My Capstone Proposal

Here it is! My capstone proposal. I would like to apologize to Mark for my impatience last week. I realize that if my readers do not understand what I am writing then it is my responsibility to make it clear. I hope I have done so in the proposal below. I had some formatting issues transferring this from Word to Blogger, but I have attempted to resolved all of them. The outlines are all in line and not indented; I tried, but could not figure out how to fix this.

TO: Dr. Scott Abbot, Dr. Mark Jeffreys, Dr. David Litchford, and Dr. Grant Richards

FROM: Grant Weaver

DATE: April 25, 2011

SUBJECT: Proposal to complete START YOUR SALES: A professional sales training program for small business entrepreneurs.

Statement of Thesis and Project Summary

I am creating a professional sales training program for small businesses with weak or no sales systems. It will teach specific direct sales skills and sales system building. This training is projected to last five hours and will include a live presentation with videos, role-playing, planning, and coaching.

Many small business entrepreneurs start their companies with a specialized knowledge in some technical field. Photographers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and construction workers who want to go it on their own and want to be their own boss are examples of such entrepreneurs. However, a good majority lack key business skills and knowledge to effectively run their companies. It is not surprising then that, according to the SBA (http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7495/8430) almost half of start-ups fail within the first five years.

One of these key areas that many small business entrepreneurs lack is selling. These technical experts may have a killer product or service, but lack the ability to effectively sell that product or service. Direct selling, to them, does not seem necessary or they do not think they have the right personality. Some believe direct selling to be manipulative and pushy. So they rely on word of mouth referrals, direct mail efforts, or other advertising methods with low response rates to build their clientele.

This training program, which I have entitled START YOUR SALES, will help small business entrepreneurs discover the value of direct sales in their businesses, teach them the basic skills, and show them how to effectively implement those skills into their businesses in a high-performance sales system. START YOUR SALES will provide the necessary skill set to dramatically increase clientele and revenues.

As a salesperson myself I have learned some valuable skills and have worked with some expert individuals who have mentored me in the field. I have taken the time to learn how to close a sale, build customer rapport, and overcome objections. Selling is deeply emotional and psychological. There is more to selling than product knowledge and confidence; a technical entrepreneur needs to understand why people buy and how to leverage that understanding to be able to sell their high quality product or service.

My thesis project will be to organize these skills I have learned from direct sales experience, experts in the field, the literature, and the existing popular sales training programs, into a program that will:

• Convince small business entrepreneurs to increase their direct sales force in their business strategy.
• Train and coach these entrepreneurs on the basic sales skills such as closing a sale, and effectively overcoming objections
• Establish a framework for a strong sales system including prospecting hiring, regular training, and time management.

I will begin by showing market data and giving my pitch and sales presentation on the need for solid sales skills and a strong sales system in every business. This data will show comparisons in different industries and how these two things make a large difference in small businesses. I will also show them hope through data that illustrates the large number of potential clients available if only they knew how to capture their business. This is one of the most important aspects of the program. Just the decision to start selling will have tremendous value.

Then a large portion of the program will be focuses on training the skills involved for effective selling. I have identified the set of skills that will be taught in the program and have listed them in the outline below. I will then show to how to effectively apply, and maintain the sales skills in a high performance sales system. This program will also focus on helping people better understand the psychology of selling by learning the importance of knowing why people buy, how to influence behavior, the role of confidence, etc. Sales people have a bad reputation for manipulating, and by helping people see the correct mentality towards selling, they will be more empowered to use these tools effectively.

For both parts of the training program I will use a mix of oral presentation, role-playing, planning, video demonstrations, and interviews with experts. The oral presentation will be scripted and done through a power point presentation to guide the structure of the program. The video demonstrations will include several examples of the skills. I will use actors to role-play common sales scenarios to show how to effectively use the skills in real life. The videos will use both good and bad examples of these sales skills. They will also be used to better keep the attention of the audience. I will also video record interviews with sales professionals on the different topics in the program. These experts will add validity and credibility to what I am teaching. I plan to interview at least 5 of these individuals. There will also be significant role-playing and planning exercises for the audience to practice and apply the principles.

Overall, START YOUR SALES will provide a classroom-style training to learn and practice basic selling principles and how to develop and apply a high-performance sales system that is lacking from many small businesses.

Review of Literature

Why Sales Skills and Systems are Essential

Sales skills are essential in the business world. A market is a place where buyers and sellers come together to do business. Sellers have long known that to be able to sell their products and services, they will somehow have to stand out from the others sellers in the market, especially if they have differentiated products. In a perfectly competitive industry, this would be unnecessary according to microeconomic theory, but the conditions for perfect competition are rare, making most industries monopolistic competitive and oligopolistic. Therefore, marketing and selling play big roles in the business world.

Many technician’s start their own business because they like what they do and want to do it on their own, however they do not usually have the right skills or knowledge to create effective business systems such as sales (Gerber, 1995). Robert Kiyosaki in his popular book Rich Dad Poor Dad (Kiyosaki & Lechter, 1997) emphasized the importance of knowing sales skills throughout his entrepreneur stories and especially in a conversation he had with a reporter. This reporter had an advanced degree in writing and asked Mr. Kiyosaki how to become a best-selling author. He responded by telling her she needed to learn how to sell to be a best-selling author. She thought she was above this and that good writing would be enough. He told her that she was a much better writer than him, but that she would never be a best-selling author unless she first learned how to sell.

Direct sales capture a large percentage of unmet demand. Response rates vary for different types of marketing methods. Research shows the difference direct sales can have on potential clients (Werner, 1995). Direct sales should not replace other methods, but should work in concert with those other methods to create the largest number of customers (Holmes, 2007).

One example is in curb-side recycling in Utah County. Many curb-side recycling programs in Utah County are voluntary/subscription programs where a household has to sign up and pay a monthly fee for recycling pickup. The waste management companies have done no direct residential sales, and have relied on promotional programs and advertising to get participation. City governments, who signed on with the waste companies, also had no interest in direct selling. Participation rates in these cities were pretty low (between 20-30%). However, when a few young sales entrepreneurs created the company, Involved Recycling, to outsource the sales efforts for the waste management companies, their sales reps signed up one out every three households they talked to that weren’t already recycling (Romano, 2011). This is means that at least 50-60% of households were willing to recycle if only direct sales were in place. That is double the number of clients.

According to statistics presented in the Ultimate Sales Machine (Holmes, 2007) for general markets:

• 3% of the population is in the ‘buying now’ market
• 6-7% are open to it
• 30% not thinking about it
• 30% don’t think they are interested
• 30% know they are not interested
  

These statistics were very similar to the recycling markets. What does this mean? Well if a company are only getting 5-15% response rates from advertising, it means that there is a large percentage of potential clients that are only available with more assertive marketing methods such as direct sales.

