[weekly review] Selling Stars, More Thoughts on Priortization, Keeping Life Simple
It’s been a very busy few days. We just finished deploying our slightly improved homepage, updating our video servers, and ending the beta period. Also, our blog traffic has more than doubled in the past month. We must be doing something right. On the previous version of our homepage, we removed our logo because it reduced the number of opt-ins we got. We are now testing a tabbed style version of our logo in the top right corner. Some background: it’s widely known in the squeeze page design circle that conventional headers on websites reduce sales–hence the jiveSYSTEMS website not having one.
Books: a list of books I read this week with a short summary paragraph.
Selling to the VP of NO by Dave Gray, Founder and CEO of XPLANE
Snippet: Secrets of the Selling Stars
This gem of a book doesn’t break any revolutionary ground–it does something better! XPLANE has a talent for simplifying knowledge and then breaking it down into a logical flow. This is why this little book is so powerful. It literally takes you step-by-step through the sales process–a process of identifying, relating to, and then responding to your prospects needs. Many of us have been exposed to parts of the sales process through expensive training courses and seminars. This book gives you the full monty in Plain English for only $19.95. I focused on a specific area of the book which I believe to be the core of successfully presenting your products and services: 1) What pain/problem do you address; 2) What are your benefits in relation the pain/problem; 3) What are the unique features you offer in relation to the pain/problem; and 4) Why should I trust you? This is part of the sequence as listed in the book. However, when you migrate into the digital domain, I believe trust must be established first, “Why should I listen to you?” A crappy website and a few emails that are thrown together will not suffice! You need a create social capital–the currency for your business online. A quality website with a couple of landing pages for free items (e.g. reports, ebooks, podcast, web videos, etc.) is a good start. A blog is a close second, arguably the first. Anyway, this book is a quick study and it’s well worth the read.
Closing Thoughts
Sometimes life and business gets in the way of the healthy habits you have formed (e.g. writing blog posts, eating properly, exercising, and learning), it happens. The key is reestablishing your good habits as quickly as possible. Habits are very easy to break and become harder to reform the longer you leave them by the wayside. I have a list habits I wish to keep, for every position in our company we have a list of habits also. This makes it easy to spot if things are slipping or need to be changed up.
I am a big believer that success in business and happiness in life is found through balance. This is why my habits are composed of business related activities and personal ones. One of my primary work habits is writing; exercising is one of my personal ones. When I see these habits slipping, I know I need to take a step back and re-prioritize what I am doing.
What are your most productive habits at work, the ones that have the highest return on investment for your company? What habits have you formed to keep your body and mind in shape? Use your habits as an indicator to your current stress level. When you are living your habits, you are the most productive and centered. When you are not, you are living in what Steven Covey refers to as Quadrant 1: crises, pressing problems, deadline-driven projects. Personal and business growth are rarely seen when operating in Quadrant 1.
Habits don’t have to conform to a schedule. If you have been reading this blog, you may have learned that I don’t care much for schedules. I set my destination and then go with the flow. Schedules do have their place and they can be very useful for some people; however, not so much for me. Too much scheduling takes the joy out of life! I keep a handful or so of what I call habits that are in alignment with my goals and live them.
Here is a window into the way I structure my world:
Content Creation
I really enjoy writing in this blog and creating content that will help small businesses owners achieve their dreams for business and life–possibly even dream a bigger dream! So, I aim to write something that I hope you will find useful each and every day.
Exercising
Exercising is a big part of my life. So, I aim to exercise each and every day. I mix it up–it keeps things interesting. Sometimes I go to the gym and do a hardcore powerlifting routine and on other days, I will simply meditate while stretching for 30 minutes or so. I also go to Rebounderz a couple of times per week for a cardio class with several of my friends, it’s basically a big warehouse filled with about 25 trampolines that are all touching [they even have that at 45 degrees to the walls].
Learning
In order for me to create content that you will find useful, I need to assiduously study and meticulously test. This is another one of my habits, ‘Learning and Testing.’ My passion for learning is bridges by testing what I learn and then becomes content in this blog.
Eating
I was born in France, and they say the French “Live to Eat.” I will agree with that one. I like to test my cooking skills on new dishes from countries all over the world–more often than not, many of my friends and the jiveSYSTEMS team, come over to my house, every week or so, for a big and delicious meal. I also look for restaurants that have unique menus, and since I lived in England until I was 16, you can bet I love me some Sunday brunch.
Traveling and Meeting New People
I drove around the United States this summer with a friend, over 8000 miles within a month. Over the course of that trip, I paid for just 1 hotel. I had a friend in every place we stopped apart from one. I like meeting new people from all walks of life and listening to their stories. You can learn something from everyone. Here is a little sentence I wrote to remind myself of this fact: Everything you need is everything you have, Everything you want you can get from what you need, Everything you’ve found you had all along. In fact, I have had some very insightful conversations with drifters that I have picked up by the side of the road. For example, a hitchhiker in Georgia, who turned out to be a medical student taking a year out. He got to Georgia in under a month from somewhere in Canada without spending a dime. I became friends with a very old and frail man who ended up being an amazing teacher and Al Capone’s piano player for a period of time–he had some wonderful stories, but even more so a wonderful perspective and attitude about life [I made a blog post in memory of Joe]. A sniper from World War 1. And many more. Here is a mini-video interview I did with Two Brothers I stumbled across that are literally walking around the world in spreading the message of micro-peace:
Video not found!
They plan to walk around the world in just six years. A total of 25,000 miles (40,000 km) over five continents: Europe, Africa, the Americas, Australia and Asia. Ferenc and István Ivanics—walk 15-25 miles a day to reach their goal: to arrive back in their home (Hungary); they were Florida, USA, when I met them. You can learn more about their voyage on their website.
Keep Life Simple
You should quickly see that life for me is kept quite simple. As entrepreneurs, it can be very easy for us to get sucked into long days of work and sleepless nights-that is why it’s critical that we define our most productive and fulfilling habits and stick to them as much as we can. If you have read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, you will know that writing crystallizes your thoughts. So take a moment, it doesn’t have to be long and write down 2 of your most productive work habits and 2 of your favorite personal ones. Then take a step back and ask yourself, “Am I living these Habits?”
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