Master Deal Maker Secrets

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

Let us imagine a situation, one that may seem completely irrelevant for the purposes of this podcast, but bear with me, there is a reason for it.

You are surfing on a beautiful beach, enjoying the sea and yourself, but suddenly, you have an accident and black out. Can you imagine the terror? What would you do?

I know this can be a fatal scenario to imagine, and a lot of times some people have had to face near-death experiences, so what would you do if you survive? What would you change? Or would you keep things the same way?

I know someone who had to go through this experience, his name is Mark Mathews, and he is my guest in today's episode. One day, as he was surfing in Tasmania he hit a reef and blacked out, as natural, terror was present, he had a lot of injuries and didn't know if he was ever going to surf again. At that time, Mark made a crucial decision, to never let fear overpower him again.

Since then, he has taken action personalizing emotion and resilience techniques to strengthen mindset and sustain long term performance, and with these techniques he has been able to win the Oakley Big Waves Award three times, positioning him between the best big wave's surfers in the world.

So, in this episode, we are going to talk about fear. Fear is not something only surfers have to face, it is a factor present in our daily life. One of the areas where I have seen fear a lot is in business and sales. Especially in sales, because when you face fear in sales there is really nowhere to hide. One of the reasons for this is that failure is there in a way, failure is a possible future, and fear can make you feel that future is about to happen.

Mark Mathews knows what he is talking about, and he defends a very important premise about fear, that you cannot live life without it. That is right, the idea of sustaining life without facing your fears is impossible and he is here to explain to us why.

Also, what we must have very clear, is that once we are facing anxiety or fear, whether in personal life or in business, we need to have the tools to know how to move from that place, we have to be able to know what is happening and what to do with it.

That is why I wanted Mark to come here with us and deliver this message because we have to stop looking at fear only for its ominosity when it clearly has a role, it is there for a reason and it is inevitable to have it in our lives.

So, if you wish to learn more about fear and how to face it when it comes to sales, among other things, I suggest you take a listen to this interview.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

In my experience, having worked with hundreds of different salespeople and businesses I've found that there are steps that they have to go through if they want to be at the top of their game. I think of these as levels on a ladder, which the higher you are, the better results you get.

So, today we are going to be talking about the five levels of the sales conversion ladder. It doesn't matter if your business has a proven, and refined sales process or if it hasn't. These levels apply anyway, the thing is though, if you want to keep moving forward and reach the highest one there are some things you need to know.

We can say that the bottom of the ladder is precisely the lack of a sales process. This might sound strange, how can a business be profitable if there is no documented, structured sales process?

Well, you may be surprised. In fact, I was talking to a guy that runs a business networking group and he did a survey with three hundred and seventy small business members in Western Australia and he found that only six percent of those people actually had a sales growth plan.

As you can see it is a very common practice, but that doesn't mean it's a good one. Just imagine how the implementation of a well-thought plan could help any of these businesses become more profitable.

Another common situation I've seen is that many times, customers buy from a business in spite of the process rather than because it helps them find a solution in the best possible way. Making sure you provide a solution to the customer's needs while making them feel invited to come back with you again is a sign of a good sales process structure.

But difficulties do not apply only to customers, sometimes salespeople have to work harder than they should to actually make a sale.

Let's visualize a particular situation. If a member of the staff relies mostly on his computer to generate sales but it is no longer working as it should, this person could refer the issue to the IT department. However, if the company's policy says that a computer should only be replaced until it is broken the worker will be stuck with malfunctioning equipment delaying the process and forcing him or her to work harder for the same results.

Here is where the importance of these levels resides, by taking care of the fundamental things you can make sure you and your team work your way up to the highest level. You can pretty much move from one level to the next if you treat leads correctly, which obviously means that you have a plan worked out that lets you know how to act in every scenario.

But don't think that because your business is small or because you have no idea where to start you'll find this impossible. Another thing I've learned throughout the years is that even if a business is completely disorganized, static, or if it has lost its focus there is still massive opportunity to increase its profitability and to help others. If your business exists to help people with the solution that you've got there's a massive opportunity to help even more people.

