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Forget Playing the Numbers Game
Baseball is one of my favourite sports. Did you know that for a ball player to have an average season, they need a batting average between .250–.300? This means that they only need to get a hit three out of every 10 times at bat. Anything greater than this is considered a good season….
Perpetuation: Taking A Long View of Your Business
The Talladega Insurance Agency in Talladega Alabama was founded in 1858. It is the third oldest insurance agency in the United States and probably one of the oldest in the world. There are few financial services firms anywhere that can claim to have operated prior to the American Civil War. That’s what I call…
The Answers to Your Top Seven Marketing and Selling Questions
Every day my inbox is flooded with questions about selling. People want to know how to grow organically. They’re trying to figure out how to boost their sales performance without giving up quality service. Chances are, you probably have the same types of questions. And you’ve probably even spent time on blogs, forums and…
Five Tips for Improving Your Prospecting Activity
For a while now, you’ve been trying to get your producers (salespeople) to see more prospects. You see other businesses doing it. They seem to make it look so easy. But for some reason, success keeps eluding you. Every time you get close to building a strong sales pipeline, something happens and…
Want to drive growth? Focus daily on these four activities
Time management is a challenge at times for all professionals, with demands from existing clients it’s very easy (tempting) to get caught in the service trap and spend less time on selling. Of course, this often results in poor sales pipeline activity and ultimately declining revenue. Top professionals guard the time by structuring…
Why You Should Ignore Your Competitors
Picture an iceberg. It has only about 10 percent of its total mass above the water, while the other 90 percent is beneath the surface. However, that 90 percent is what the ocean currents act on, and what creates the iceberg behaviour at its tip. Financial services selling can be viewed in a…
Three Proven Ways to Leverage Your Existing Clients for Growth
Everything that you do in your business should be about producing a result that ties back to the financial goals and objectives that you have established. A key objective should be to maintain an overflowing sales pipeline that presents you with more opportunities than time. Existing Client, are your biggest and most often…
Change Your Behavior Take it bird by bird, smile by smile.
By Marshall Goldsmith & Patricia Wheeler Anne Lamott took the title for her book on writing, Bird by Bird, from one of her father’s teachable moments. She said: “My older brother, who was 10 years old at the time, was trying to get a report written that he’d had three months to write. It was…
Six Ways To Stay on Top of Your Game
I recently had the opportunity to see one of my all-time favorite groups, The Temptations, perform in Melbourne. This group has gone through many personal changes over the past 50 years, yet has kept its amazing harmonies, outstanding choreography and stylish dress. The group’s founder, Otis Williams, is 75 years old, but his…
My 10 favorite non-fiction books 2017
My reading in 2017 has helped me make (a little) sense of the world this year. Here are my 10 favorite non-fiction books, in alphabetical order by author. Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book Originally published in 1940, readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its…
