Enigin Distributors, and others, can enjoy twenty small actions we offer here, which you can take, any day or every day, that can double your sales.

To make it easy for you, these actions are separated into five categories, here is the second set.

Implement one action from each category, and you’ll not just double your sales, but you’ll get a geometrical improvement. I’ll explain why at the end of the posts.

SET 3: TWEAKS THAT INCREASE YOUR CONVERSION RATE

Even if you’re calling on the right people, if you do or say the wrong things, you’ll spend time and money on opportunities that don’t pay off.  Here’s how to help ensure that you don’t accidentally lose the deal:

• Action 11: Research the competition. Once a lead is completely qualified as a prospect, then the prospect is going to buy, either from you or your competitor.  Therefore, increasing your “conversion rate” for a fully qualified lead is always matter of outselling the competition.  Ask the prospect who else is calling on them and if there’s a threat, accelerate your sales activities to compensate.
• Action 12: Hone your sales campaign document.  The most frequent reason sales reps are outsold is that they didn’t talk to the right people – and the competitor did.  In many cases, the losing sales rep failed to research and therefore understand the prospect’s actual decision-making process, and who would play what role in that process.  So don’t assume you’ve got it right from the start.  Make changes as you learn more.
• Action 13: Increase the number of meetings. It’s common practice for sales reps to communicate with a senior decision-maker at the beginning of the sales cycle, and then revisit that connection at the end of the sales cycle, in order get final approval.  However, if your contacts are limited during the middle of the sales cycle, you may lose track of what’s going on. Be in regular communication with decision-makers so you always know what’s changing inside the customer account.
• Action 14: Improve your follow-through. Many deals have been lost simply because the sales professional forgets to follow up on a commitment.  If you make a commitment, log it in your schedule, and make sure that you do it, no matter what.  Follow-through is the only way that a potential customer can learn to trust you, and that makes the customer more likely to buy.

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Enigin Distributors, and others, can enjoy twenty small actions we offer here, which you can take, any day or every day, that can double your sales.

To make it easy for you, these actions are separated into five categories, here is the second set.

Implement one action from each category, and you’ll not just double your sales, but you’ll get a geometrical improvement. I’ll explain why at the end of the posts.

SET 2: ACTION THAT IMPROVE YOUR PROSPECTING

Even if you’re calling on high qualities leads, a certain percentage of them won’t be potential prospects, usually because they don’t really have a need for your offering, or they do have a need, but no money to buy.  As you know, eliminating these “opportunities” from your sales cycle, means that you’ll spend more time with real ones.

• Action 7: Refocus on the elimination of bad leads. Make certain that you’re not falling into the trap of thinking about prospecting as “getting as many as possible into the pipeline.”  Instead, realign your thinking so that your initial conversations with a sales lead are not for the purpose of selling, but rather to identify which leads are most likely to become customers – and which are least likely.
• Action 8: Improve your listening skills. When a potential customer is speaking, listen carefully to what’s actually being said, rather than waiting for something that will give you hope of making a sale.  For example: if you ask: “how would you handle this problem if you didn’t have a solution like ours?” and get a response like “we’d probably struggle along for a few more years”, the prospect may not be serious about buying.
  Action 9: Remember what’s important. The key issue when developing an opportunity and making a sales is always value.  First, the “prospect” must have the budget to buy, or at least some budget dollars that could be spent, if the need is great enough.  Second, the prospect must have that need, and the need must have a financial impact that’s overwhelming larger than the cost of your offering.  Anything less, and you’ll never be a priority, so you ought to move on.
  Action 10: Reward yourself for disqualifying a lead. Remember, every lead that you ELIMINATE from your list is a victory, because it means you won’t be wasting your time.  Treat the elimination of a lead from your list as much a victory as the conversion of the lead into a real prospect.  Celebrate the winnowing process!  If you don’t, you may find yourself sneaking questionable prospects into the pipeline.

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Enigin Distributors, and others, can enjoy twenty small actions we offer here, which you can take, any day or every day, that can double your sales.

To make it easy for you, these actions are separated into five categories.

Implement one action from each category, and you’ll not just double your sales, but you’ll get a geometrical improvement! I’ll explain why at the end of the posts.

SET 1: ACTION THAT GIVE YOU BETTER SALES LEADS

If you’re calling on the wrong people, you’re spending time on “opportunities” that never had a chance.  If your leads are higher quality, you’re less likely to be calling on the wrong people.

A high quality lead is one that’s highly likely to become a customer. Your challenge is therefore to figure out what constitutes a high quality lead for your offering, and focus on finding more of them.