If we think about it, optimizing your organization and building your way up the ladder is not only beneficial for your business. It also pushes stress and complications away because the structure will provide a way of making sales that is friendlier to you, your customers, and your team.

So, if you want to know what the other levels are and what to do in every one of them to get the best results I encourage you to listen to this week's podcast. I'm sure you'll find it very useful.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

Have you ever felt like there is something missing from your sales process? Maybe you feel like you are not getting enough from it, or that it is not bringing you the same results as before. Well, I have a tool that may come in handy, and is one of my favorites, because each time I use it, it works. I am talking about stories.

Are you aware of the incredible power that lies beneath telling stories? Stories are one thing that lots of people take for granted as if they were only useful when we were little kids, but I actually can spend days and days talking about them, because they have power, and believe it or not, all of us live through them.

One of the ways that I learned the importance of stories, was because of an incredible author called Joseph Campbell, he dedicated his life to studying religions and especially stories. You know the kind of movies that have this amazing hero, and the entire time it has you hooked to the story, he wanted to understand that and transmit it to the world, and he ended up writing an amazing book called The Hero's Journey.

Stories are our first memory of language, are part of our human history, what you choose to believe every day, whether it is evolution or the bible. Is what determines how you live your life. They are not only something you tell the kids before they go to bed.

A story offers many possibilities, and since we are familiar with them it is not hard at all to reflect ourselves in a particular character or to just enjoy being immersed in the narrative. However, today I want to talk about something more specific.

I want to share with you how by unlocking the power of stories, I learned to use them in a sales context, and I still use them every day. In this episode, you'll not only learn how to increase sales using the Corporate Parable Framework, but I will also show you exactly how to create your own sales stories and exactly how and where in your sales process you should introduce them.

If you are interested in learning more about this hidden power I strongly recommend you listen to this podcast.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

The other day I did a presentation with a high-end business group about ways to maximise revenue and I thought it would be a great idea to share those ideas with you.

In previous episodes, we've talked about converting your leads. About how to constantly push further to make your conversion rate bigger each time. It can indeed be pulled off, there is massive on bank cash sitting in your pipeline which if you had a better process, a better system at the front end you could convert better, and you could actually see.

So, working on your front end is a great place to look if your sales process is broken, if you know your conversion rate is twenty-five or thirty percent or lower there's a good possibility that we can make that work a lot better for you.

The beauty of this is that you will make a massive difference to your revenue without spending much more money on ads, on salespeople, or on staff. You just make more sales.

But today we're going to go further, we are going to be talking about other strategies that work alongside with the conversion process. Remember that the front end is as important as other areas, such as retaining people or maintaining communication.

We've already talked about this in previous episodes, but I think it's important to understand the big picture. A business is not built exclusively upon selling, there are many structural and social abilities required to align all the gears.

These seven effective strategies will help your business get to a new level. Especially since the times we are living in have changed considerably the way we keep our businesses running and the way we relate to others. We must have the ability to adapt to new situations and the never-ending fluctuations of the market but also to new technologies, adversities, and possibilities.

I know that setting everything up is a very exhausting and demanding job. Having all the elements you need to work properly needs the investment of both time and money. Although things are not easy, there is something in your power you can do to improve, almost every time.

That's why I think it is important to be aware of something. You are most likely going to be left behind in the market if you adopt a reluctant attitude, be it you don't want to embrace change or a strategy or a tool. It is paramount you learn to incorporate those things into your businesses if you want to keep going.

So, if you are interested in learning what these strategies are and how you can make them work in harmony to get better and consistent results I encourage you to listen to his week's podcast.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

Building a successful business in sales is not an easy task to do. As you may have noticed by now, there is a vast spectrum of elements that converge in building a model able to adapt in a continuously moving market.

That´s why today we are going to discuss a very important topic, some of the biggest threats affecting companies with salespeople. Things that can really give you and your business a hard time if you get caught off guard when unexpected situations occur.

Truth be told, a business can hardly be carried by one person's shoulders, you need others to make it take off. If you are the only one converting leads or pushing to develop a relationship with clients without any help, or even worse, with very poor help from your team then there is definitely something wrong in the picture.

