Strategic Planning for the Sales Professional

Welcome to this program on personal strategic planning for the sales professional. My name is Brian Tracy, and I've been studying and practicing and teaching strategic planning for something like 25 years now. I've done strategic planning for individuals and organizations in companies as small as two people. I've done strategic planning for organizations bigger than a billion dollars in sales. And I'm here to tell you this, that what you're about to learn can so dramatically improve your life and increase your results that right now you cannot believe it. I have taught this material to thousands of people, and I've had people come back and tell me stories that are absolutely extraordinary. In the time that we spend together, you are going to learn more about how to put your life and your career on the fast track than you have ever learned in any single period of time in your whole life. Now, let's start off with some of the most important concepts of all. We know that strategic planning is basically a mental game. It's a mental tool, and it starts off with the way you think about yourself. And the most important way that you think about yourself in personal strategic planning is, is that you are the president of your own company. That you are the president of your own company. You're in business for yourself, your sales territory, your area of responsibility. Your customers are your store. The part or the area that you sell in is like a farm, and you're responsible for turning that farm into something glorious. Now, as the president of your own company, know that all successful companies, all successful businesses have strategic plans. In our exhaustive studies, we find that unsuccessful businesses don't have strategic plans. They have what are called operational plans. Do you know what an operational plan is? It means that they're running by the seat of their pants. They're making it up each day, and they're concentrating solely on sales, volume, profits, and money in the bank. Because that's not for you as the president of your own business. You want to build something extraordinary. And I'm going to show you how. Now, here are the keys to a strategic plan. A strategic plan for a business has two parts which are very similar to your parts. If we can divide it into four, we can say that there are operations and strategy, and this is strategy. And here on this side, you have clear strategy and unclear strategy. Up here, you have operations, the things that we do each day. And you have either efficient operations or inefficient operations. Now, if you are in quadrant one, where you have clear strategy and efficient operations, then you'll have success in the present and Success in the future. If you're in Quadrant two, where you have clear strategy but inefficient operations, you'll have failure or poor results in the present, but with a great possibility of having success in the future. If you're in Quadrant three, where you have unclear strategy but efficient operations, you'll have success in the present. But if you don't know where you're going, then any road will get you there. Your future looks kind of grim. And if you're in Quadrant four, where most people and most companies are where they have unclear strategy and inefficient operations, then you're having failure, frustration and under accomplishment in the present, and you're going to have failure and frustration and underachievement in the future. Now, here's an important point. Many people say, well, I'm doing all right. How well you're doing today is only relevant when you compare it with how well you could do. And I'm here to tell you that if you're not using the principles that we talk about in this course, you're probably doing half or a quarter or maybe even 10% of what you're truly capable of. And you'll come to that conclusion before the end of this course. Well, successful individuals also have a strategic plan. Successful individuals have a plan that is written down, that is clear, that is detailed, and which they work on every single day. In fact, let me give you a very simple example. You've probably heard of the Yale study where they compared two graduating classes between 1953 and 1973. Well, Harvard University, not to be outdone, did a study in 1979amongst their graduating business seniors, and they asked them, how many of you have clear written goals and plans to accomplish them when you leave? Basically, strategic plans. They found that only 3% had clear written goals. They found that 14% had goals, but they weren't written down. And fully 84% of graduating seniors had no written goals or plans at all. Well, they went back in 1989, ten years later, and they asked these people, how are you doing financially? What they found was that the 14% who had plans but not written down were doing about twice as well as those. And the 84% had no goals at all. But the 3% who had clear written goals and plans were earning already 10 times as much as the whole other 97% put together. And every single study proves that, that this happens over and over again. You have no idea how powerful written goals and plans can be. So let's go on to the Next point. The next point is that strategy is a tool. Strategy is a tool. It's like a calculator or a bicycle or a car or an airplane. It enables you to get far more done in a shorter period of time. Strategy is a vehicle. It's something that you can get in and drive from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. But you can get there from A to B. You can get there with strategy far faster. What does this mean? Well, let's say over the course of your lifetime, you're going to go from earning $30,000 to $75,000. Now, you can spend 30 years doing that, you can spend 20 years doing that, you can spend 10 years doing that, you can spend five years doing that. Which do you want to do? Strategy enables you to put your foot on the accelerator of your own potential and move fast toward what you want to accomplish. The basic strategic model that we will teach you in the course of this program is called the GOSPA model. And GOSPA stands simply for. You don't have to memorize this. Goals, objectives, strategies, plans and actions. And in the final analysis, this is the key. Everything simply gets us ready for that. So remember, number seven, all strategic planning, personal strategic planning, and business strategic planning leads to action, and it leads to action. Now, when you get up from this program, you will have specific actions to engage in the next hour, the next day, the next week, month, year, and for the indefinite future. But remember the nothing happens without action. It's the key. Now, number eight is strategy is also called and has been defined as the art of the general. Now, the art of the general means simply this. It's the way that we take resources and we organize them and reorganize them, like in chess, the game of chess. And we move things around in order to win. What is the purpose of strategy? The purpose of strategy, when we talk to corporations and we work with businesses is very simple. It's to increase roe. It's to increase the return on equity invested in the business. If the company has equity invested of a million dollars and they're getting a 10% return, the purpose of strategy is to reorganize resources and apply them differently to increase that to 11% or 12%. Now, what's the purpose of strategy with regard to you? It's also to increase roe, but in this case, it's to increase return on energy. It's to increase return on your life. If you're going to spend a certain number of years of your life achieving goals, strategy will help you accomplish them far faster and far easier than you could imagine. Point number 10 is that strategy gives you a clear blueprint. It's like building a house. But if you have a really good blueprint designed by an excellent architect, which you will be in a very short period of time, then you can build a beautiful structure. You can build something that enables you to use every minute of every day to give you the greatest number and quality and quantity of results. It enables you to make a wonderful life, and you can't do it without it. It is a source of power. It's a source of motivation. Because very clear strategy excites you. It motivates you, it energizes you when you have a clear sense of where you're going. The very best definition of happiness, and happiness is the one common goal of you and I and all human beings, is that happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. And what strategy gives you is first of all a worthy ideal, and then a step by step plan to get there. Number 12 point is that strategy is the most powerful tool that you will ever learn for accomplishment. Personal strategy is the most powerful tool that you'll ever be given to accomplish anything that you want. When you learn personal strategic planning, when you learn personal business planning, when you learn how to organize every part of your life so that you're working efficiently and effectively, you will feel terrific about yourself. Dr. Robert Schuller once said, by the yard, it's hard, but inch by inch, anything's a cinch. Well, the key to high levels of motivation, high levels of energy, being happy, being positive, being focused, channeled and directed, is to have very, very clear goals and very clear, step by step plans to accomplish them. And in the sessions ahead, we'll show you exactly how to do it.

They have three qualities. Number one, and this is based on exhaustive research. Top salespeople, top human beings, are ambitious. They have an intense desire to be successful. Now, what does ambitious mean in sales? It means that you want to be the best. It means you want to be in the top 20%.