Kevin Boyle

Every now and then I have the rare privilege of speaking with someone who mirrors my values on being authentic and being genuine in their desire to help others.

Bob Burg is such a man.

This man practices what he preaches, which is relationship selling. In fact one of the principles he espouses, “All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like and trust,” can also be found in my book under The First Key to Asking For and Making the Sale, “You must earn the trust of your customer”.

I would like to take this opportunity to share with you a book that Bob co-authored with John David Mann, it’s called “The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea.” “The Go-Giver” is a business parable that presents its message in the form of a story where the authors explore what is the real value behind creating wealth and success in your business.

The book is a parable, and if you take the message to heart (like I did) it will give you and your business soul! Rather than seeking what others can do for you, seeking what we can do and how we can be of service to others. A seemingly easy concept to grasp yet for some difficult to master and to put in actual practice.

Ultimately, for me the book is a practical guide of how to make the “Laws of Attraction” work for you.

Here are the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success (as presented by the authors):

1) The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.
2) The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
3) The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.
4) The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
5) The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

Simply put if you are looking to reaffirm what is really important in your life and learn some practical lessons along the way, then “The Go-Giver” is a must read!

To find out more about Bob Burg, his work, and his books visit him here…

** Please note, Bob is the real deal. (He does practice what he preaches).

If you are looking for a book that is practical and has real substance, then look no further!

In short, noted author John Seeley goes where I needed him to go with his powerful, insightful, and life changing book “Get Unstuck! The Simple Guide to Restart Your life!”

This book offers a practical guide for anyone who’s not really happy with where they are or who for the moment may be feeling “overwhelmed” and might not be completely sure on what steps they need to take in order to make that shift they need to improve their life circumstances.

What I liked most about John’s book is how John looks at our underlying beliefs and experiences. I think most of us at some point in our lives wrestle with our self image and how we got to here (wherever here may be for you). What most of us don’t fully understand and fully realize is that the person that drives us (our unconscious behavior patterns) for the most part comes from and through the lens of our early childhood!

And this is where John’s book really hits a home run. John’s book is chock block full of thought provoking questions, action steps for setting goals, and most importantly exercises for accomplishing change in your attitudes and your circumstances!

How many times have you found yourself making the same mistakes over and over? I think we all need help from time to time in “Getting Unstuck”! This practical, easy-to-read and all so very inspirational book is a must have for book lovers and people who are serious about real self improvement!

My thoughts, highly reccomended!

If you would like to learn more about John and this fantastic book go here!

Every now and then there comes along a person who gets you to reevaluate your approach to selling, that person for me is none other than Joe Nunziata. A long long time ago I had met a sales trainer at a networking function, basically his words of wisdom for me were, “if you haven’t taken my sales training program then you’re doing it wrong”.

Now at the time it came as a little bit of a shock to me as I was currently not only our companies best salesperson but our industries best sales rep (I was setting new and higher sales records each and every month). But, I guess what really bothered me was the arrogance of the statement.

Perhaps he thought he was being confident in his program, but for me it only diminished his stature in my eyes, probably the exact opposite effect he was hoping to elicit from people!

So what does this all have to do with Joe? Well Joe is the opposite, Joe and I share familiar phislosophies when it comes to selling, all be it, Joe has a twist. Joe and I believe that every single person (in fact I continue to learn even from my students each and every single day) bring something new and innovative to the table. We can never stop learning from each other! We are all students in this journey we call life. We all bring value to the table.

More importantly though, where the “rubber hits the road”, Joe takes a unique and valuable look at selling. He goes where other authors seldom have the courage to go, a deeper understanding of your spiritual self and it’s affects on your ability to sell and generate business success.

My takeaways from Joe Nunziata’s book, “Spiritual Selling” included but were not limited too;

1) Clearing your blocked chakras for improved success in selling.

2) Partnering with your customers to help them buy rather than “selling” them.

3) Joe’s easy to use and follow guideline to help you organize your day.

4) Joe will help you connect to the higher power that surrounds each and every one of us. “Love what you do, and what you do will love you back!”

For those of you who don’t know Joe, he is real, he is genuine, his message is powerful and his book is definately worth putting on your “books worth reading list”!

If you would like to learn more about Joe Nunziata and his book “Spiritual Selling” go here…

From time to time, I like to introduce you to new material that I believe will be of great benefit in helping you getting more out of your life and more out of your business.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alan Tutt, celebrated Author and self-empowerment coach. Alan, is one of those rare authentic individuals who’s main concern is helping others. This is quite evident, when you get the opportunity to speak with Alan and see the quality of his materials.