Sales Skills

Sales training programs have been very popular for decades. Dale Carnegie’s classic books including How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People, 1981) and The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking (Carnegie, The Quick & Easy Way to Effective Speaking: Modern Techniques For Dynamic Communication, 1962) were geared towards the business audiences, particular sales people to be more influential and persuasive.

Most sales program have between 7-10 steps. These steps are generally very similar while some combine some steps. Research has shown that there is no specific set of persuasive or influential skills that work with every type of customer (McFarland, Challagalla, & Shervani, 2006). Effective sales people know how to adapt their presentation to different types of customers. However, the steps in these programs give general steps on how to approach customers while the applications of these steps change as you meet different customers. These steps generally include: prospecting, know your customer, building rapport, setting appointments, asking effective questions, building value, overcoming objections, closing the sale, and effective follow up (Holmes, 2007) (Hopkins, 2005) (Shook, The Perfect Sales Presentation, 1986).

It is generally agreed that the most important sales skills is closing the sale. Entire books (Ziglar, 1985) have been written on the subject with various techniques, and no sales training or book has not devoted a good portion of its contents to this critical skill. Knowing how to close a sale makes you a sales person, all the other skills will add power and efficiency, but without knowing how to close a sale, the other skills are not sales skills. One classic way to close a sale is to assume the close by asking a question that assumes a customer is agreeing to buy. For example, “Would you like to pay with cash or check?” or “Would you like to take this home now, or should we have it delivered later this week?”

An effective sale and close will influence to a specific behavior. In the classic book on leadership and change, Influencer by VitalSmarts (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, & Switzler, 2008), the authors research how master influencers make effective change come about using multiple sources of influence. They highlight effective leaders such as Muhamed Yunus with the Grameen Foundation and Mimi Silbert with Delancey Street enterprises and how they influenced large groups of people to do incredible things. The book shows how the strategies of these master influencers to create such change by focusing on a specific behavior to influence. These behaviors, which they call Vital Behaviors, are the key and specific behaviors they are trying to influence to create maximum influence. Closing a sale is influencing a vital behavior, whether it is signing a contract, disclosing credit card information, walking a product to a cash register, or just saying yes. An effective sales person influences to a specific closing behavior and not to a vague one.

While most people see behaviors and the underlying motivation behind those behaviors, most of us ignore the underlying capability to do a behavior (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, & Switzler, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, 2008). Motivation to do something is dead when it is difficult to do that thing. However, remove the obstacles and motivation will become much more powerful. By making it easier for someone to say yes and buy, and making it harder for them to say no, you will have increased an individual’s ability to buy, and have compounded it with your sales pitch and motivation. Increasing the sources of influence you use on someone, by coming at them from more than one angle you are going to see dramatically better results.

In fact, when at least six different sources of influence are used, behavior change is ten times more likely to occur than if only one source is used (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, & Switzler, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success, 2011). Most people only use one source, including average and mediocre sales people. As Chet Holmes teaches, you need to go after potential customers at least eight times to see significant results (Holmes, 2007). Chet, in his book, The Ultimate Sales Machine, requires his reps to be rejected twelve times before giving up. If you knew before you started that you would get rejected 8 times before making a close, but knew that you would close many of your sales, you would think differently about how to take rejection. Most people give up after the first rejection (Holmes, 2007).

Research has shown in many independent studies and fields, that people are more motivated by a fear of loss than a hope of gain (Tracy, 2004) (Peck, 1978) (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, & Switzler, 2008). Showing someone that they are going to be hurt if they don’t buy is more effective than how someone is going to benefit. Effective sales presentations should use this high leverage tactic where possible. Save people from the tiger, don’t just try and give them candy.

Some sales training programs focus on motivating sales people to work harder or overcome the fear of rejection. Sales people are guaranteed to face a large number of rejections as they give presentations, assuming they are doing any presentations. Effective sales people will find ways to increase their self-esteem or confidence so that they are less affected by rejections (Peck, 1978). We see that all sales people become more confident and get more sales immediately after they make a sale (Tracy, 2004). This phenomenon shows that internal feelings of confidence have a very large impact on the number of sales made. It is for this reason that many training programs help people overcome their internal fears, through self-affirming statements, showing the statistics about rejection and persistence, etc.

Programs that focus on the psychology of selling emphasize the need for salespeople to educate themselves thoroughly about the products they sell to know their value. It is also helpful to sales people to be highly educated about the market they sell in to know what their comparative advantage is and how they compare to competitors. The more convinced a salesperson is about the value of a product, the better they sell.

High-Performance Sales Systems

High-performance sales systems can take sales skills and maximize them through effective strategies, policies, and practices (Holmes, 2007). Sales skills alone will not find the best customers, find you the best salespeople, get in front of the most people possible, etc. By changing the environment and structure a person works in you can make significant changes to behaviors and bottom line results (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, & Switzler, 2008).

Let’s begin with how a company hire’s only good sales people. In a large meta-study of hundreds of companies, Good to Great by Jim Collins, shows that companies who ‘hire slow, fire fast’ create much more effective organizational human capital (Collins, 2001). The Good to Great companies would take a long time to put the ‘right people on the bus in the right seats’, and get the ‘wrong people off the bus quickly’ as a critical part of their HR policies. Chet Holmes (Holmes, 2007) also suggests this method for hiring sales people. While it may seem that a new sales rep, paid only on commission, costs no money if they do not make any sales, ineffective sales reps will hurt your sales force. It takes a lot of time to train sales people and you can waste a lot of time to not get any sales from them. Bad sales reps can also affect the morale and culture of the company and sales team. You will save yourself a lot of grief and time training people if you learn how to weed out the bad from the good (Holmes, 2007).

Holmes recommends that, to find the best salespeople you should reject every candidate in every interview to their face. Since you are looking for people with the type of personality that are willing to, and can effectively overcome objections, you should see this in the interview when you reject them. This process will eliminate almost every person interviewed. Holmes claims this is the only way to recruit sales superstars. While it may take considerable time to find such a superstar, Collins suggests this is a highly effective hiring strategy.

Formal training for new sales reps is necessary for high-performance sales systems. Many training systems in sales have a new sales person ‘listen in’ on an experienced one to learn the ropes and then put them on the phone. This ‘tribal method’ as Holmes calls it, does not teach good sales principles to new reps if they are listening to an experience bad sales person. The new rep cannot even analyze what is good or what is bad. Class room style training will give reps a framework to analyze their skills constantly. Then you can have them listen to experienced reps and even have them be able to tell them what they are doing wrong.