Let us think of another problem. It is frequent to come by a business whose owner has to rely mostly on one specific member of the sales team, the best one. This successful worker can even be responsible for 50% of the company's revenue. Credit where credit is due, there are a lot of talented people out there but that´s not the point. What happens if that person decides to leave?

That is certainly a good question, but there is no general answer. It all depends on whether you have or lack a structured sale system.

In fact, I saw some so some data the other day that said that only six percent of companies actually have a sales plan. That´s a big threat on its own!

Having a structured sales system takes the pressure of hard-working individuals, meaning you don't have to depend on one specific person to deliver most of the revenue, but the most important thing it does is that it organises your entire network. You should not have to worry if one of your team members leaves because there is a system behind which you can count on. In this scenario, you are already thinking of different names and phone numbers to call, you have an effective hiring method, you know what to do.

This is just one of the ways your business can find itself in a bind but it is not the only one. Different areas have different issues and they all require attention and action, that's why in today's episode we are going to go through four of the most important forms in which an inadequate approach to the overall sales system can become a threat.

If you want your business to accomplish a resilient position, there is a very huge and complex arrangement of elements that must be attended constantly. The good news is, that if you have the tools and the knowledge to take action whenever a potential threat must be faced, if you are standing on solid ground then they become manageable.

So, if you are interested in learning how to build an effective sales structure and in knowing how to act when unexpected situations menace your business, I encourage you to listen to this week´s episode.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

Pretty much anywhere we look these days, we can find lots of different information on how to attract customers or on how to build an effective sales process. Nevertheless, there is one key element that is often unseen, and it should be taken in count, it really should.

That is precisely what we are going to talk about today. What are we doing with our customers once we have them?

I'm really excited because we have a person that has dedicated a big part of her life to this specific area, customer retention. We've got Ali Cudby with us. Besides being well known for her work with many companies on developing a better and more profitable relationship with their customers, she is the writer of Amazon's number one bestselling book on bra fitting called "Busted!" which then became "Fit My Bras: How to Find Your Perfect Bra and Why It Matters"

However, Ali started her career somewhere else. She worked in Hollywood making blockbusters but after living in hotel rooms for fourteen straight months she reconsidered her career and decided to go to the Wharton School for an MBI. After business school, she landed at the New York Times's Companies Corporate Strategy Team and that was her first taste of customer retention, it came from a project that sent her all around the United States studying best practice at companies from FedEx to L.L. Bean, and that was, at least partially, what got her hooked on really boosting customer experience as a way to improve retention and revenue.

Some time later, while working on her client's lingerie business, Ali realised that there was a massive hole in the market and that expertise around customer attention was sorely needed. That's where Your Iconic Brand was born, to help companies develop the emotional connections and systematic processes needed to inspire customers to spend more, stay longer, and refer like crazy.

Besides helping businesses improve customer retention, Ali teaches entrepreneurship at Purdue University and her work with companies has become the basis for a brand new book, which we are going to definitely talk about today, called "Keep Your Customers: How to Stop Customer Turnover, Improve Retention and Get Lucrative Long-Term Loyalty", published just this month.

As you can see, that is quite a background and by no means, I've mentioned all of it.

So, today we are going to be talking about some of the main issues around customer retention, especially because we find ourselves in a sales-driven culture where the main focus is getting and closing the sale, but if we don't keep our eyes open, this particular interest can lead to much less attention invested into the customer's experience and into the possibility of further, more profitable customer relationships.

That´s why Ali is going to share her view on the topic with us and, she is going to talk about the foundations that owners can put in place to give themselves the highest possibility of lowering customer turnover. She is also going to illustrate us on how to tell if we are doing a good job on customer retention or not, what can we do to improve, among other questions related directly to this matter.