While speaking to Alan, he introduced me to his Pathway to Power program. The Pathway to Power program consists of three recordings that come in MP3 format in which you can download to your iPod or burn to into a CD.

For those of you who know me, you know I’m pretty well working six days a week in and on my business. For me it’s love, but it does come with it’s challenges and there are days when I used to feel overwhelmed. Although there are three CDs in the series; Sharpen your Focus, The Power of Intention, and my personal favorite by far is Alan’s meditation “Awaken your Power”.

It’s been a week since I started listening daily to the meditation “Awaken your Power” and I noticed a difference in what I was able to manifest in my life after the first couple of days. In the “Awaken Your Power” meditation, you’re guided to relax and open yourself up to the Power of the Universe. Alan does the meditations himself, and you will find ways very soothing, relaxing and reassuring.

As with most of these programs, there just simply isn’t enough time to really utilize the full power of all three audio programs that can take up an hour of your day. Because of this reason, I try to fit in; Sharpen your Focus and the Power of Intention when and where I can.

Overall the quality of the recordings and the background music is very professional and well done, and I would have to say that you are looking for something to help you to relax and access a higher power than yourself, then I would highly recommend this material for you.

From what I understand, Alan is also coming out with a new book called, Choose to Believe. Therefore, I copied and pasted the following from Alan’s web site so you can get a mini preview:

Within this revolutionary new book, Alan presents some VERY interesting concepts – including some that have NEVER been presented before.

Concepts such as:

why thoughts DO NOT create reality
how quantum irregularities become real magic
why you’re not ALWAYS responsible for the things that happen to you
why we sometimes experience things that conflict with our surface beliefs
why some people use affirmations or visualizations and get the opposite of what they focus upon
why the connection between reality and the Power of Belief is not always obvious
the role the Placebo Effect plays in creating the life of your dreams.

Of course, understanding WHY things happen is not nearly as important as knowing HOW to change things as you desire.  That’s why this new book presents a POWERFUL system for doing exactly this, and offers some UNIQUE tools.

You can find out more about Alan and his TRANSFORMATIONAL work here…

Over the past couple of years several “guru’s” and so-called industry “experts” have tried to demystify the “myth” that sales is a numbers game.

Their argument is based on numerous conjectures, for example that the salesperson who goes for numbers is not interested in quality. That they are just unskilled salespeople using a shotgun approach.

That they will sell anybody with a pulse.

They will explain further that because the salesperson uses this “willy-nilly” approach that in doing so they’re actually getting bad customers. Bad customers who are difficult and represent most of your headaches, and drain you of your precious energy throughout your day.

I’m not going to go into how silly and preprosperous this is, any professional successful salesperson is always concerned about the quality of his leads. And any professional successful salesperson generally has clients who can be difficult at times whether they were a good initial fit or not.

This overgeneralization about salespeople going for quantity over quality is an oversimplification of the process, and demeaning to sales and business people in general.

Another argument put forward by our so-called “gurus” and “industry experts” is that their “system” which in my opinion is nothing more than a lead generating piece (a marketing piece for lack of a better term) is to entice interested prospects into contacting them.

So my response to that is while you are waiting for the phone to ring, what is it that you are doing with the rest of your time?

An interesting download on sales mastery…

The fact is any marketing piece or lead generating piece takes time to bring in qualified leads. Would you rather use a system that’s reactive (a marketing piece or lead generating piece) or a system that’s proactive?

Leaving those two arguments aside, I do believe sales is a numbers game and I want to prove it to you.

The professional successful salesperson proactively looks for quality leads, he or she qualifies each prospect carefully to see if there is a good fit for their product or their service. These are called sales skill sets.

Additionally, professional successful salespeople and business owners have a high degree of belief in themselves and in this one life transforming principle:

“All it takes is one person or one opportunity to change your life.”

Really think about what you just read, and how that relates directly to the premise that yes sales is a numbers game.

My message to you is simply this, never stop knocking on doors, you never know who or what is going to be behind the next door and whether there will be that one person who will change your life forever!

All it takes, is one person to believe in you as much as you believe in yourself! That’s why sales is a numbers game. It’s about finding people who believe in you, and yes if you knocked on enough doors you will find people that will believe in you and your product and your service.