You must also have regular trainings with all reps to perfect and improve their skills. You must ensure they are all up to par. Weekly meeting with role-play sessions can show a manager where improvements are needed and can give the reps coaching as they are doing the presentations in a fake setting. People are more likely to use and remember skills and principles with this kind of regular repetition of training (Holmes, 2007).

Sales reps need to be consistent in their approaches to customers. Consistency means that every sales person in a company, finds prospects the same way, gives sales presentations the same way, and generally overcomes objections the same way. By giving each customer the same experience you can benefit in two ways: the ability to measure performance changes with the change in scripts or marketing, and repetition for the customers (Gerber, 1995) (Holmes, 2007). When customers get the same experience each time they are more likely to remember a brand and stick to a brand because of the repetition and reliability. It is imperative that each salesperson in a company is well educated about the brands so that their sales pitches are in line with their marketing campaigns. Without such consistency you will have greater variability among our salespeople. By finding out what your best salespeople are doing, and making your less successful reps do those same things, you can gain this consistency and raise the overall performance of your sales team (Tracy, 2004).

One of the fastest ways to double sales is to double the number of presentations made. You may have the best trained sales team but if you are lacking a good system to go through prospects quickly, then you are missing out on a good majority of your sales. Most systems are computerized (called Customer Resource Management) while some are sales friendly and others are not. You need to have a system that allows sales reps to easily generate lists and compiles information in a way so that sales reps can quickly call, or present to each customer and move on to the next. Good time management is one of the fastest ways to increase sales in a company (Holmes, 2007) (Shook, The Perfect Sales Presentation, 1986). When I started my sales firm in the summer of 2010, we did door to door sales. We got pretty good at making our presentations and the success rate was well over 30%. However, not everyone was home so we didn’t get to talk to as many people as we would like. What did we find? The faster the sales person walked from door to door, the more sales and hour they made. It was that simple, successful sales people walked quickly.

Conclusion

Sales skills and systems are necessary for capturing the largest number of customers. Small business entrepreneurs can learn these skills from various training programs available.

Preliminary Outline

Why Sell?

1. The data (showing the difference between sellers and non-sellers, and the data on markets and potential customers).
2. Your company and sales

• a. Why you are uncomfortable with selling.
• b. How that comfort zone is killing your business success.
• c. How your company’s revenues and clientele will increase dramatically with a stronger sales focus.

What is selling?

1. Incorrect paradigms and mentalities of sales and salespeople.
2. The true nature of selling in the business world.

Overview of training

1. The Skill Set
2. Systems knowledge

Sales Skills
The Three Steps of Selling

1. Establish the Appropriate relationship
a. Prospecting
b. Establishing rapport
c. Knowing your customer
i. Needs assessment
d. Follow-up (customer service)
2. Building/Educating Value
a. Education is the key to a good sales presentation
i. Teach and set the buying criteria in your favor
b. Build value with good questions
c. Overcoming objections
i. The classics: Money, time, think about it, etc.
ii. Overcoming new objections before they happen
3. Closing the sale
a. Closing Behavior
b. Make it easy to say yes and hard to say no
c. Show immediate value (urgency)
d. Do it early, do it often
e. Different techniques and scenarios

Sales Systems

1. Hiring effective sale reps
a. Reject them in your interviews
b. Hire slow, Fire fast
2. Regular Training and Role-playing
a. Classroom style training prior to observing
b. Set up schedule and skill set curriculum
3. Sales Scripts and Consistency
a. Selling a brand
4. Build lists: Best buyer’s strategy
a. Plan and coaching
5. Time management
a. Fastest way to double sales
6. The Psychology of Selling
a. The Psychology of Sellers
b. The Psychology of Buyers

Review
• Why Sell?
• Skills
• Systems
• Start Your Sales

Schedule for Completion

•Background research (May 1)
• PowerPoint Presentation
o First Draft (June 13)
o Second Draft (Aug 1)
• Script of the presentation
o First Draft (June 27)
o Second Draft (Aug 1)
• Videos
o Introduction (Aug 1) (This is done last, since it will draw from the other videos)
o Interviews with Professionals (May 16)
- Write questions (May 4)
- Nick Romano
- David Litchford
- Rob Metler
- Blaine Banbrow
- Bruce Jackson
o Acted examples of skills (June 1)
- Overcoming objections (May 23)
- Taking Control (May 23)
- Asking good questions (May 23)
- Closing the sale (May 30)
o Overview (May 30)
• Edit Videos (Aug 1)
• Handouts and exercises (June 1)
o Planning (May 9)
o Role plays (May 23)
o Assessments (June 1)
o Curriculum
• Master Plan, Outline with time frames (presentation time frames) (Aug 1)
o First Draft (June 27)
o Second Draft (Aug 1)
• Advanced Public Speaking Course (July-August)

Annotated Bibliography

Carnegie, D. (1981). How to Win Friends & Influence People. Simon & Schuster.

• A wide variety of skills are illustrated in this classic such as, ‘Getting a person to think something was their idea, building rapport, showing sincere interest, etc.’

Carnegie, D. (1962). The Quick & Easy Way to Effective Speaking: Modern Techniques For Dynamic Communication. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

• This classic book on business presentations and speeches gives a long list of practices in giving presentations such as using personal stories, how to organize a presentation, and building rapport with your audience.

Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. HarperBusiness.

• Get the right people on the bus, get the right people in the right seats, and get the wrong people off the bus. HR hiring/firing strategy: hire slow/fire fast.

Gerber, M. E. (1995). The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. HarperCollins.

• This book runs you through basic business systems for small business entrepreneurs. The POWER POINT marketing system shows a simple template on how to set up a script and test changes so that you can measure effectiveness. Gerber also demonstrates how consistency among sales people is critical; therefore sales scripts and role-playing sessions are necessary.

Holmes, C. (2007). The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies. New York: Penguin Group, Inc.

• This book is the book for building a strong sales system. He gives you time management skills, hiring, etc. Here you will find the ‘reject your potential hires to find superstars’ strategy. It runs you through market statistics on buyers and how to leverage those statistics. One of the biggest takeaways in the book is that it takes, on average, eight direct contacts to make most sales. This knowledge helps people overcome their fear of rejection if they know that they will have to be rejected that many times before closing.
• • A corporation fails every 3 minutes
• • A directorship changes every 32 seconds
• • A company changes control every 15 minutes.
• • 96 percent of all companies fail within 10 years.
• • 26,000 products and brands are introduced every year.
• • 16 percent to 30 percent of consumers change brand loyalty in one evening watching commercials.
• • 74 percent of consumers buy outside their favorite brands.
• • 29 percent of consumers do not read a newspaper.

