How To Stay Ahead Of 90% Of Your Competition
Sep 01, 2021 12:01 pm
Hey there
Welcome to September.
Fun fact:
Out of all 12 months of the year, September is spelled with the most letters.
It contains nine letters, and it happens to be the ninth month of the year.
No other months have the same amount of letters as their number in the calendar year.
Anyways...
Back when I was the Regional Manager for Evergreen Pensions (Now Oak Pensions), I often found myself travelling back an forth between the regional office and our HQ.
One day...
It was around 5pm and I'd just got back into town, my driver was taking me home.
We'd just turned the corner on a street when I saw this Lady just standing there seemingly looking lost..
Being a sucker for Ladies in distress...
I asked my driver to stop by her so I could offer her a lift.
So I wound down my glass to ask where she was headed..
And madam leaned over and offered me a full view of her mind numbing cleavage...
And in the most sultry voice said: Anywhere you want me to go.
Brodas and Sistas in the Lord!
Daz how wound up my window and asked my driver to: Git Me Outta Hia!!!
I guess there must have been something about the way I squealed out the order that had him laughing all the way to my house!
There’s one thing above all else that must be crystal clear.
It’s the answers to:
“Where are you going?”
“What’s your objective?”
“What do you want to accomplish?”
You’d think it would be easy for us humans to clearly know what we want.
Funny enough, most people find it darn hard.
Though come to think of it...it's not really funny.
The simple skill I’m about to teach you can erase a lot of misery
very quickly.
In an exercise a client of mine did as part of our work together, he wrote out two objectives he wanted to accomplish in his company:
Objectives / Desired Results:
● To intensify dialogue with supplier partners and work on relationships
● To travel with new purchasing staff to meet supplier and guide into stronger dialogue; to see new purchasing person look after this job following up through Skype, emails and phone conversations
#sigh
Can you spot the problem?
There’s not a result to be found.
These don’t describe the outcomes he wants.
These are all means to an end.
But we don’t know what he really wants and why!
And this client is not alone.
Every day I’m pointing out to clients, all very bright people, that they’re talking about the means (or the how, an activity, etc.) before they’ve specified the WHAT, the outcome, the result, the goal.
Have a look at another set of objectives, from the same client after I pointed out the flaw in his first reply.
How did he do this time?
Objectives / Desired Outcomes:
● To shorten production time by 4 working days
● To drop pricing by 10%
Much better.
These answers are all about outcomes, WHAT will change.
Once your desired results are clear, then your next step is to figure out HOW you’ll achieve your shortened production time and lower prices.
Taking your production staff to meet your suppliers might be a good idea.
But it is just one possible ‘means’ or route to the true goal of shortening production time by 4 working days.
When I teach clear thinking skills to clients in my coaching programs the first skill we learn, and the skill we build everything on afterwards, is the skill of describing the results you want so clearly that there’s no room for question or misunderstanding.
It pretty much at the core of the transformations we engineer in the 97 day challenge.
Now, I know, this doesn’t sound very difficult, right?
But it IS.
Look around you and listen to what people say.
You’ll notice that most of the goals people talk about are really not goals at all.
They are ACTIVITIES.
Things to be DONE, rather than RESULTS to be achieved.
Even more interesting is how people tell you what they don’t want when you ask them what they want.
But that's gist for another day.
Learning to see the distinction between WHAT and HOW is a tremendously important skill that forms the foundations for building your marketing and sales system.
Let me share with you a concept that I go into depth with when I'm working with my private clients...
It's called The What vs. How Map ( or WvH Map™)
If you’re talking about an action or an activity, you’re talking about a MEANS to an end; that is How..
If you’re talking about what will CHANGE, what will be different, then you’re talking about a goal, an outcome, a result; that is What.
Think about this for a moment.
Most people mix these up, and so they’re unclear, waste time and lose sales.
Your prospects will almost always ask for a means.
Your job is to uncover the ends they want.
Then, show how your product will help them get what they want.
Few of us have thought through what we really want to accomplish.
So when you invest some time and brain cells to get your desired results clear, you’re creating a winning advantage....
I’m soon going to show you how to do this in the context of marketing and selling.
Your prospects is also usually not so clear about what they want.
Through your questions, you help them clarify that for themselves.
And you then show how your product or service will give them what they really
want.
Tomorrow I'll send you a snazzy summary of all that we've shared so far to really lock these concepts into your thinking and then on Friday....
I'll share with you why you shouldn't bother trying to convince people to buy anything from you and what to focus on instead...
That's it for now...
Till tomorrow...
Play a bigger game..
CTM
PS:
- Today's all about packaging on HPEN. And I share a framework for how to think about creating a high ticket transformational program that gives you the ability to start small serving one on one clients and then scale whenever you want. It's called OPENS...and to read all about it: CLICK HERE. Be sure to follow the Get Paid topic to get notifications whenever I post related to that.
- I'll be in abuja from the 25th of this month to host an exclusive session for some coaches at the Sheraton Abuja. Once it's done I'll stay over for a few days. I'm thinking of hosting a private 3 day VIP Intensive for just 5 people at N450,000 each. During that time we work together to map out your action plan for 2022 and the rest of 2021. Interested? Hit reply and let me know.
- This Saturday will be our very first #hpenconnect meeting. It's an opportunity to learn and connect with each other and it promises to be fun. Look out for details in the events topic tab on HPEN later today.