SuccessCo

Success Book ~ What Clients Love & Selling the invisible

Here are two excerpts from one of my favorite business authors, Harry Beckwith.

Excerpt from What Clients Love Written by Harry Beckwith

How to listen
Don’t just listen to what the person is saying. Picture it. As they speak, create a visual image – a movie even – of their story. This will help you understand, follow and remember the story. And even help you remember it a month later. If you retain only the words of that story and not the images, you’d forget the next day.

Don’t listen with your ears. Listen with your eyes.

Excerpt from Selling the invisible Written by Harry Beckwith

What’s your point?
Bob Boylan of Successful Presentations in Minneapolis has built a successful book and solid business around a presentation concept distilled into three words: What’s your point? It’s based on Bob’s discovery that most presenters don’t really know what their point is. Usually, their point is “I want to sell you something.” But to the listener, the point is obvious and meaningless. Most marketing communications fail for the same reason. They never tell you what the point is. Tell people in a single compelling sentence. Why should they buy from you?

If you don't already have these two titles in your collection, I would certainly encourage you to pick them up.

-Jim

Success Book ~ Tribes

Excerpt from Tribes written by Seth Godin

Marketing changes everything, but mostly it changes the market

The market wants you to be remarkable. The most important tribes are bored with yesterday and demand tomorrow. Most of all, the market has demonstrated that ideas that spread win, and the ideas that are spreading are remarkable ones. For fifty years, established brands with efficient factories and effective marketing carried the day. Pepsi, the Salvation Army, and the local hardware store were the cornerstones of the marketplace. Suddenly, though, the older brands are no longer the fastest-growing ones. The marketplace has raised its voice. If you want us to follow you, don't be boring. "Good enough," stopped being good enough a long time ago. So why not be great?

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Success Book ~ Words that sell

Excerpt from Words that sell - Written by Richard Bayan
“The thesaurus to help you promote your products, services and ideas.”

“Like magicians with their props, or fisherman with their time tested lures, advertising copywriters rely upon a handy assortment of contrivances for seducing their audience. A copywriters tools are words, and the most effective tools are words that sell.”

Permits you to…
Assists you
Solves
Advises
We deliver…
That’s what we give you.
A good friend to have by your side
The solution to your…
Our friendly staff is here to assist you.
Were in business to help your business succeed.
Consultation
Precision marketing
First-hand briefing
A professional recommendation
A total management tool

Words that Sell, Revised and Expanded Edition

Success Book ~ Communicate with Confidence

Excerpt from Communicate with Confidence by Dianna Booher

Present Fewer, Not more Choices when things stall.
Having too many choices paralyzes people in decision-making. Analysis paralysis sets in with even the smallest decisions.
 
You walk into the local convenience store that has only snickers and milk duds and you can make a choice in two seconds or less. But drift into a candy store that has 28 different candy bars and the decision will likely take you two minutes.

 When people seem puzzled or indecisive, don't take that as an impetus to brainstorm more options, Instead, narrow the choices. Lead them to focus on the two or three best contenders and forget the rest.

Communicate With Confidence!

Continuing education – for the best of the best

Doctors, pilots, attorneys, and many other professions are required to continue training and professional development throughout their career. In fact, the top 10 percent in any field also takes it upon themselves to go the extra mile and develop their skills beyond the industries accepted standards.

While most sales professionals are not required to undergo continual professional training, it is certainly recommended.

I’ve heard it said that 80 percent of the sales books are sold to 20 percent of the salespeople. While I can’t substantiate this data, based on my own experience with sales professionals, I’d be more inclined to say 90 percent of the sales books are sold to 10 percent of the salespeople.

Do you want to become the best of the best? Never stop learning!

A few of my high reading recommendations go to:

How To Become A Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox

How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules For Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

Selling The Invisible by Harry Beckwith

Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing

The Mentor by Jack Carew

The Mentor: 15 Ways to Success in Sales, Business, and Life

-Jim
©2008 Successco.com
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Success Book ~ Ask the right question

Excerpt from Ask the right question by Rupert Eales-White

What is the goal?
The goal for a successful client relationship is just the same as for all the relationships we have considered – namely, to create an environment where both parties develop new insights and perspectives on problems, which lead to effective action by both parties and the development of a long-term partnership, which brings significant added value to both parties.