• Action 1: Hone your selection criteria. Look at the kind of leads that are working for you and then go back to your lead generation method and find more of the same.  Generate a better lead scoring mechanism so that you follow up on your best leads first.
• Action 2: Enhance your research tools. Periodically revisit the online tools that you’re using to find leads, and research companies and individuals.  New tools are being introduced into the marketplace every day, so do some research… on how to do better research.
• Action 3: Revisit your network. Everything changes, especially in the business world. Friends and colleagues who previously didn’t know of any prospects may know of some now.  You’ve also built up a customer base; enlist their aid in expanding your network and finding new customers.
• Action 4: Help your marketeers. If you’re fortunate enough to have a marketing groups that’s tasked to generate sales leads, provide them with regular, direct information on who’s interested and who’s buying, along with all the specific details (like job title, industry, typical organizational structure, etc.), so that they can get you better leads.
• Action 5: Improve your database. Because a CRM system tracks sales efforts, it can provide a treasure-trove of statistical data defining the current customer base and how effective you’ve been selling to it.  Make sure your CRM records are up to date is in your own interest.
• Action 6: Hone your sales messages.  There’s no sales message so perfect that it can’t be improved.  Every few months, try revisiting your core sales message, your elevator pitch, your qualifying questions and so forth.  Based upon your current experience, try to make the better, shorter, and more effective.

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But you should not fear rejection, not to the extent that is postpones or abandons your successb

You have to learn how to turn rejection into an incentive that motivates you to ultimate success.

Today we provide the last of four simple steps to accomplish this:

STEP 4: Reframe rejection into your path to success

In sales, the number of rejections you get is directly proportional to how successful you’ll become.  It’s true.  The people who hit the most home runs are the one who get up to bat the most.  As has been pointed out innumerable times, the person with the major league baseball record for being struck out is Reggie Jackson, one of the greatest batters of all time.

At the danger of going from the sublime to the trivial, here’s a story from my own experience.  When I first started writing freelance, I needed to sell a book to launch my career.  I sent it to numerous editors and agents and got plenty of “rejection letters.” Rather than feeling discouraged, I started each day by laying out the letters on the floor of my kitchen and walking on them like they were stepping stones.

I’d say to myself: “This is what’s going to make me successful, because the more rejections I get, the better deal I’ll get when it happens.”  And, sure enough, when I did sell the book, it was too Random House, and it not only launched my career but did much better in the marketplace than I ever dreamed.

Here’s how to do that same kind of thing with selling.

Estimate the number of times you encounter rejection in an average day. (No need to be entirely accurate; go ballpark here.) Now calculate your daily average salary/commission. Now divide the number of rejections per day by your daily salary.  Example:

• Number of times you get a valid rejection each day on average: 5
• Your daily salary and commission, on average: $500
• The money you make every time you get “rejected”: $100

Look at that number carefully. That’s how much money goes into your pocket every time you encounter a rejection. The reasoning is simple. If you’re not getting rejected, you’re not selling. So when you do sell, it’s because you’ve been willing to be rejected. The rejections lead to the sales, so you’re being paid to be rejection.

Now take a post-it note and write down the following equation: “REJECTION = MONEY” in big, bold letters with a sharpie!  Make two more post-its the same way.  Stick one post-it by your phone. Put one where you see it every time you open your briefcase. Put the third in your bathroom where you’ll see it when you get ready for work in the morning.

Yeah, I know that sounds kinda corny, but the technique works because it forces the equation into your subconscious mind.  Leave the post-its up until they crinkle up and fall off.  Then make new ones.  Just do it.  Trust me.

Source bnet.com

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You have to learn how to turn rejection into an incentive that motivates you to ultimate success.

Today we provide the third of four simple steps to accomplish this with more to follow in the next post:

STEP 3: Remove the Sting of Rejection

Now that you know why you feel rejected (Step 2), your job is to weaken the ability of the “rejection” situation to make you feel bad about it.

