Morning for Salespeople Companion Guide.

It will be much harder to give up on your five-year and ten-year dreams. After all, who can tell you that you cannot accomplish something in ten years? Look what you have already done in the last ten.

Click here to download 2 Free Chapters or purchase the book, The Miracle Morning for Salespeople.

Affirmations that Work – 4 Tips to Creating Effective Affirmations

Posted on April 8, 2017 by explosivesales - Sales, SAVERS

Affirmations that Work!

Do you remember being told that if you want something, really really want something you must affirm and reaffirm those very same things loudly and clearly again and again? That you must say all those things that you want to be true as if they were already true?

And that’s exactly what you did! You sat there or stood there (maybe in front of a mirror) and enunciated all those hopeful thoughts loudly and clearly, again and again (and hoped that nobody was able to hear you and if they did they did not think you were being silly!)

Even though that was precisely what you thought about yourself! And sometimes you asked if you were just lying to yourself…

It seemed like your words (even when stated loudly, clearly and repeatedly) still did not convince your mind or yourself. It became a process which you eventually agreed only made you feel conflicted, uncomfortable and unwilling to believe! And often plain silly!

So you stopped doing it!

You stopped believing in and practicing your affirmations!

Because you were not aware that it was possible to believe in your affirmations and to make them work!

And the Miracle Morning does just that – makes you aware of a process that will help you believe (again) in your affirmations and make them work!

There are 4 simple steps to this process:

Affirm (again) – what do you really really want and why it is that so important to you. You begin by establishing and affirming what it is that is important to you and why it is important to you.
Commit – what do you promise you are going to do to make sure what you really really want actually happens! What are the activities that you commit to do to make sure your affirmations come true?
Say it with feeling – you should be able to see what you want, smell it, hear it, almost taste it (and know that you are going to touch it – definitely touch it)
Check in – with what you really really want as often as possible. Review them again and again.

An example of an affirmation would be where you tell yourself that during this year you plan to double your sales volume in order to be able to afford 3 extremely exciting vacations with your family. And in order to double your sales volume you are going to ensure that you talk to 20 new people every new single day about your product.

I am doubling my sales volume in order to take my family on three vacations this year by talking with 20 prospects every day!

You are stating what you really want (the increased sales volume), why you want it (for that vacation) and what it is you are going to do to make certain that it happens (those 20 people you plan to talk to).

Then imagine, not talking to those 20 people you promised to contact. That should make you uncomfortable. Hopefully so uncomfortable that you actually make the calls.

And while that volume may not have doubled yet, it will be because of your commitment to talking to those 20 new people each day. Otherwise you would be living out of alignment, and that should make you more uncomfortable than not making the calls!

This is a reprogramming of the subconscious mind. You are creating new patterns and telling a new story about yourself. The difference now is that you can actually buy-in to your own words because it isn’t just wishful thinking. You are creating behavior change that will bring the results.

Integrity and without exception – that’s making sure you always do the things you say you are going to do.

If you enjoyed this article and would like more information on this topic, order your copy of The Miracle Morning for Salespeople now on Amazon!

Meditation and Silence Improve Sales

Posted on April 1, 2017 by explosivesales - Sales, SAVERS

Could Meditation Grow Your Sales?

Meditation is making, or has made in some circles, it’s way out of the land of hippity-dippity into the business realm. Because of meditation’s tremendous benefits, it’s no surprise that meditation has become more and more popular as part of a daily routine of successful people and Fortune 500 Companies alike. The benefits of meditation reach far beyond the basics of simple peace and quiet. Recently I had the opportunity to see Julianna Raye, mindfulness coach and trainer, speak at the Best Year Ever Live Event, and she discussed some of the basic reasons why meditation is such an important part of a daily routine.

Here are just a few of the benefits of Silence and Meditation:

Improve Focus, Clarity, and Productivity
Lower Stress & Blood Pressure
Strengthen Your Immune System
Better Sleep Cycle
Heighten Creativity, Empathy, Emotional Regulation, and Well-Being
Slow Brain Degeneration and Increase Neuroplasticity
Improve Sex Drive

Now, I am sure there is not a single one of you reading this post that couldn’t use some improvement in at least one of those areas if not all of them. I am no exception to that rule. That is one of the reasons meditation has become such an important daily practice. For me, meditation has improved my attitude, intensified my clarity and focus, and allowed me to balance my emotions and stress in a healthy fashion.

Zen stones in water for meditation.

As a salesperson, sales trainer, sales manager, sales leader, author, speaker, father, and husband, there is seldom a time that my mind stops for even a second. While that ADHD, type A, driven salesperson mentality has led me to accomplish a great many of my goals, it is not always the most healthy, efficient, or effective way to take on all challenges.

I have learned the incredible power of clarity and focus that comes from starting my day with a morning routine based in personal development. The first practice of which is Silence.

While I struggled with meditation for the first several attempts, okay, more like for weeks or even months, I have learned some extremely helpful tips in practicing meditation that have improved my practice and increased the benefits.

3 Tips to Improve Your Practice

1.) Focus on your breath. I would explain more, but it really needs little to no explanation. You have been breathing for your entire life. It takes no thought at all to breathe in and out. In fact, that’s likely why we still exist. So, by focusing on the breath, you will allow your body to relax and move away from trying to solve the problems of the world.

2.) Don’t fight the 50 Million thoughts. For a long time I thought I was meditating the wrong way. No matter what I did I couldn’t stop the thoughts from entering my head during meditation. Just recognize the distraction. Even label it based on whether it is something you see, hear, or feel and then let it pass and move on.

3.) Lots of us type A salespeople and entrepreneurs have trouble slowing down. I strongly suggest trying some guided meditations. There are some great apps available like Headspace, Calm, Omvana, and several others. There are also tons of Free guided meditations you can find on YouTube.

If you would like to learn more about my daily morning routine and how to implement silence and meditation into your day, check out two free chapters of my book, The Miracle Morning for Salespeople.

You can read this and several other books for FREE with Amazon Kindle Unlimited.