Ask The Right Question

Success Book ~ Tribes

Excerpt from Tribes written by Seth Godin

Stability is an illusion
Marketing changed the idea of stability. It’s human nature – we still assume the world is stable, still assume that Google will be number one in five years, that we’ll type on keyboards and fly in airplanes, that China will keep growing, and that the polar ice caps won’t really be melted in six years.

And we’re wrong.

We’re wrong because the dynamics of marketing and storytelling and the incessant drumbeat of advertising have taught us to be restless in the face of stability. And the Internet just amplifies the lesson.
No one watches a mediocre YouTube video they’ve seen before. No one passes on a boring e-mail. No one invests in a stock that’s boring, with few prospects for big growth.

Here’s what changed: some people admire the new and the stylish far more that they respect the proven state of affairs. And more often than not, these fad-focused early adopters are the people who buy and the people who talk. As a result, new ways of doing things, new jobs, new opportunities, and new faces become even more important.

Marketing, the verb, changed the market. The market is now a lot less impressed with average stuff for average people, and the market is a lot less impressed with loud and flashy and expensive advertising. Today, the market wants change. “Established in 1906” used to be important. Now, apparently it’s a liability. The rush from stability is a huge opportunity for you.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Success book ~ The 25 sales skills they don’t teach at business school

Excerpt from The 25 sales skills they don’t teach at business school written by Stephan Schiffman

Even the most seasoned, most experienced person can go from a hero to zero with alarming speed in today’s economy. How? By neglecting personal and professional development. This is the kind of job you never really “get down.” Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep asking, “How can I do this better?” Keep listening to the answers you hear.

The 25 Sales Skills: They Don't Teach at Business School

Success Book ~ The Other 90%

Excerpt from The Other 90% - “How to unlock your vast untapped potential for leadership and life.” Written by Robert K. Cooper.

There’s a simple mechanism that overcomes our natural resistance to growth or change and helps us to be out best. All that is required is to regularly ask these two questions:
 
  What’s the most exceptional thing you’ve done this week?
  What’s the most exceptional thing you will do next week?

The word “exceptional” is defined however you want. It simply means, “What stood out for you?” or “what real difference did you make to the people around you or the world at large?” Perhaps this week it was something big. Or maybe it was a kind word to an unnoticed task at home or at work that5 made you proud. It is the intensity that counts. Take a moment to reflect on your answer: Was this the best you could give? Is there any way you could have given something more?

The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life

Success Book ~ Expect the unexpected

Excerpt from Expect the unexpected written by Roger Von Oech

Be artful with your knowledge. We’ve all known people who knew many things but who never did anything very innovative with their learning. The key to being more creative is being able to work and play with our knowledge. Getting a satisfying result depends on what things we add together and how we mix them. For example, suppose we assigned each of a dozen the task of preparing an interesting dish with the following ingredients: chicken, tomatoes, spinach, eggplant, potatoes, honey, ginger, oregano and raisins. Some might make a salad, others a soup or stew, and still others a hors d’oeuvre or perhaps even a dessert. Some of the dished might be delicious, and others barely edible. Also, some cooks will closely follow a recipe while others might be more imaginative – say, dyeing the soup purple. One cook might even have the nerve to eat all the ingredients himself and than tell us, today you should fast!”

The point is that with the same resources, different people will come up with different solutions – some more resourceful than others.
Outside the kitchen, life is no different. Like cooks forced to improvise, we must draw on everything we know in order to achieve success, even if our experiments sometimes fail. Whether it’s repairing an automobile engine, coaching a team of little leaguers, selling a new product to a demanding customer, or counseling a friend during a time of loss, we must decide (1) which of our ideas to emphasize and which to ignore; (2) what to interrupt literally and what to take as a metaphor; (3) when to apply a principal and when to disregard it; and finally, (4) when to let an idea stand on its own and when to connect it with other ideas. Thus, creative insight arises not just from having knowledge, but also from being able to work and play with the knowledge.