I have met some of my best friends and business associates from cold calling. These are people I would’ve never had the opportunity to speak to, these are the same people who take flyers and throw them in the garbage, I’ve asked them, they actually prefer someone who has the courage and the belief in themselves to call them. I’ve asked them about e-mails, they said more often than not they just hit the delete key.

When you cold call, and you leave voicemails, you leave a part of yourself with that person. If you are not getting the results that you want, it doesn’t mean that there is something inherently wrong with sales being a numbers game, or cold calling or prospecting in particular, it might just mean that your scripts or MOST importantly your approach needs a lot of fine tuning.

Let me be the one help you get the results you have been looking for!

Never ever underestimate how life-changing that next call with that next person can be. That next person could be and can be your next best friend, that next person who helps you out in lifts you up, that next person that gives you a referral into another account, or that next person who becomes your very best client.

But you will never know, you will never have that opportunity, if you do not have the courage to pick up the phone and use it.

Kevin, I need your help getting past the gatekeeper!

Kevin Boyle
Author / Public Speaker / Sales Trainer and Coach
“The Secrets to Sales Mastery”

ps – Did you enjoy this post? Please feel free to add your comments!

Other Blog Articles on Cold Calling Techniques;

3 Rules to building a compelling cold calling strategy!

The best cold calling advice I can give you!

How to get your voice mails returned!

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Did you know that more than seventy five percent of today’s businesses have replaced cold calling with emails?

I would be willing to bet my next dollar, that the reason most salespeople and businesses do this is because they don’t want to feel the rejection of making that dreaded cold call. What most salespeople and business owners fail to realize is that according to studies up to 97% of those e-mails either end up trapped in a spam filter or deleted before their even read.

So what then?

I would love to sell you a program on how to “never suffer through another cold call again!” How to double or triple your prospecting results by just using e-mail! But I would be lying to you. The fact is unsolicited and one unwanted advertising is the same in any medium or form, it’s spam.

And no one likes it.

What determines whether a marketing piece is going to be successful or not is the effectiveness of the headline, targeting the right person or audience, and having a Client Centered Value Proposition that speaks directly to the recipient.

With the introduction of the internet sales people and business owners alike have access to new tools to communicate with their prospects and their customers. Some sales people and business owners may even think using email to sell their products or services is a great idea. But I would ask them, what is their real motivation, fear?

E-mail should be part of an entire cold calling and prospecting campaign. A campaign where cold calling is part of the overall strategy.

Why? In my opinion leaving a voice mail is still a better option than an e-mail.

And let me tell you why, when you leave a compelling voicemail, you are leaving your prospect with something that you can’t give them over an e-mail. You are giving them a sense of who you are; by your enthusiasm, by the tonality of your voice, and most importantly, by your presence. This is something you just can’t do by e-mail.

If you’re confident in what your product or service can do for someone and the solutions that you provide, you should be excited by the prospect of having an opportunity to tell someone about who you are and how you can impact their life.

That, is the attitude of a successful business owner and salesperson.

If you believe in replacing calls with e-mails, I invite you to really consider why? Why do you feel uncomfortable with calling someone? Why would you worry about someone’s perception of you that you haven’t even met yet? Why would you buy into the negativity that surrounds the two most evil words in the English language “cold calling”?

You show me a successful salesperson, and I’ll show you someone who is comfortable with picking up the phone and calling a prospect or client.

There is one exception in which I advise my clients to use e-mail as a prospecting tool to begin relationships, and that’s when the company that they are contacting as a rule does their business online. But I still strongly recommend a follow-up phone call.

Speaking to someone in person is the only basis to ensure that your communication is being received and understood and it is the best way to start a long-term profitable relationship.

Some e-mail tips:

1) Don’t put your company’s name in the heading of the email.

2) Put the persons name who you are corresponding with in the subject line instead.

3) Remember people tend to skim e-mails, so put your best stuff where it’s going be read at the top of the body of your e-mail

4) Mondays and Tuesdays are the best days to send emails.

5) Use a credible email address in your “from” field.

6) And lastly, listen to this…

All my best!

Kevin Boyle
Author / Public Speaker / Sales Trainer and Coach
“The Secrets to Sales Mastery”

ps – Did you enjoy this post? Do you have any tricks or tips on how to use email more effectively in filling your sales funnel? Please feel free to add your comments!

Click here to learn how to get past the gatekeeper and get your voice mails returned!

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