Hopkins, T. (2005). How to Master the Art of Selling. Business Plus.

• Hopkins shows how to build a good set of questions in sales presentations. He has identified specific types of questions and when how they are applied to close sales, build value, and overcome objections. A part of my presentation will include some question planning and building for sale presentations.

Jim, R. (2003). The Art of Exceptional Living. Simon & Schuster Audio.

• Gives the right attitude about business, and appropriate for the psychology of selling. Blaming company or product inhibits growth and performance. Successful employees look inward for problem solving and performance improvements.

Kiyosaki, R. T., & Lechter, S. L. (1997). Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-- That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not! New York: Warner Books.

• Kiyosaki shows entrepreneurs the need to learn a variety of business system skills including sales. He effectively demonstrates this need in an interview with a reporter. He also began his career in sales, even though he was much more qualified to do other things. He felt he needed to learn how to sell to be successful in any business.

McFarland, R., Challagalla, G., & Shervani, T. (2006). Inluence Tactics for Effective Adaptive Selling. Journal of Marketing, 70(4) , 103-117.

• The authors’ research shows how the most effective sales people are able to adjust to individual buyer’s needs. Thought scripts are an effective tool for sales people; effective sales people can bring them to life and adjust the presentation according to individual buyers.

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2011). Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success. Business Plus.

• VitalSmarts’ new book on a narrower topic of influencing. The authors show the research on influencing individual behaviors. If you use all six sources of influence you will be ten times more likely to enact change.

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2008). Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. New York: McGraw-Hill.

• VitalSmarts’ first book on influencing. Shows research on how to target and measure specific high leverage behaviors and how to manipulate the environment to encourage or discourage specific behaviors.

Peck, M. S. (1978). The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional value and Spiritual Growth. New York: Simon & Schuster.

• This book suggests that all human mental illness is derived from some avoidance of suffering. People will avoid positive and healthy behaviors because of a fear that is will cause them some sort of discomfort. This happens more often as people age and become less open to new ideas. Effective sales people will recognize and empathize with these fears and minimize the pain of doing new things and maximize the pain of not doing new things.

Romano, N.A (2011). Increasing Curbside Participation Rates in Subscription-based Programs in Utah County. Provo: Brigham Young University.

• BYU Honors Thesis by Nicholas Romano, Executive Director at Involved Recycling. The report shows the data for direct sales in the recycling industry. Direct sales capture unmet demand.

Shook, R. L. (2003). Hardball Selling: How to Turn the Pressure On Without Turning the Customer Off. Sourcebooks, Inc.

• Shook shows the right mentality about high pressure sales. It is not about being pushy or manipulative; it is about clear communication, and doing business deals that you believe will benefit both parties. You realize that some people shouldn’t buy and you respect people when they make a final decision.

Shook, R. L. (1986). The Perfect Sales Presentation. New York: Bantam Books, Inc.

• This book gives a solid example of a full sales presentation and what to do before and after presenting. It shows a good example of how to get through gatekeepers to get to the decision makers, by using a voice of authority and ambiguity.

Tracy, B. (2004). The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc.

• Focuses on both the psychology of the sales person and the psychology of buyers. The most effective time to make a sale is right after you have made one. Confidence plays a big role here. The fear of loss is greater than the hope of gain.

U.S Small Business Association. (n.d.). What is the Survival Rate for New Firms? Retrieved April 22, 2011, from U.S. Small Business Association Website: http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7495/8430

• Shows the failure rate for new firms. About half of the new firms fail within the first five years.

Werner, C.M. (1995). Commitment, Behavior, and Attitude Change: An Analysis of Voluntary Recycling. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 197-208.

• Study on the level of commitment different marketing methods had on customers. It shows how signatures and direct sales led to higher levels of commitment than did other less direct means.

Ziglar, Z. (1985). Secrets of Closing the Sale. Berkley Trade.

• This classic book on closing demonstrates hundreds of closing techniques. It gives you a good overall picture of what it means to close the sale.

Review of Literature

Scott and Mark,

Here is the first draft of my lit review. I would like some good feedback so I can get a good grade on this proposal. I have included the bibliography below as well.

Sales training programs have been very popular for decades. Dale Carnegie’s classic books including How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People, 1981) and The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking (Carnegie, The Quick & Easy Way to Effective Speaking: Modern Techniques For Dynamic Communication, 1962) were geared towards the business audiences, particular sales people to be more influential and persuasive.

Sales skills are essential for the business world. Many technician’s start their own business because they like what they do and want to do it on their own, however they do not usually have the right skills or knowledge to create effective business systems such as sales (Gerber, 1995).

Robert Kiyosaki in his popular book Rich Dad Poor Dad (Kiyosaki & Lechter, 1997) emphasized the importance of knowing sales skills throughout his entrepreneur stories and especially in a conversation he had with a reporter. This reporter had an advanced degree in writing and asked Mr. Kiyosaki how to become a best-selling author. He responded by telling her she needed to learn how to sell to be a best-selling author. She thought she was above this and that good writing would be enough. He told her that she was a much better writer than him, but that she would never be a best-selling author unless she first learned how to sell.

Most sales program have between 7-10 steps. These steps are generally very similar while some combine some steps. Research has shown that there is no specific set of persuasive or influential skills that work with every type of customer (McFarland, Challagalla, & Shervani, 2006). Effective sales people know how to adapt their presentation to different types of customers. However, the steps in these programs give general steps on how to approach customers while the applications of these steps change as you meet different customers.

These steps generally include: prospecting, know your customer, building rapport, setting appointments, asking effective questions, building value, overcoming objections, closing the sale, and effective follow up. (Holmes, 2007) (Hopkins, 2005) (Shook, The Perfect Sales Presentation, 1986)

It is generally agreed that the most important sales skills is closing the sale. Entire books (Ziglar, 1985) have been written on the subject with various techniques, and no sales training or book has not devoted a good portion of its contents to this critical skill.

An effective sale and close will influence to a specific behavior. In the classic book on leadership and change, Influencer by VitalSmarts (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, & Switzler, 2008), the authors research how master influencers make effective change come about using multiple sources of influence. They highlight effective leaders such as Muhamed Yunus with the Grameen Foundation and Mimi Silbert with Delancey Street enterprises and how they influenced large groups of people to do incredible things. The book shows how the strategies of these master influencers to create such change by focusing on a specific behavior to influence. These behaviors, which they call Vital Behaviors, are the key and specific behaviors they are trying to influence to create maximum influence. Closing a sale is influencing a vital behavior.