• Frequency. To make yourself feel less vulnerable in this area, you must first throw out all the invalid objections (as defined in Step 1).  Don’t even count them.  They’re nonsense.  If you still feel that you’re getting a lot of rejections, then look at the norms for other professionals at your level.  If you discover that you’re in the ballpark for everyone else, there’s no particular reason to feel bad about being rejected. If it turns out that you are getting valid rejections more frequently than your peers, then you’ll need to figure out what sales skill is missing or broken in your tool kit, and then work on it.  We’ll get to that in STEP 5 of this post.
• Emotional involvement. The cure for this subjective ailment is to value both what you’re offering AND the relationship.  If you truly value both, then there is absolutely NO reason why you shouldn’t want your customers to be your true friends.  If it turns out a your friend doesn’t want or need your offering, it’s not a rejection of you, but of the need for your offering.  Because it’s not about you, stop worrying about it.  If it’s just a matter that your friend doesn’t want or need what you’ve got to offer, then you can go ahead and be happy for that friend didn’t buy.  That’s what your friend wanted and your offering is still good.  And you’re doing what’s right by your friend.
• Perceived importance. The cure for this is simply to believe in yourself.  Here’s the honest truth: if you’re offering something that’s crucial to the success or happiness of your customer, you are as important as the biggest bigwig on the planet.  Here’s another big truth: most bigwigs are exceedingly average people who’ve stumbled into their success.  They’re not Gods Among Men Whose Judgment Must Be Valid.  They’re everyday dudes and dudettes, just like you and me.  So get some perspective.  The opinion of some muckety-muck is just not all that big a deal.

The trick to bulletproofing yourself against rejection is to let people have their own emotions and beliefs, and then simply use whatever happens as either a signal to improve your skills (a valid objection) or a signal to exercise your “so what” mental muscle (an invalid one).

Look out for the next post and the next simple step.

Source bnet.com

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You have to learn how to turn rejection into an incentive that motivates you to ultimate success.

Today we provide the second of four simple steps to accomplish this with more to follow in the next post:
STEP 2: Understand why you FEEL rejected

Why do you work? Money? Recognition? Achievement? Wrong, wrong, and wrong.  All of those reasons are just outward manifestations of your real goal: you want to feel good about yourself.

For example, you think that you work because you want money? Wrong. What you really want is what the money can buy, and I’m not talking about that new Ferrari. I’m talking about the feeling that owning a Ferrari would give you.

No matter what reason you give for being in sales, trace it back, and you’ll eventually get to “it makes me feel good about myself.”

Therefore, rejection “hurts” because there’s something about the situation that makes you feel bad about yourself.  To test this theory, imagine the biggest idiot you’ve ever known telling you that you’re stupid.  Do you care?  No.  The “rejection” fails to sting because it doesn’t assault your sense of self.  Who cares what that oaf thinks?

Rejection starts to sting as the result of three qualitative and highly subjective factors:

• Frequency. Everyone can deal with some rejection, but how much rejection can you experience before you start taking the negative feedback to heart?  How many times can you contact a qualified prospect and get a negative response before you begin to take it personally?  In other words, getting told a million times that you’re stupid might make you question your intelligence, even if you didn’t particularly respect the people saying it.
• Emotional Involvement. How emotionally involved can you become with somebody before you feel that the other person might know you so well that criticism hurts?  For example, you might be reluctant to close because you’re afraid that your customer might feel “buyer’s remorse” and stop liking you — a form of rejection.  In other words, if you like somebody, you’ll tend to feel pretty bad if that person tells you to go take a hike.
• Perceived Importance.  As a sales rep, you’re likely to feel most comfortable contacting people who are of a similar (or lower) social class or educational background.  However, you might find yourself avoiding people whom you feel are more important than yourself, because their rejection of you might seem to carry more weight or authority.

Understanding why you feel rejected is the first step to removing the “sting.”   To do this, you take a different approach, depending on subjective reason that’s behind your feeling of being rejected.

Look out for the next post and the next simple step.

Source bnet.com

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At Enigin we teach Enigin Partners not to fear “No” from potential clients, expect it and move on ot those that will say “Yes” – not that is all you need to do. We do teach Enigin Distributors and partners how to get to a “Yes”.

But you should not fear rejection, not to the extent that is postpones or abandons your success.

You have to learn how to turn rejection into an incentive that motivates you to ultimate success.

Today we provide the first of four simple steps to accomplish this with more to follow in the next post:

STEP 1: Differentiate between invalid and valid rejection

There are two types of rejections.  Valid rejections are when a person doesn’t do what you want because of something that you can change.  Invalid rejections are when that “failure” took place because of something completely arbitrary that’s outside of your control.

Here’s an example of an invalid rejection.

Suppose you make a cold call and a prospect hangs up on you. While that’s a textbook definition of “rejection”, the truth is that the prospect’s reaction has nothing to do with you.

What’s actually happened is that you accidentally broke the prospect’s rules. You had no way of knowing that the prospect was busy and that the prospect thinks it’s OK to hang up on unfamiliar callers.

