When times are tough one of the first things that generally get's ditched is training, coaching and sharpening the saw. And this can be a big mistake.
Why?
When competition is fierce you need an edge and the only way is to continually improve, learn new skills and sometimes just go back to basics.
As such Rashid and I attended a two day sales boot camp earlier this week. And boy was it worthwhile.
You see, sometimes as good as we are, we often forget the basics. We forget to do the things that made us successful in the first place and often become either cocky or jaded.
So over two days we sat in a mastermind with about 15 other very successful people and sharpened our collective saws.
People like John and Peter, both retired Insurance salesmen who want help younger people succeed like they've done. People with over 40 years professional sales experience who were back for more – so that they kept fresh.
And then there were younger people who either had their own businesses, or were employees who wanted to improve their skills.
Skills such as Strategic Story Telling – where you casually let prospects and clients know about what you've achieved for other people just like them.
Stories like how we helped one organisation go from $3,000,000 turnover to $11,500,000 turnover after working with them for 9 short months.
Or how we helped Australia's premier professional photographic lab who were struggling to get their message out go to number one in the industry while their competitors have fallen by the wayside (and that's in a supposed recession).
Or the person in the finance industry who put an extra 30% on his bottom line using our strategies – working less and enjoying life more.
Over the last 5 years we've been doing more and more stuff online. Taking bricks and mortar businesses and helping them create completely new sales channels online with a local and often global audience.
Internet marketers who built a lot of their success on advice we gave them and systems we created. People who have small sites doing a few thousand dollars a year to a couple who do millions of dollars a year online.
Reflecting on these stories we realised that we've been hiding our light under a bushel… containing ourselves rather than getting the message out.
We realised our major strengths lie with fusing online and offline marketing and sales strategies with real world communication skills and leadership to make a major difference in the lives of the hundreds of businesses we've worked with over the last 9 years.
Rashid Kotwal is an international speaker and author who specializes in on-line and off-line strategies for direct response marketing and sales optimization. He works with sales organizations want to get more business, faster and with less wasted effort. You can find more information at
Sales & Marketing Consulting and
Get Clients Online Fast.
Copyright Rashid Kotwal.