Some sales training programs focus on motivating sales people to work harder or overcome the fear of rejection. Sales people are guaranteed to face a large number of rejections as they give presentations, assuming they are doing any presentations. Effective sales people will find ways to increase their self-esteem or confidence so that they are less phased by rejections (Peck, 1978). We see that all sales people become more confident and get more sales immediately after they make a sale (Tracy, 2004). This phenomenon shows that internal feelings of confidence have a very large impact on the number of sales made. It is for this reason that many training programs help people overcome their internal fears.

Bibliography

Carnegie, D. (1962). The Quick & Easy Way to Effective Speaking: Modern Techniques For Dynamic Communication. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Carnegie, D. (1981). How to Win Friends & Influence People. Simon & Schuster.

Gerber, M. E. (1995). The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. HarperCollins.

Holmes, C. (2007). Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies. New York: Penguin Group, Inc.

Hopkins, T. (2005). How to Master the Art of Selling. Business Plus.

Jim, R. (2003). The Art of Exceptional Living. Simon & Schuster Audio.

Kiyosaki, R. T., & Lechter, S. L. (1997). Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-- That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not! New York: Warner Books.

McFarland, R., Challagalla, G., & Shervani, T. (2006). Inluence Tactics for Effective Adaptive Selling. Journal of Marketing, 70(4), 103-117.

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2008). Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Peck, M. S. (1978). The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional value and Spiritual Growth. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Shook, R. L. (1986). The Perfect Sales Presentation. New York: Bantam Books, Inc.

Shook, R. L. (2003). Hardball Selling: How to Turn the Pressure On Without Turning the Customer Off. Sourcebooks, Inc.

Tracy, B. (2004). The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Ziglar, Z. (1985). Secrets of Closing the Sale. Berkley Trade.

Sales Systems

I read an excellent book this week from one of the sales gurus in the industry. The book is called: The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies, by Chet Holmes. I have primarily been studying books on sales skills. This book, however, focuses on sales systems. It was an eye opener for me. This could have really improved my sales firm last summer. At first this book did not seem relevant to what I am doing for my capstone until I dug a little deeper. Here I will briefly go through the a few of the main ideas in this book and explain how it applies to my capstone project.

1. Time management for sales managers and sales systems.

Mathematically, there are really only two general ways to increase sales volume: (i) Increase the rate at which people buy (as a percentage of those you approach and to whom you sell) and (ii) increase the total of number of potential customers to whom you give sales presentations.

If only 1 out of every 10 presentations yields a sale, you have a lot of room to grow in terms of success rates, but measuring how to improve sales skills isn't easy, and if you are only giving one sales presentation a day, then the fastest way to double your sales is to give two sales presentations a day instead of trying to double the skills.

This chapter of Chet's book focuses on how you can cut time as a manager and in your system to increase the volume of people to whom you sell.

2. Regular and effective training. One of the most important aspects of an effective sales training program is repetition. Most programs give you a lot of information all at once and people walk away feeling good but with few lasting new skills. Effective sales trainings need to be repeated. In fact it is much better to teach 3 or 4 new skills again and again and again, instead of teaching 15 new stills once. In these trainings you should do mandatory role plays so that you can ensure that all of your sales reps are getting the skills down. You need to have consistency with your reps so that you can know that all of your customers are getting the same experience. This makes it much easier to measure your sales teams skills when there is consistency among your reps.

3. Strategy

This part talked about putting educational seminars together so that you can give what Chet Holmes calls, "Stadium Pitches" which are well prepared and in front of lots of potential buyers at one time. Buy giving people a genuine educational seminar that addresses certain issues you can then show how your company can help them overcome those concerns. A popular seminar title could be called, "The 5 most dangerous trends facing (doctors, lawyers, retailers, banks, etc.) today." This hooks people in, because they want to know that is going on that is a dangerous in their industry, and if you can give some really good information you can really build trust with people.

4. The best buyers

Decide who your best buyers are and target them directly. Build lists and stay away from random cold calling.

5. Hiring Superstars

What I love most about this part was how it suggested that during an interview with a potential sales rep the first thing you do is reject them and see what they do. Most people say okay and walk away, but your potential superstars will overcome your objections, and this what you are looking for.

A few things

So I just found out that I get to train a new sales person at work on Wednesday. Perfect timing.

I will be racing to put something decent together for this new guy so that I can start testing out my methods and presentation in a real life sales situation.

I also just bought a few of books online:

How to Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins
The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy

These were recommended to me by Prof Litchford. I will read them as soon as I get them.

I am also going to try and convince my boss to pay for me to attend a Chet Holmes sales training seminar so that I can see how the top sales training guy in the world does his presentations.

Good news

I have some new developments that I am excited about.

I have asked Professor David Litchford to be my adviser and he has agreed. After speaking with him, I discovered his vast experience in sales training. He seems to be the perfect one to help me with my sales training program.

He also recommended that I take his Advanced Public Speaking course in the summer. He told me that in this course students will get rigorous one on one feedback on their presentations. He said that I could use this course to work on and perfect my presentation. I am very excited about this opportunity to work more closely with my expert adviser.

I have also decided to narrow down my thesis to just the sales training program. I believe this will help me focus and I will have many more resources in this area to draw from.

Note to Scott and Mark: Sometimes I post more than one time each week. So please do not miss the other work I do.

Effective Sales Training Program

This last week I have been working hard on developing a training program on selling. This program is something I would like to be able to use to train people in the companies that I start. Last summer I started my own sales/marketing firm and wanted to develop this but never got around to it. Now I would like to include it as part of my capstone as a motivational speaker.

Selling is an essential life skill in business. It is the money maker; it is how deals are made, and it is how business is done. I have worked in sales, started and run my own sales company, studied the literature, and have spent time working and talking with some really good sales people that have taught me almost everything I know.

I am going to put a video together to train people on essential sales principles. I have asked my mentor Nick Romano (an expert sales professional) and other sales professionals to participate in the video. They have agreed, and with their help, I am going to teach how to effectively sale anything.

I have based my training program on 3 fundamental skills:

1. Establish the appropriate relationship
2. Educate/Build Value
3. Identify the Closing behavior (close the sale)
   

Each skill is based on principles of human behavior, psychology, relationships, and economics. In my video presentation I will show examples of how to use these skills in real life situations in multiple arenas of selling. I will also include hand out worksheets to allow people following the presentation to practice these skills.

My presentation will not only draw from my own successful sales experiences, and those of my mentors, but also from the academic and popular literature in sales to provide credibility and power to these principles.

I will begin the presentation by building the value of effective sales training. I will show how simple steps and skills can lead to big sales results. Then I will show an overview of the program and the three steps.

In each step I will use one or two experts from the sales profession to help teach that principle. I will also show acted examples of those principles to show how to use it in real life. At the end of each principle. I will create a spot on the video for people to take time to practice that skill with a partner.