If you want to find out if you are working on your customer retention correctly, if you hadn´t thought of it, or if you just want to find ways to improve, I really encourage you to listen to this week's episode, because there are so many things around the issue that must be discussed thoroughly.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

As we all know, nowadays we are living in incredibly unique times. We are all affected in some way or another by the current situation and as a result, this has taken its toll on the whole economy. There is no way to deny that the challenge is certainly big and that it can be overwhelming, but I think there are things that can be done to improve the way we manage our money helping us build a financial foundation that lets us get through.

Speaking of that, I've heard many people talk about maximising sales and also some people saying that regardless of what the business is, it can actually thrive and rise above this situation. I don't necessarily agree with that but I think one of the ways that you can minimise the impact is by really rationalising your expenses, and that is precisely what we are going to be talking about in this week's episode.

To have a better perspective on this issue, that right now is a priority, I've invited George Slater to talk with us. He is a retired CRM specialist, and he is still pretty active, he has written a couple of books, he's been a mentor of mine for a number of years, he was the director of online for Worldwide Selling Marketing and was also responsible for helping its owner and many others to rationalise their expenses and right-size their businesses over a number of years. He's got a lot of experience working it out that's why I think he is the best person to talk to about this.

Even though he has helped many important businesses, the principles he teaches do not only apply to big corporations, that's why today we're going to be talking about how you can save, if you are an individual, somewhere in between three and six thousand dollars per year almost straight away through looking at your expenses.

Some of these things might sound pretty obvious but there are going to be a couple of gems in there that you are just not doing, and if you do choose to do them I think you'll emerge a lot leaner and a lot more profitable once we pop at the other end.

With that in mind is that today, George is going to walk us through a list of things he has carefully thought and designed so you have the tools to know where to look and how to manage your expenses without sacrificing the essentials.

So, if you are looking for a way to relieve your economy or if you just want to be more careful when it comes to spending money I encourage you to listen to this conversation, because I can't think of a better person to talk to about this issue than George, and I can guarantee you are going to learn a lot listening to him.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

Today I'm really psyched because we've got Adam Lewis Hawker with us, an amazing talker, and an inspiring teacher who I've had the pleasure to know since 2013. He is the author of the Awaken Your Alpha podcast, one of the highest-ranked podcasts on the internet today with almost 400 episodes already.

But first, I want to introduce you to his work a little bit more in detail. He founded TalkXcelerator to help people to secure their own Ted X talk increasing their influence, income, and impact. He speaks of leadership resilience and how to utilize mindset and the tactics of the world's top performers to thrive. Ultimately, he teaches how to Awaken Your Alpha to accelerate your mission. I am really excited to have him in today's episode because besides having this impressive background he is also such a great and funny person.

While I was looking for more information about his background I found, and this is really interesting, that he's a former international pole vaulter whose career was, unfortunately, cut short by an accident. After I found out I had to ask him about that experience and how he managed to deal with the undeniable fact that he wouldn´t be able to perform as an athlete anymore. His answer was far more interesting and complex than I expected, and I think we all can learn a lot just by listening to it.

So, we are going to be talking about how that moment influenced his particular vision and his approach to working with other people in more recent years, but he is also going to share with us some of his best and worst moments in making deals and what I consider to be a great philosophy towards coaching and understanding the complexity of each particular issue.

I was also very interested in another thing. Through the years Adam has been involved in making podcasts, writing books, and giving every client the personalized coaching service they deserve, he has found what I call to be patterns, commonalities among successful people he's worked with. I was eager to know about these, and I am so glad I asked him because he has found absolutely essential issues which I am sure you'll find quite interesting as well. These issues pertain directly to managing failure, planning, action, among other things that can become drawbacks when building a business if the approach is the wrong one.

So, if you are interested in learning more about these issues as well as Adam's experience, which I insist, is full of knowledge, I encourage you to listen to our whole conversation in this week's episode, as we discuss thoroughly all these aspects and have a little fun while doing it.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

Have you ever felt your performance is not as good as you know you are able to accomplish? Or that stress and fatigue are consuming time and energy that could be spent somewhere else? There is a good chance that interference you are experiencing is being produced by unhealthy management of emotions, and overall, a lack of awareness about the issue and your position in it.

