1. Send an email out to your clients offering a 24-hour deal. What product do you sell that you can offer a very short rebate on? You could position this 24-hour discount to your clients as a reward for their loyalty. The great thing about this technique is you can’t lose- some people will buy it, but even the ones who don’t will be reminded of you, your company and the good things you offer.
2. Spend 4 minutes coming up with a more expensive option for what you already sell. Usually, around 20% of people will buy a more expensive version of what you already sell. What could you add to your product offerings to justify a higher price? Come up with a few ideas in 4 minutes and start testing them with potential customers.
3. Contact the media about what you are selling. Could you think of a story about your company that the local newspaper would run? What about an angle that your industry trade press or industry websites would be interested in? The more people see articles about you and your services, the more likely it is someone will contact you to buy what you offer. Try spending 4 minutes brainstorming media angles, then start emailing some journalists.
As the legendary Koren entrepreneur Kim Woo-Choong said, “Every street is paved with gold.” There are so many ways to build your business- stay open-minded and try at least one of these this week. It’s amazing what you could achieve in 4 minutes.
It always amazes me that people will spend years doing business degrees and courses, but spend almost no time studying how to be more productive.
Yet being super productive is one of the master skills of business.
In a world where anyone senior in business usually has 3 times more work than they can actually do, using your time really well is absolutely crucial.
Time management is actually a hobby of mine. It fascinates me how one person can literally get more done in one month than others do in a year.
So here are 3 time management techniques that I love (and are not commonly known) that can radically increase your productivity, as soon as you start doing them…
The 2-Minute Rule. Invented by David Allen, one of the most thoughtful productivity gurus and author of the seminal bestseller ‘Getting Things Done, this simple rule works as follows:
Whenever an email or task appears, simply ask yourself this question: “Can I do this in 2 minutes or less?”
If the answer is Yes, you do it right now. If the answer is No, you resist doing it and put it on your To-Do List for a later time.
The 2 Minute Rule works so well because it quickly gets rid of all the small tasks that can really build up over time, and prevents you from stopping major things you’re working on to handle the latest To Do that pops into your Inbox.
Follow this rule assiduously and your life will almost instantly become calmer and more productive.
Schedule a half day each week to do all your admin. One of the biggest challenges at work is we keep on switching our thinking styles during the day. As I see it, there are two basic thinking modes we have during most work days.
The first is Deep Thinking on issues and projects that count. The second is Processing Thinking – doing numerous relatively mindless tasks.
The brain works in very different ways for each of these thinking styles, so it can become quite stressful and ineffective to constantly switch between doing Processing Thinking and Deep Thinking.
One excellent solution is to save all your less important Processing Thinking for a one-half day each week. For example, on Friday morning.
If it’s not important or time-sensitive, literally postpone getting it done until that Friday, and then get all of those type of tasks done at once.
This massively clears up and simplifies your week, and increases 10 X how much-uninterrupted quality thinking time you will have.
Have a strict and early leaving time. The Human Performance Institute in Florida has conclusively shown that most executives do not work hard enough when at work, but also work too many hours.
You can solve both these issues by setting a clear and relatively early leaving time for each work day and strictly keeping to it.
I can assure you, that absolutely having to leave work earlier will speed up your work rate all day long.
Arguably the most important rule in all of time management is Parkinsons’ Law: ‘Work expands to fill the time allotted for it.’ When are you at your most efficient? The day before you go on vacation! Because you know you must, must, must finish your work by a certain time.
One of the most respected productivity experts is Michael Hyatt. At his highly successful company, he makes sure his staff get their work done at a reasonable hour by programming all the lights in the company to go off at 6 pm!
In summary, these are 3 of the most important productivity systems I teach the executives I mentor on high performance. They work for them and they will work for you too.
Give them a try for a week and you will be astounded at how productive you become.
When you get a good lead, it is absolutely vital that you convert it into a sale.