Below I have included some of the basic material I will cover that I have drawn from my experiences, Interviews with sales professionals, and the popular and and academic literature.

Closing the Sale

This step is by far the most important and most difficult part of any sale. It is the part where you get them to buy. Where you get them to do what it is you want them to do.
To Effectively close the sales:

1. Identify the CLOSING Behavior

An effective sale and close will influence to a specific behavior. In the classic book on leadership and change, Influencer by Vital Smarts, the authors research how master influencers make effective change come about using multiple sources of influence. They highlight effective leaders such as Muhamed Yunus with the Grameen Foundation and Mimi Silbert with Delancey Street enterprises and how they influenced large groups of people to do incredible things. The book shows how the strategies of these master influencers to create such change by focusing on a specific behavior to influence. These behaviors, which they call Vital Behaviors, are the key and specific behaviors they are trying to influence to create maximum influence.
Examples of vital behaviors include
In sales the vital behavior happens when you close the sale. One of the biggest problems people have with closing sales is not selling people to do that specific behavior. What I mean by this is if you are selling something, what specifically you want them to do to buy. What specific behavior do you want from them? Do you want them to sign a contract? Do you want them to take an item and purchase it at the register? Do you need a credit card number? Do you want them to only say yes? Do you want them to jump up and down and do a little dance for you?
I started a sales firm once selling curbside recycling services. I learned quickly the importance of Identifying Closing Behaviors quickly. I would emphasize the importance of closing sales in my trainings but my sales people kept trying to get people to ‘sign up for recycling’. I identified this problem one time training a sales person when a frustrated customer said, “What do you want me to do? Do I sign up with you? Do I call my city utility office? Do you have a website? What?” All we needed from people to ‘sign up for recycling’ was to fill out and sign a simple form. My sales people had the forms but kept trying to get people to sign up for recycling and not sign the forms. They would do an excellent job and educating the value of recycling to people and do everything perfect but could not clarify to each customer what it is they wanted from them specifically.
I then focused my sales scripts to simply and quickly get to the closing: “All we need is for you to fill out this simple form, and we can get you started recycling.” My sales reps were to hand the clipboard and pen anticipating acceptance from the customer. Sales performance improved dramatically.
How does this apply to other sales?
Identify the specific Closing Behavior first; it is the main objective of the sale, and everything else in your sales strategy should build up to that objective. This is primarily why I have chosen ‘Close the sale’ as the first step in an effective sale.

2. Make it easy for them to say yes/ Make it hard for them to say no:

a. Physically
b. Psychologically
My mother works as a cashier at ShopKo. She recently came to me for advice on how to sell extended warranties on electronic devices sold in the store. She told me how corporate was pushing these warranties and how nobody wanted them and she didn’t feel like it was her place to try and push these onto people.
I asked her to go through her sales presentation with me. As a cashier you have only a moment to make the sale. She said she would quickly explain the benefits and price and then ask if they wanted her to add on the extended warranty. She hadn’t had much success with this approach.
I went through with her the principle of closing sales and found out that the closing behavior for selling these extended warranties is consent. All the customer has to do is consent that they buy the extended warranty. They don’t have to sign anything extra, fill out any new form, just say yes.
This is where principle 2 of close the sale comes in. Make it easy for them to say yes and make it hard for them to say no. You are going to do this verbally, physically, and psychologically. Let’s talk about how to do this verbally and psychologically. I thought about how to make it easy for someone to say yes and hard to say no to the extended warranty. Originally my mom would ask, “Would you like me to add on the extended warranty to your product?” Now taking the time to add one something sounds hard regardless of price. You have to wait longer, you have to make the cashier more work, you have to pay more money for something you might never need or use, it is just too hard to say yes and easy to say no. An effective sales person will switch this.
I told my mom to try it out this way. Instead of asking the customer to add on the extended warranty, she was to say, “If it’s alright I’m going to go ahead and add the extended warranty.” This way instead of making it easy to say no, it was hard to say no. The customer would then have to stop the cashier from doing something they had already started and awkwardly communicate the desire to a confused cashier to not get the extended warranty. In this situation it is socially much easier to say yes, and hard to say no. Physically I told my mother to also, after she said, “If it’s alright, I’m going to go ahead and add the extended warranty,” she was to turn away from the customer and begin the transaction.
Selling in person has this advantage. You can use strong body language and gestures to aid you in closing sales and making it easy to say yes and hard to say no. This definitely is a high pressure sells technique but you must learn that all good salespeople are high pressure sales people. It isn’t about manipulation of strong-arming someone; it is about doing business and being concise. There is no shame in a good business person trying to do business.
When I ran my sales firm selling recycling services I used body language to make it easy to say yes and hard to say no on the doorsteps of peoples’ houses. After my sales reps gave the closing line, “All we need you to do is fill out this quick form and we can get you started recycling,” the reps were to hand the clipboard and pen to the homeowner in anticipation of them taking it and signing the form. It worked miracles when it was done.
Not everyone has the courage to close hard and show anticipation of the sale toward customers. They have a fear that waits, not allowing any expectations to go up in case they don’t get the sale. There is something powerful about communicating an expected sale. When you can successfully communicate, “it is obvious that you are going to choose to buy this so let me take care of the details for you quickly and easily,” you are almost guaranteed to close the sale every time.

3. Show immediate value

After you communicate the closing behavior, you should then communicate the immediate value associated with that behavior. "All we need you to do is sign this form and we can get you started saving the environment."

"If it's alright, let's go ahead and move forward so we can start working hard for your company."

4. Do it early, do if often

This principle is self-explanatory. When you are closing the sale, do it early in the sales presentation to communicate to your customer clearly what you want from them, and do it more than once. (Statistics?) What's great about this skill is that it can first save you a lot of time if they say yes the first time, but it will also help any objections or concerns about your product come out early in the presentation. You will better be able get a feel about your customer's feelings about your product.


PRACTICE

With a partner, go through each of the situations below. For each situation (1) Identify a closing behavior (2) Discuss how to make it easy to yes and (3) Identify the immediate value and (4) Take turns practicing closing the sale in a role play.

1. You are a clerk in a retail store trying to sell the new big screen television set that is on sale to someone 'just looking'. The workers in the back have to bring one to the front when someone buys one.

2. You are negotiating a large marketing contract with a big company. The executive you are negotiating with seems interested but you cannot yet tell if he is in or not.

Establish the Appropriate Relationship

Based on two main factors:
1. Your customer

References
McFarland, R., Challagalla, G., & Shervani, T. (2006). Influence Tactics for Effective Adaptive Selling. Journal of Marketing, 70(4), 103-117. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

“Buyers are more complex than orginally presumed. You cannot neatly put buyers into categories. An effective salesperson will adapt their influencing techniques to match the buyer’s specific needs and personality.”

