Poisoning an employee? What does that mean? I’ve never hurt anyone anytime in my life! Deliberately yes – likely what you think is the case may not be true! Why? Because poisoning an employee means you’ve removed one or more employee’s sense of empowerment and ability to positively impact the efficiencies/effectiveness of what they do for the company!

What is the typical result of “POISONING AN EMPLOYEE”? Two possible results – there may be many more: 1) they quit and you’re left in the cold having to replace them quickly as their loyalty to the company is no longer there or 2) worse yet – they stay with the company but they’re there only physically – they no longer care and do “just enough work” with less energy and drive than they had before you poisoned them.

Have you ever said to your spouse or a good friend, “Boy, I wish I could spend more time enjoying the sense of accomplishment I should be getting from my business? I hardly have time to get all the stuff done that’s need every day – forget about being able to free up some time to grow and better managing my business?

Worse yet, my spouse just doesn’t understand how hard it is. It’s getting tougher and tougher to get it all done. And I’m falling behind in building my business because I’m just “too busy”!

OK – you’re busy! Busy doing what? Reacting to events? Getting buried in work because you never seem to be able to “keep up”? Do you think there might be something wrong with this picture?

A long time ago, a successful business development professional told me that its far easier to sell more to the people already being sold to than go out and try and close new business. It seemed to me pretty obvious and, since I was also a reseller at the time, I developed a suggestive selling program to encourage my line staff to adopt the practice. It was a successful effort as my company grew 25 percent that year — at least 60 percent of which can be directly attributed to the program.

Sound interesting? It should. Unfortunately the percentage of resellers who train their staff to “suggestive sell” is far less than you’d expect based on the opportunity it presents. I’ve heard estimates that anywhere from 20-25 percent of resellers suggestive sell. What about the other 75-80 percent? They take orders…and their growth and profitability is negatively impacted as a result.

Can you imagine anything worse in business today than to have internal operating/sales-marketing or financial management systems in place that everyone knows and understands, and can use? Yes, the kind of systems that helps make the company more efficient and better able to compete (smile)? What a thought. Probably, almost immediately, you’d start to think [...]

Closing deals takes more than the old “we have great service” line. It takes a carefully crafted USP!