Now, perhaps if you said something different or called at a different time, you might have gotten a different reaction, but that’s just a fiction that you’re making up in your mind.   However, if you had called at a different time, the prospect might just as easily have added a expletive before hanging up and then sent a memo directing the company to never buy from you ever again.

There’s no way of knowing.  It’s not a valid rejection.  It’s just luck.

What’s important here is that the prospect’s reaction really didn’t have anything to do you with personally, because anybody else taking the same action at the same time would have gotten the exact same result. You simply you took an action that didn’t work.

Here’s another example.  Suppose a guy is “selling” a woman on the idea that she should go out on a date with him.  Talk about the potential for “rejection”!!!  Millions of guys live in terror of this situation. Even so, much of the time the anticipated “rejection” is just an illusion.

I was once rather “smitten with” an attractive woman in my martial arts class.  However, despite several attempts on my part, she simply would not go out with me.  In fact, she seemed offended I had even asked.  A classic case of “rejection,” right?  I should have been crushed, right?

Not so fast!  Since we hung with the same crowd, I began noticing the kind of guys she dated.  They were all about 5′6″, dark-eyed, with long dark hair, and played in rock bands.  I’m 6′1″, blue-eyed, with short blond hair, and write about business.  Under her “rules” for what she found attractive in a potential mate, I wasn’t even in the ballpark.

So where’s the rejection?  She had her rules; I didn’t fit those rules.  That’s an invalid rejection because there’s nothing I can do to change who I am.

Now, suppose she actually had been the type who wanted to date guys similar to me.  And suppose I had asked her out, but due to my awkward approach, she decided to “reject” the idea.  That would mean is that my sales approach didn’t match her rules, even though the product met her needs. That’s a valid rejection, because my approach is something that’s within my control.

As soon as you realize that invalid rejections are just luck, most of so-called rejections simply become neutral events and the entire concept starts to lose its sting.  With that in mind, here’s the next step…

Look out for the next post and the next simple step.

Source bnet.com

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If your equipment does not demand as much then whatever you generate it from will not be so stressed, let alone the cost implications.

But I was reading and interesting blog recently that offered some other sources of energy you may not have thought about (positiveenergy) – check out there ideas:

Waste tea leaves. Scientists at a Pakistani university used a gasification process to create biodiesel from used tea leaves. Considering that the world today consumes several million tones of tea annually, the leaves could be a reliable fuel source.

Gribbles. A tiny, wood-chewing crustacean called Limnoria quadripunctata, or the gribble, has been shown to have a digestive trait that could convert wood and straw into liquid biofuel. Researchers at the universities of York and Portsmouth have proposed using the enzymes that fill the creatures’ long digestive tracts to break down cellulose and lignin into energy-rich sugars.

Grass clippings. Again at the University of York, scientists are experimenting with using microwaves to heat garden and wood waste in the absence of oxygen in a process called pyrolysis. The resulting biofuel could be blended with fossil fuel or used by itself.

Frog foam. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati are creating an artificial photosynthetic material that uses enzymes from plants, bacteria, fungi, and frogs, all trapped within a foam housing, to create solar energy in an entirely new way. Foam was chosen because it can effectively concentrate the reactants but allow very good light and air penetration. The design was based on the foam nests of a semi-tropical frog called the Tungara frog, which creates very long-lived foams for its developing tadpoles.

Poke berries. The fruit of the pokeweed — the ubiquitous purple-stalked plant that grows rampantly across the south and whose red berries Civil War soldiers used to write letters home – could be the key to spreading solar power across the globe, according to researchers at Wake Forest University’s Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials. Scientists have used the red dye made from pokeberries to coat their efficient and inexpensive fiber-based solar cells. The dye acts as an absorber, helping the cell’s tiny fibers trap more sunlight to convert into power.

Household garbage. A consortium of companies in Australia is investigating the viability of constructing an ethanol plant that would turn household rubbish and building waste into more than 200 million liters of fuel per year. The process, developed by a U.S. biofuel company, Coskata, Inc., uses sources like municipal, commercial, and industrial waste at the end of its life cycle—waste otherwise bound for the landfill, and turns them into renewable energy.

Cow power. Using the methane gas byproduct of cattle is old news, but William Taylor, a farmer in Northern Ireland, has rigged up an entirely new way of deriving renewable energy from cows. Instead of letting his cows free range while they graze, he puts them on a treadmill. The electricity generated from one cow on a treadmill is enough, says the farmer, to power four milking machines. And as a bonus, cows that exercise produce more milk.