• Be on their side
• Talk about anything about the sale at first to build rapport
• Fill their needs: Find out their specific needs. “Whats important to you (in a tv)?”
• AMPP: Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime

Do not ever start a conversation with, “Can I help you?” You will almost always get a no. Find other questions to ask to get started. “Have you shopped here before.”

2. Your product

Educate/Build Value

The market place exists to create and exchange value. Nothing should be sold or will be sold for very long that isn’t really valuable to someone. In the market place you are not just selling things to people. The word selling has gotten a bad reputation somehow connoting manipulation and ripping people off. But you should never sell something where you have to do that. It isn’t good business and it isn’t ethical. In the real business world you are exchanging value.
However, there is so much value out there and we don’t all see value in the same way. So the only way that we can learn to recognize new value is to discover it on our own, or have someone else teach us the value of something. This is what a sale is. It is educating value to customers. If you don’t see value in what you are trying to sell then how can you teach its value to someone else without lying to them? You either need to find something else to do or have someone teach you more about value. Entrepreneurs are trying to create new value, and they do create new value, this is how we have made so much advance in the world over the past few centuries is because of entrepreneurs creating value.
Sell only things that are valuable. Learn how to recognize value where it exists. You cannot communicate and build value if you do not see it yourself. It is much easier to get someone to see something you are seeing than to get someone to see something you do not see. You need to clearly understand why it should be obvious why someone should purchase a specific product. You must be totally convinced yourself. To do this you need to be educated about the product as much as you can. People buy things for different reasons, and you need to see how this product is valuable to many different types of people with many different types of needs and wants.

When it is possible, I try to sell to specific types of people who I know will obviously need or want the product. When I am convinced that someone will clearly want it, then all I have to do is teach them what I know so that they will buy. If I am selling to someone who at first does not convince me that they do obviously need the product, I try to take time to learn more about the product and the situation so that I can see why something is so obviously valuable. This is why I prefer to sell to businesses instead of resident households, besides there is more money, I can do more research on the specific company because of their own marketing/PR efforts, rather than a person at their home whom I will know little about before speaking to them besides the color and type of front door they have.
You also need to trust that people can make good decisions about value if they are only taught to see what you see.

People buy things that they perceive to be valuable. This is why they purchase; they are purchasing the value. They are not purchasing the product, they are purchasing the value of the product. When you buy a microwave, you aren’t buying a weird looking box with buttons, you are buying the convenience of heating your food quickly, this is why you are buying a microwave. When you buy life insurance, you are not buying paperwork and another monthly bill, you are buying the security that comes for loved ones in the event of your death. In Michael Gerber’s book The E-Myth Revisited, Gerber emphasized that you are selling more than just the product, you are selling the feeling. When you go to McDonald’s you are not buying a very high quality hamburger or any high quality food for that matter, you are purchasing the McDonald’s experience which is Ronald McDonald, the play place, the quick, friendly, and consistent service with a , “Welcome to McDonald’s!” in ___ locations around the world.

Other
Sell the feelings, not the product; sell the value, not the item
Make them feel special
Overcoming objections
High pressure sales
Do business, not manipulation
Get them saying yes

Your best customers are you best customers

Annotated Bibliography

Here is my annotated bibliography. I have many more sources that I plan to use (which I have listed from the books in a previous post) but I will annotate them once I have used some material from them.

Bibliography

The Holy Bible Authorized King James Version. (1979). Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Adler, M. J., & Van Doren, C. (1972). How To Read A Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Ashcraft, M. H., & Radvansky, G. A. (2010). Cognition 5th Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.

Franklin, B. (1996). The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc.

Gallwey, T. E. (1974). The Inner Game of Tennis: Revised Edition. New York: Random House.

Gordon, T. (1970). Parent Effectiveness Training. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Graham, B., & Dodd, D. (1934). Security Analysis: The Classic 1940 Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Jackson, B. H. (2003). On Becoming a Professional:Lessons from Professionals on Becoming a Human Performance Consultant.

Kiyosaki, R. T., & Lechter, S. L. (1997). Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-- That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not! New York: Warner Books.

Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Penguin Group Inc.

McConnell, C. R., Brue, S. L., & Flynn, S. M. (2009). Microeconomics: Principles, Problems, and Policies Eighteenth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Mormon. (1981 [1830]). The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2008). Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Peck, M. S. (1978). The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional value and Spiritual Growth. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday.

Weinberg, G. M. (1975). An Introduction to General Systems Thinking. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Sample material: Ideas

Here is about 10-12 minutes of written material that I am going to record. It is not very good in terms of grammar; I wrote it out as I would say it so it needs a lot of editing as a written piece. There are sentences that are repeated. This is not an error. Again this is how I would say the material out loud. A repeated sentence is said with more emphasis and more slowly. But I would like some feedback for anyone who has time to go over it.

An idea: the most resilient parasite

We live in a world of complexity and information overload. There is just not enough time for us to process the vast amounts of information the world expects us to process. All this information coming in from the outside leaves us very little time to think about and process information and ideas that come from the inside, from ourselves.

This power to generate ideas, make inferences, and be creative is the key difference that separates us and keeps us above computers in the evolutionary chain. It is what makes human special. Computers can store and process massive amounts of information with incredible power and speed. Human brains do not consciously do so well. Yet in the information age, to keep up to speed, we are required to learn and process so much information. Let’s not forget what makes a human brain so powerful and so unique. It is not our ability to process A LOT of information, it is about ability to process information in really creative ways.

Henry Ford was criticized for not being very educated, for not having enough of that outside knowledge. He replied saying that he didn’t need to be educated. He said that he hired other people to learn that stuff for him so he would have more time to do more important tasks such as thinking. Thinking and creating is what we do well.

That’s what I would like to talk about today: Take more time to think to generate and develop your own ideas. There is incredible power in this discipline and I will show you how and why.

You don’t need to be a genius to come up with good ideas. I have a theory that I would like to share with you: Human beings were designed to have good ideas. Human beings were designed to have good ideas. I know at times it seems that exactly the opposite is true, and I will admit that most of any one person’s ideas are probably bad ideas. I have had loads of bad ideas I could tell you about, but I still believe that it is in our fundamental nature and design to produce good ideas even if they aren’t as frequent as the bad ones. YOU were designed to create brilliant and powerful ideas!

“So how come I haven’t recognized any of these ideas?” you ask. Well if you are like most people, who don’t give much awareness and attention to their own thoughts and ideas, you just let ideas come and go as they naturally do. You probably don’t take the time to think about, test, and act upon these ideas to see if they are good. You probably don’t have the patience or trust to give yourself a chance. It is a terrible mistake. You were designed for so much more.