This problem is very common, it does not just happen among business people, but today we are going to be focusing in our field and in what we can do to prevent ourselves from being caught up in inadequate handlings of the issue. As you know, if we don't assess ourselves and our businesses frequently, things can go out of control and lead to catastrophic results which would then affect other people as well.

That's why today I'm particularly pumped because we've got a person that has been working on this matter for a long time, Matt Griggs.

Let me introduce you to him a little. Matt is a performance coach for both business people and professional athletes, he is the writer of two best-selling books, an ex-professional surfer who has actually worked with one of the world surfing champions, a number of NRL players, and many other elite athletes. Besides that, he is also a teacher of a unique meditation called Kelee Meditation which helps people detach from disharmonious thoughts and emotions so that they can distill their natural ability to its purest point.

As you can see, that is quite a resume, and I am really excited to have him on the show this morning since we get to talk more about the emotional problems that can affect our business and also about Matt's perspective towards a healthy and more rewarding approach to life in general.

He recognizes himself as a holistic coach, who understands all the influences and all the aspects around an issue. As he says, "There is a lot of instruction out there, a lot of know-how on the why? but you know, the saying goes: where there's a will there's a way. There's not too much instruction on actually coaching the will so that's going to be the most important part and, the biggest problem to solve is to make someone's will very strong, to make it very aware"

Matt believes that people can't teach what they're not living themselves or what they don't understand themselves, "otherwise it just becomes an opinion and there is enough of that in the world". We are going to discuss the importance of this thoroughly because the knowledge he is talking about concerns not only the position from which you talk about something, but also what you know about your own situation and how you deal with it, and that I think is a fundamental aspect that deserves to be attended.

So, if you are interested in learning more about Matt's perspective and in being able to recognize and approach a particular issue in your business and in your life with appropriate tools, I encourage you to listen to this week's episode

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.

Visit http://JohnBlakeAudio.com to Learn How to DOUBLE Your Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion with The Lead Flow You Already Have.

Today I'm very stoked because we are going to be talking to Gavin Bassett, a man that has a very extensive background in business and that I've known for many years. In this week's episode, he is going to be sharing some of his wisdom with us around some of the biggest deals he's made in his career and some of the insides. I find this information very useful as Gavin has always been concerned about the important things in life, and right now we are facing challenges that put us in a complex situation, affecting our loved ones and ourselves but our businesses as well.

This situation has changed many things about the way things get done. "This is not a traditional downturn" as Gavin says, and we should not approach it like one, as many people are doing. We must know what is best for us at this particular moment, all things considered.

In this matter, he is certainly the man to talk to. Despite the woeful circumstances, this uncharted territory has given us more time to be with the ones we love and that is something that Gavin has always been worried about as he is a husband, a father and a business owner.

For almost fifteen years he served owners in the banking industry and watched as way too many of them put way too much time into the business and not enough into their families. He then left the industry and got an opportunity to help even more businesses to get under control so that people could spend more time with their families and make sure that they were there for them. That gave him the chance to spend more time with his own wife and his four boys as they were growing up and also, to become known as one of the best business coaches in Action COACH globally.

Years later, he came across an alarming statistic that said eighty-three businesses were failing every sixty seconds somewhere in the world. This made him realize that he needed to be doing much more than what he was, then Biznostics was born, an online platform to help small business diagnose where their businesses are and provide them with a step by step guide plan to help them run a more successful business so they have the finances and the time to do the important things in life before it's too late.

As you can see, he is committed to making the running of a business strictly that, avoiding wear out and saving time for what matters most, but along the way, he has also got a lot of experience in making deals, and that's why I think you'll find his vision very interesting.

Gavin is a firm believer that small businesses are the fabric of communities and that when small businesses are succeeding their families succeed and then the community benefits. So, if you want to know more about what he has learned over the years, and how that experience can help you cope with this unprecedented situation, I invite you to listen to the whole interview.

To DOUBLE your lead-to-sale CONVERSION with the leads you already have, go to http://JohnBlakeAudio.com for his exclusive, free, no-fluff, audio training and companion PDF guide.

Inside you'll get word-for-word email followup templates, phone scripts, and more that you can put to use today.