Building a Championship Team

Secret Tip of Awareness for Being a Great Leader

July 3, 2017 by sycreed

As a leader, you spend a lot of your time focused on bringing out the brilliance of those you are working with and helping them become the best versions of themselves. It’s easier to do this when everything is rosy and everyone is riding high on great results, lots of wins and repeated successes. However, let’s face it, a lot of the most critical learning happens when things are not going right and they start going (or worse, have completely gone) off the rails. To be able to take the learning from these moments and rectify the situation as quickly as possible requires a level, objective approach. One thing I know for sure…

Freaking out and blowing up will typically make things significantly worse and rapidly unravel much of the progress you have made with your team.

This means, as a leader, the moment things are falling apart around you, you have to avoid letting your upset (whether it be anger, fear, irritation, disappointment, etc.) hijack your brain and take over running the show.

Anyone who has spent any time with me knows the saying, “When emotions are high, intelligence is low”. As a leader, you don’t want a flare of emotion to undo all the good you have achieved up to that point, so mastering your ability to control your emotions during the challenging times is ESSENTIAL.

Watch the short video below to get my secret tip that will help you navigate your next highly-charged emotional upset so you can help your team through the challenge and remain a great leader.

Learn more about managing your emotions with my 20 Little Voice Mastery techniques available here.

Entrepreneurship is NO JOKE!

June 2, 2017 by sycreed

You have that stroke of genius, that million dollar idea, that vision of independence and true financial freedom and with your all the energy and passion that you have, you step out into the world of being in business for yourself.

That’s when the trouble begins. People, accounting, taxes, sales, legal issues, cash flow, and tons of resistance. Most never make it to the financial freedom they are looking for. They quit, fail, get disillusioned, can’t deal with people, can’t sell their ideas. They fail, give up or settle for working 24/7 and struggling financially and emotionally.

Worse yet, most never even try. The prospect of the risk and their lack of confidence or knowledge keeps them imprisoned in jobs they don’t like, with bosses they can barely tolerate. Dreams become fantasies.

Yet, there is ONE ELEMENT that most every would-be entrepreneur is never taught, that every successful and financially-free entrepreneur knows. It’s the team of advisors, mentors and teachers that you surround yourself with. And that team is:

“More Important Than Money.”

Which is the name of the brand new book we are launching this week all around the world.

This book is the best of the Rich Dad Advisors multi-million dollar advice, teachings and setups for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Whether you have never left the security of employee-land or have been slaying dragons for years. Put down the sword, give the office keys back to your boss, and let a team who has been there and done it for real give you the pieces to make your journey joyful, profitable and do-able.

It is an honor for me to share with all of you this Advisor team. It is one of the greatest teams I have ever been a part of. You’ll learn that it’s a team of characters, very much like you, who all screwed up, struggled, persisted and lifted each other to the top of their entrepreneurial games.

You will learn that it is not the idea that you have, but the people you have around you that will make or break you. Being an entrepreneur is no joke as it is, but even more daunting if you go it alone. Let us, the Rich Dad Advisors, give you the very best advice, tips and tools that you will get anywhere to help you achieve your dreams.

Through the human-ness and real-ness of each of these amazing entrepreneurs, you will be inspired to win. No other Rich Dad book shares with you the “real side” of who these guys and gals are and how our mis-steps led to the success that you will achieve as well if you let us guide you.

The book is launching now… Click here to pre-order yours!

Introduction to Objection Handling

October 25, 2016 by sycreed

Successfully handling objections can make the difference between occasionally closing a sale and being a sales super star. In the video below, I share my simple steps to handling objections that can be mastered and used any time, any place to help you close more sales and increase your income.

Business Leadership Facilitator – Building a Championship Team

August 11, 2014 by sycreed

“I’ve learned that business is really simple. But the really hard part is dealing with the people.”

That’s what a little 10-year-old boy in my son’s 5th grade class said to me. Several years ago, I put his class in some business scenarios to teach them a little bit about entrepreneurship. In the middle of the class, this brilliant response came from him, and is a pretty good introduction to what I’m about to discuss with you right now.

By now, if you’ve watched by Business Success Formula video, or read that blog, you know the importance of the selling, building a team and teaching as the basic formula for creating a successful business and becoming a successful business leadership facilitator? Also, you’ve learned how that nagging little voice that’s going on inside your head could be detrimental to your success if you don’t know how to manage it.

But it’s not just your little voice that matters — it is your entire team’s little voices, as well. Realizing this is part of the job as a Business Leadership Facilitator.

So, let’s take on the analogy of a coffee cup. Inside this cup, is coffee, tea, whatever you want. Let’s call this the content of your business. That could be a variety of things:

Your products/services
Your team and vendors
Your customers
Your business systems
Your cash-flow

…the list can go on.

What’s inside this cup almost doesn’t matter. You may think to yourself, I need better product, a better accountant, better vendors, but those aren’t the most critical elements.

You could have the best coffee in the world, but what if your cup cracks? Your coffee — or rather, the contents in the cup — spill out, and in business, we would call that a business failure. The cup itself is a model for the context or the environment of which your business is run. And, it doesn’t have to be your business — it also relates to your health and your family.

Let’s say you’re on a diet. It doesn’t matter what diet you’re on (as long as it means eating healthier and exercising). It doesn’t matter what the content of your cup is. But if you don’t have an appropriate environment around your diet to keep you disciplined and motivated, (the equivalent to cracks in your cup), then the whole health system falls apart.

So how do you create a stronger cup?