So… when you have an idea, when it hits you and you feel inspired, when it makes you smile, when it stirs you and gets you excited, hold onto it. HOLD ONTO IT with all your might. Let it swell within you until it brings forth fruit and you can say, “It was a good seed; It was a good idea.”

“What is the most resilient parasite? (Remember the movie Inception?) Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.”

Ideas are powerful. Hold onto them.

Do not let them go because they will disappear if you do. Most people never find out which of their ideas grow into really good plants, which ideas are the most valuable, which ideas make millions, because they let them go. We have lots of bad ideas but we should at least take the time to find out which ones are bad and which ones are good.

All the time I hear fantastic ideas from people. They go something like this:

“I think I should quit my job and do this.”

“I think I’d be really good at that.”

“I’d like to start doing this or that.”

“If only someone did this or that..”

I say, “HEY! I think that is an excellent idea. You should do it.”

How many people listen to me? Not very many. I’m telling you I hear such good ideas from people all the time it hurts me when they let them go. Hold onto your ideas.

One of the best ways to hold onto an idea is to write down these ideas on paper. Make a habit of this. Any spark that goes on between those cute ears of yours, write it down. If you are in a place or situation you can’t write down an idea, hold onto it! Hold onto it until you can write it down because that idea might just be the one that changes your life. And it only takes one idea written down and acted upon that can make enormous changes for you.

An idea came to me one night as I was getting off the bus on my way home from college. It was cold and snowy, and dark so I wasn’t about to write it down right then; I was just going to go home. But I had to pee really bad. There was a Taco Time right there at the bus stop, so instead of walking ten minutes uncomfortably to use my bathroom at home I just walked into the Taco Time to use their facilities. After doing my business in the men’s restroom, this idea came to me again and I thought I should write it down. So I did. Right there in the men’s restroom at Taco Time I pulled out a pen and notebook and wrote down the idea.

I am so glad that I did. It was one of the most important ideas I have ever had.

Honestly I probably could have made it home without using the restroom, but the idea might not have made it home.

The idea might not have made it home. It’s funny because I ended up writing that incredible idea because I needed to use the restroom. I would have just walked home otherwise. So here is my advice: If you can’t wait to get home to use the restroom, don’t wait to get home to write down an idea. (Profound yeah? J )

Write down your ideas. We don’t do it enough. If you have an idea for a business, write it down. If you have an idea to improve your life or someone else’s, write it down. If you have an idea for a book, write it down! That one should seem obvious, if you are going to write a book about some incredible ideas, I would think at some point you would have to start actually writing those ideas.

We’ve all heard of writer’s block. You know, when a writer can’t write because he’s run out of ideas? Well a worse type of writer’s block occurs when a writer won’t write and he is FULL of ideas. We need to get over our writer’s block and write down our ideas.

You should also make a habit of writing down ideas you get from other people. You will learn a lot doing this; there are a lot of good ideas out there. But it is much more important that you write down the ideas that come out of your own head. Why? Well you are probably more likely to do those ideas if they are your own. More likely to turn one of them into a plant that produces fruit. You could hear the same idea a hundred times from other people and you’ll never do it. But once it comes from you, it is inspiration.

Cobb: What do you want?
Saito: Inception. Is it possible?
Arthur: Of course not.
Saito: If you can steal an idea, why can't you plant one there instead?
Arthur: Okay, this is me, planting an idea in your mind. I say: don't think about elephants. What are you thinking about?
Saito: Elephants?
Arthur: Right, but it's not your idea. The dreamer can always remember the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake.

Once you come up with the idea, once it is yours it can grow and work magic. If you want to influence people don’t try to give them ideas, try and help them discover ideas. Inception plot. That’s a Dale Carnegie classic how to win friends and influence people.

While you are listening to me, if an idea comes to your head. Forget! what I am saying and take a moment to dwell onyour idea. Your ideas, for you are much more important than my ideas for you. In fact the most important ideas you’ll ever have are the ones that come out of your own head. This is the idea that changed my life and just so happens to be the idea that I wrote down in that Taco Time restroom. The most important ideas you’ll ever have are the ones that come out of your own head. I will share with you some ideas, but you need to get your own! Do you understand the power and potential of what I am saying? Or even more important, do you understand the power and potential of what you are thinking? Even right now? This room is swarming and bursting with really really good ideas. And they’re not coming from me.

Let’s take a moment to talk about the great thinkers in history men in history that came up with really good ideas: Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Hegel, Marx, Dante, Aquinas, da Vinci, Galileo, and Einstein. These men have gone down in history as the great thinkers. Might I suggest that they are considered the great thinkers because they I don’t know, took a little more time to think? It’s possible. The point is that they took the time to think their own ideas, write them down, develop them, improve them, and write them again until they became the great thinkers. They were brilliant because of their OWN ideas, not because they necessarily new OTHER peoples’ ideas. In fact Mortimer Adler, Editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica said that the great thinkers probably read less books in their lives that what is required for us to read in college. They just took more time to read better than we do. Took more time to think and create their own ideas. Interesting. Why then do we try to get as much outside information in our heads as possible? We should, if we want to be great thinkers, develop our own ideas.

Take more time to think and generate your own ideas.

I’m not saying that you should NOT study other peoples’ ideas and other books. You should make study and reading a very important part of your life. I am only suggesting that you take more time to think about your OWN ideas. Because unless we can catch and hold onto a few good ideas from our own head then we will have sure wasted our time, wasted a good brain that was designed for creation, designed for more. Until we capture our own good ideas then we will never discover our true potential.

The idea was the product of other ideas.

If it is a good idea, it will swell within you.

And you got to test the idea. People are afraid that their idea that they think is good will not turn out to be so good. That will probably happen… a lot. But you have to be emotionally stable to accept it and not take it personal. You have got to have the courage to keep trying your ideas even though many and possibly most of them will fail.

I had a professor once to agree to go over a paper of mine as a favor only if I promised him that I wouldn’t be offended if he torpedoed it. He said that people sometimes have “fundamental misunderstandings” and he was a very logic based professor so fundamental misunderstandings did not slide with him. I told him okay. However before I gave him the paper I was worried that he would find fundamental misunderstandings in my paper and reasoning and I was afraid to give him my paper. Now this seems odd to me. Wouldn’t I like to know if I had a fundamental misunderstanding somewhere in my head? Shouldn’t I try to make sure I have the fundamentals understood correctly? Why is it people are afraid to face their imperfections and learn from them? Why can’t people face their fundamental misunderstandings of the world?

Have courage to face and fundamental misunderstanding that you have, and then have courage to keep developing those incredible ideas.