The difference between converting 1 out of 4 leads into a sale versus 1 out of 3 is a phenomenal amount of money over a 3-year period.
You need to get your sales conversion right.
There are so many ways to increase your sales conversion rate, but here’s one that is very easy to do and has a high predictability of success:
Offer a Last Minute Downsell.
It works like this: If after pitching your main product or service to the potential client, you intuitively feel that they are not going to buy, switch to a lower-priced alternative.
A typical script for this might be as follows:
“There’s one other version we offer that a lot of people love- it allows you to get most of the benefits of our primary service, but for around half the price. Would you like me to take you through it?”
That’s all there is to it. It’s that easy.
It works because the reality of selling a medium to high-priced service is this: Most of the time, the potential buyer will not tell you your price is their main objection.
Many are uneasy revealing that and would much rather just quietly end the meeting.
When you offer the Last Minute Downsell you greatly increase your chances of getting a sale. And once they work with you and trust you more, later down the track you can then upsell them to the original option – and even more expensive alternatives.
It’s such a simple technique, but it’s rarely used in most industries.
Are you missing one of the most important ingredients of being a great entrepreneur?
I’ve been mentoring entrepreneurs for about 14 years, and here’s what I’ve noticed:
There are many entrepreneurs that work hard, focus and really know their industry, but still do not achieve great things.
It’s very frustrating for them because they appear to be doing everything they need to, but are still not making nearly as much money as they feel they should. In many cases, I believe what is missing is simply this:
Massive desire.
Desire is the missing ingredient for many people.
I believe massive desire completely changes the game and will lift you to a much higher level of achievement than just doing the right actions. When you really, deeply, desire to succeed in business the following outcomes occur:
1. You see opportunities you have never seen before. You just notice more things that can help you when you really crave business success. Your subconscious picks out people, software or opportunities that it just doesn’t see unless you’re on fire with desire for your business goals.
2. It forces you to take more action. When you have a huge desire you make the phone calls you’re nervous about making. You work the extra hour. You push yourself past pure professionalism into the rarefied space of uncommon excellence. And thus your results rapidly improve.
3. Your belief triples. You usually can’t have a large rise in desire without also having a rise in belief. And that increased belief leads to taking more actions in the direction of your business goals, and more certainty when dealing with potential customers. These two combine to give you much stronger financial results.
4. You get much more luck. I don’t know exactly why this occurs, I just know from experience that it does. I have had times when I did all the right actions in my business yet did not have luck go my way. And other times when I had a huge amount of lucky circumstances occur in my favour. After a long time analyzing this, I concluded that the missing ingredient was desire.
When my desire for business success was white hot, I experienced a lot of luck. When I was working hard but my desire was merely moderate, I didn’t see many lucky moments occur.
It is like massive desire functions as some kind of magnet, bringing to you all manner of good fortune, in sometimes strange and spectacular ways.
So if you are working hard in your business, but you are just not getting the results you want, try greatly increasing your desire for your goals. Think about them constantly with emotionally intense desire.
It might just be the missing ingredient that changes everything.
Last week one of the great entrepreneurs of the world died.
Dietrich Mateschitz, the multi-billionaire founder of Red Bull.
But there is a powerful lesson he can still teach you.
Because the same technique Dietrich used to grow his company you too can use to grow your business.
You see Dietrich did not invent Red Bull.
He was in Thailand and saw there was an energy drink called Krathing Daeng, which was very popular with workers and truck drivers, to keep them awake. (At that time, such high-caffeine drinks did not exist in the western world)
He reached out to the Thai businessman who owned the company, and they agreed to create a version of that drink for the western market. (Krathing Daeng translated into English is ‘Red Bull’).
Fifteen years later he was a billionaire.
So if you are wondering how to grow your business, try using the same method Dietrich Mateschitz did.
Look at what other countries are doing in your industry.
Then see if you can adapt their ideas so they work for you.
It’s never been easier to do this.
All you have to do is Google companies in your space in different countries, visit their websites, and see what they are selling- and how they are doing it.