Tomatoes. Designer Cygalle Shapiro created a tiny LED lamp powered off circuits running off several tomatoes sitting next to it. The lamp draws power off of the chemical reaction among the tomatoes’ acids, zinc, and copper. And the “batteries” run out when the tomatoes turn stale.

Tobacco. Maybe there’s hope for this cash crop. Researchers in Virginia have suggested that tobacco could be genetically modified to use as a biofuel, with the added benefit that it is not a food source, like corn and soybeans — and therefore the object of a battle over resources. Because it can generate high quantities of oil and sugar, its potential as a fuel crop is high, but commercial use as a biofuel may be more than five years away.

Here at Enigin all we have to devise is a way to connect our real-time energy monitor Eniscope to a Gribble a Frog or any of the other ideas presented here!

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I know many of Enigin’s Distributors around the world report that they have clients who win business because they are doing the right thing as far as the environment is concerned.

Enigin Distributors recommend that their clients consider a variety of low or no cost energy-saving measures, so why don’t we share some of these with you now.

By following some simple energy efficient rules you too could end up savings thousands.

The UK environmental agency NetRegs claims that small and medium businesses (SMEs) could save around £1,000 ($1500) per employee per year through basic energy efficiency, with the UK government-backed Carbon Trust estimates that £1bn ($1.5 billion) is wasted annually by growing businesses.
Turn off PCs

It’s a myth that screensaver software saves power when your computers are not in use, so by leaving them on all night, and even all weekend, as many offices do, is simply a waste of money.

The UK Government estimates that if all your PCs were turned off overnight and at weekends, they would save £63 ($95) a year each. So, for a business with 100 computers, that’s an annual saving of £6,300 ($9,500).

Turn That Light Off

Encourage staff to turn off all lights and electrical equipment at night and over weekends.
Many offices have fluorescent lights, but it is a myth that they use less energy if they are left switched on.

While, they use a lot more energy in the few seconds they take to start up than they do in the equivalent time of running, in 15 minutes a fluorescent light will have used 500 times the energy it uses in coming on.

Position employees’ workstations in away that they can make more and better use of natural light and less use of electrical light.

The Heat Is On

Taking control of your heating can make a huge difference to your bills. Your firm could save around 10 per cent of its energy simply by turning down the office thermostat by one degree, while a new boiler could be up to 40 per cent more efficient, and regular maintenance of your heating system will help, too – especially if it is well insulated.

It might sound obvious, but simply adjusting your heating to the seasons can make a big difference too. When it’s warm in the summer, open windows instead of turning on the air conditioning; if it’s too warm in the winter, turn down the heating, don’t open the windows and allow heated air to escape.

Don’t heat areas that aren’t in constant use, such as corridors and store rooms, and make sure radiators aren’t blocked by furniture.

We Have A Shutdown

Some employees might not turn off their computers because they forget or find it a nuisance to have to boot up every morning. To solve this problem, you can install Nightwatchman software to shut down PCs at a set time and restart them in the morning before their users arrive for work.

You can also fit timer plugs to devices such as photocopiers, scanners and printers that spend a lot of time idling to save money by turning them off at night and on again before the office opens for business.

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Keeping myself abreast of the latest news regarding progress in  environmentally-friendly initiatives/behaviour, I was pleased to  hear that the UK Portsmouth City Council’s civic offices became  equipped with energy saving lighting sensors earlier this year.

It could be a ricochet effect following last week’s EU legislation  implementation which requires energy saving measures to be applied  to all buildings constructed after 2020. In any case, it’s definitely a  commendable initiative!

These sensors are able to reduce carbon emissions by up to 324  tonnes/year and will save the council over £33,000 on energy bills!

This was decided upon because the council had set themselves a  target to reach – they wanted to cut their CO2 emissions by 30%  over the next 5 years.

Apparently, they also plan to install automatic metering tools in a  number of their buildings, to save about 5% of their energy  consumption/year.

I researched about meters and found a company, Enigin, that offers  one. They call it the ‘Eniscope‘ and it’s used to measure how much  energy a business is consuming (with lighting or aircon for  instance), and identify where improvements can be made (where energy is being wasted by inefficient appliances).

With that information, Enigin are able to evaluate how to reduce a  company’s energy costs and consumption and upgrade their equipment  with energy efficient products to eliminate wastage and reduce carbon emissions.

Saving energy and money is compatible if more businesses use energy  efficient alternatives, via companies like Enigin for example. It  provides a valuable contribution towards the conservation of the  planet, and clearly, it also saves people a lot of money. No one  can really afford to disregard the environment, everyone has a part to play and there are products that exist out there to help us be  proactive.

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