Setting up the best environment to run your business is one of the best tools for any entrepreneur to guarantee success in the long-run. If you remember in the first sell-team-teach model, it’s the Code of Honor that really supports the system.

And it’s the values you have that will help you create this Code of Honor, or the set of rules, in order to have that strong environment.

The difference between values and rules are simple. Let’s say traffic safety is one of your values. Now, the rules would be:

Always stop fully at a stop sign or red light
Drive at or below the speed limit
Always wear your seat belt

Creating a set of solid rules to support your values is important, particularly in times when the heat is on. While your content may reach a boiling point, it’s your cup that needs to stand strong in tough time to ensure that the business (or your family or health) do not spill out.

I have business partners all over the world. I communicate with them all the time about my values and rules, because no matter where or when my business is being conducted, I know that my overall mission of improving people’s quality of life is constantly being upheld. Also, having values that we can strive for is one of the best motivators for any team.

One of my teachers, Mack Newton (highest ranking Taekwon-Do instructor in North America) once said to me: The single most defining factor of success in your life may be the people you hang around with most often. Are they playing by the same rules? Do they subscribe to the same code of honor? Do they operate with the same values?

All of this not only applies to people in business, but teachers, family members, leaders in organizations can all benefit from learning how to leverage this tool, this idea of creating a sustainable environment with solid values and rules worth striving for.

One of my bestselling books Team Code of Honor talks about it in intimate detail step by step.

Systems and Accountability are Part of Your Formula for Business Success

August 10, 2014 by sycreed

Let’s say you have a great business. You have a great product, a great service-and you’re going to kill the market. You’re making money, and your business is growing because people are loving what you’re doing. And you’re growing, and growing and growing, but the next thing you know – it’s all GONE. It’s just, gone. Why is that?

It’s a very common thing, actually. In all the focus on sales and marketing, a business easily falls into a state of chaos that spirals out of control. You see, most people who are great at selling and promoting aren’t good at accountability and systems. Yet, accountability and systems are what get your business from a state of chaos to stability and affluence, supporting successful, profitable growth.

Being a successful entrepreneur requires the ability to move from chaos to stability. And it’s not just true for business — accountability and systems work in your health and relationships, too.

Let’s look at how we can implement accountability and systems in your sales.

I believe one of the best motivational tools for salespeople is the Monday morning sales meeting. As a young, new salesperson (when I was just starting out), my company had to make sure I had a tight operating system to work within, and that I would be held accountable for my efforts. We had something we called the 5-call close, and it looked something like this:

COLD CALL: The purpose of a cold call was qualify the lead and book an appointment.

APPOINTMENT: The purpose of the appointment was to book a demonstration.

DEMONSTRATION: The demonstration was designed to get the prospect to ask for a presentation or proposal.

PRESENTATION: The presentation was designed to outline all the aspects of the service or product being offered so we could agree to move forward and ask for the sale (close).

CLOSE: The ultimate goal of getting a signed agreement for purchase.

Essentially, you can’t master the close unless you have mastered the first step, the cold call, then the appointment, then the demonstration, etc.

So, the 5-call close was the system. The accountability portion was every Monday, I had to go up there and present to everyone the results of my efforts — that made me accountable to my numbers. There is an example below:

Sales Grid Example

Cold calls	Appointments	%	Demonstrations	%	Presentations	%	Close	%
75	15	20	5	33	4	80	0	0

The meeting motivated me to want to deliver better numbers each week, because I was being held accountable in front of my entire team.

There are many benefits to having a system and being held accountable to it. For one, you know your sales cycle. Many businesses I’ve worked with don’t have one, and that’s unfortunate because the system will help you target areas of opportunity. Otherwise, you’d just hand out brochures to your sales team and say, Have at it, folks! That simply won’t work.

Looking at the sales grid (as I call it) above, it’s easy to see where the opportunities to learn and grow are. For example, I could definitely benefit from learning to improve the percent of appointments I set from my cold calls (20%). I could also improve the percent of clients I close after making presentations (0%!).

Now, please note: Accountability is NOT about saying you are a GOOD person or a BAD person. Accountability is simply taking responsibility for what you have done. If you write 0 for closes for the week on the sales grid, you are being accountable for the fact you have no closes. If you write nothing, you are not being accountable for your numbers.

When you are accountable to your numbers, the sales grid will help your Sales Manager quickly see the areas that with improvement could vastly enhance results (which means more revenue for the company and more commission in your pocket).

This grid is applicable for any kind of business. Let’s say your business doesn’t rely on cold calls. Maybe in your business, it’s customers that come through the door, inbound calls you have received, how many have registered for an event, etc. Or maybe it’s presentations you give, and the number of offers you hand out, and the number of follow-ups, etc. The point is to define your own sales system and hold your team accountable to mastering each part of it.

Once you have your sales cycle is systematized, it is easy to hold sales people accountable so you can see where you are leaving money on the table. By identifying where they can improve and potentially by how much (improve a close rate from 0% to 10%), you can predict what the incremental revenue will be as they improve their mastery of the sales process.

Want to track your sales process on your own Sales Grid so you can master your sales system and hold your sales people accountable Click here to access a free Sales Grid template with built in formulas to help you track your teams results and hold them accountable.

You can also Download my free Income Calculator to help determine how to achieve your specific sales revenues goals. This is a great tool once you have used the Sales Grid to track your current success ratios for each step of your sales system.

Need some guidance on how to make this work for your specific business? Click here to schedule a free 45-Minute Consultation with a Blair Singer Certified Coach.

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