When I coach entrepreneurs, this is one of 21 methods I use to massively increase their income.
After all, if it worked for the founder of Red Bull, it can work for you.
If you want to excel at a high level in business, it is so important to get your mind in great shape.
With the right mental state, you can achieve enormous things. But if your mind is weak, confused or lacking in confidence, it is really hard to reach your business goals.
Or frankly even your personal goals.
I just did a deep interview where I outline some of the most cutting-edge mind techniques to think like a champion.
Techniques currently being used by elite athletes and U.S special forces to get their minds super strong.
I guarantee that if you listen to this you will gain some brilliant tools to help you perform at a high level.
Can you believe it? We are already in the last quarter of the year!
Before you know it, the year will be over. Done. Finished.
How’s this year looking? Are you kicking big financial goals? Are you achieving what you set out to do?
If you feel like you’re behind on your aspirations, it’s not too late. But you must dramatically adjust your behaviour.
I coach entrepreneurs all over the world on how to increase their income, and I assure you, if you do the 3 steps below, you can make this 4th quarter of the year your most finically successful.
1. Follow up on all old leads. Make a list of every person you talked to this year about working with you, who hasn’t hired you yet. And call every single one of them.
Concurrently, email them at least twice about working with you.
You would be amazed how much money is sitting in that list of old leads. Go get it!
2. Spend 2 hours a day reaching out to potential customers. Look them up on Google or Linked In, make a contact list and introduce yourself.
Tell them 3 reasons why they should work with you. Be warm but assertive.
Money follows connections- the more people who know your company exists the more money you will make, simple as that. Yet so many business owners do almost no cold outreach.
Go find clients, every single day you work this quarter. Don’t just do an occasional call or email, but work on it 2 solid hours a day.
Whatever you are usually doing is unlikely to be as important as finding potential customers.
3. Bring massive Desire and Urgency to your work. Do everything faster. Demand speed from everyone – your staff, your suppliers, yourself. Stop being so relaxed and ramp up your desire and your urgency.
Get out of your normal speed of working. Do you think Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is moving slowly?
The opposite: his day is planned in 5-minute blocks.
Money loves speed.
Start creating that speed and your financial results will dramatically increase.
With only 3 months left in the year, there really is no time to waste.
Follow these three steps every single day and you’ll finish this year delighted with your monetary results.
People think building a highly successful business is hard.
Actually, it’s really simple.
As long as you have a good product or service to offer, you only need to avoid making two mistakes.
Mistake 1: Not reaching out to enough potential buyers.
I have coached hundreds of entrepreneurs, and it’s truly amazing how many of them spend most of their day handling their current business and spend hardly any time introducing themselves to new potential clients.
How can you expect to grow your company if hardly any potential customers even know you exist?
Surely Mission One is to get your company known. All else is useless unless you can get that job done.
Only when you have a large enough pool of potential customers that know what you offer, can you ever hope to convert some of them into actual customers.
Mistake 2: Not staying in touch with those people.
When I started my first company I made this classic mistake. I reached out to plenty of potential clients, but then I didn’t stay in contact.
Oh sure, I’d ring them once or twice a year to see how they going, but that’s not nearly enough to stay in their minds. And get them to buy your services.
You have to be communicating with them many times a year to keep your company at the forefront of their thoughts. (The art, of course, is to do it in a way that makes you valued, rather than reviled).
These two simple mistakes are made by at least 80% of business owners, to varying degrees.
Get these two things right and most of your business growth dreams will be realized.
Get them wrong and even if you have a great product, your growth will be slow, a fraction of what it could have been.
When I coach entrepreneurs I focus on two primary things to make them more money.
Better marketing.
Greater productivity.
Let’s talk about number two for a minute.
Most business owners are performing at well under 50% of the level they should be. They waste enormous amounts of time, almost every day.
But if you get superb at productivity, you can make a phenomenal difference in how much wealth you create for yourself.
To help you do that here’s a productivity technique I recently invented- and it’s really helping me get things done.
I call it 20/20 Vision.
It’s a little extreme, but here’s how it works.
Firstly, you try to do every task in 20 minutes. Yes I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out.
It will truly amaze you how many tasks that would normally take an hour or more can actually be done in 20 minutes when you really push yourself.
And if you can’t complete the job in 20 minutes, at least you’ve made fast progress. Instead of it sitting on your To Do list for weeks, you at least move it forward.
This quick progress gives you an enormous amount of momentum and massively boosts your confidence and self-esteem.
The second part of the method is all-around Vision.
In my experience as a coach to business owners, many of us get caught up in doing endless jobs in our company and often forget our overall vision or big picture aims.
What are we actually trying to create? Who are we trying to become? If all you do is work on the next thing, you will get pulled down by your never-ending To Do List and could be in danger of not achieving your dreams.
With the 20/20 Vision technique, we take a different approach. You think about your life Vision numerous times during the day.
This does several valuable things:
It keeps you motivated- we stay inspired by our beautiful vision of our future.
It makes you focus much more on what is truly important your “to do’s” actually are. You do less of the urgent and more of the important. Less of the minutiae and more of the impactful activities.
So there you have it, the 20/20 Vision productivity technique.
It speeds up your rate of achievement, increases your morale and confidence (because you are making fast progress in many areas) and keeps you focused on your true work and life vision, rather than getting caught up in the trivial.
Professor John Kotter of Harvard University wanted to know what makes some CEOs more successful. So he and his team studied the fastest growing U.S companies over a ten-year period, then examined how their chief executives behaved differently.
Was there one thing that separated the great CEOs from the ordinary ones?
There sure was.
Kotter discovered that the CEOs who got the best results in America had a very different mental attitude from the other business leaders.
They had what he calls “A Sense Of Urgency.”
Professor Kotter found that only when you have a spirit of urgency can you push your way through the admin and red tape. Only by acting with urgency can you get others to deliver on time. Only by being truly urgent in your dealings can you achieve significant things in a year.
The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Urgency is the one thing that drives business projects forward quickly.
If you’re not urgent, people sense it and relax and move slowly. Things take ages to bear fruit. Mediocrity abounds.
The big question you may be asking of course is, are you performing with enough urgency?
Are you demanding enough? Of others, or indeed yourself?
Urgency is not an easy character trait to develop. The world doesn’t particularly like urgent people. They can seem rude. Pushy. Unreasonable. Yet being that way is often the only way to get stuff of consequence done.
As George Bernard Shaw so aptly put it, ” The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
There are several different types of urgency we should focus on if we want to achieve great things.
1. Urgency with strategic planning.
I know so many business owners who frequently procrastinate about choosing a company strategy. As a result of their strategic cowardice and complacency, they often get left behind in their industry.
(What have you been thinking about for too long? How about making a decision in the next 60 minutes on it?)
2. Urgency with other people.
Who owes you a report, product or idea? Why haven’t they sent it to you already? Do they really need that much time, or are they taking advantage of your leniency?
When you ask for a result with genuine urgency you usually move straight to the front of the other person’s line of important tasks. That’s where you deserve to be, must be, to get things done quickly.
3. Urgency in your own mind.
When I am coaching my business clients, I am always pushing them to cultivate great urgency in the way that they think. We need to see ourselves as highly time-sensitive, fast-achieving people. Only when we view ourselves this way are we likely to muster the energy and drive to make things happen at warp speed.
As the great American psychologist, William James, so often reminded us, we become what we consistently think about. If every day we have a self-image as somebody who has a real spirit of urgency, then soon we are likely to become that type of person.
So in conclusion, if you are not happy with the speed at which you are achieving in business, don’t just look at tactics, like sales, marketing, systems and the like. Spend at least as much time focusing on the one mindset that makes all the other stuff happen.
A real, deep, all-encompassing, powerful sense of urgency.
