Small Business - Key Areas to Focus On! - Colin Sprake from MYMSuccess.com

Let's just look at this in its entirety. So what are the three key reasons why businesses. Outside of that indecision, why businesses fail? What do you think they are? I heard one of them earlier. Cash flow. Okay, Cash flow, which is income. It's everything, all in all, entwined. Okay, Cash flow. What do you think the second one is? Competition. Competition. Competition to me. And here I could have a fight in this audience if I'm not careful. Competition to me is mindset. I believe everybody can be complementary. I don't even think of things being competitive. People go, wow, there's always a way to work with your competitors. Always. I know with Jim's company, you're just working with another company. I know both the companies really well. Not know your company too well, but I know the other company extremely well with basic. They used to be basic business systems. And it's really interesting now, working together, it's really important. You can always work together. You can say, well, buyouts happen. Understand that too. But you can always be complementary to each other. I work with other sales trainers. I work with other marketing trainers. Why? Because they have certain niches that they're in where they're better than me and I can learn from them. I don't believe you ever stop learning. I don't believe you ever stop learning. So cash flow is one. So I'll write the second one on. So then. Poor sales and marketing. Poor sales and marketing. What do you think the third one is? The top three reasons why. Why a business fails. Poor management. Poor management. What else? No goal. What else? Poor service. What else? Poor mindset. Mindset. Really, really important. Those are the three key reasons why business fail. And I always say to people, mindset is probably the biggest challenge. And I've said, I'll say it probably a hundred times tonight, because here's the thing. Our mind takes us out of the game all the time. I'm gonna tell you a story now, and you can just put yourself and see how you fit into the story, because it's a really great story in this room. Chiso's Didi Nearly two years ago now, we had two realtors sitting in this room, and we was doing Sales Warrior, which is one of our first. It's our second course. But during Sales Warrior, we asked them at the first lunch break on the first day to go on the street upstairs and sell CDs. And people were. You must be kidding. How many of you would be, if I said that to you now, would either get in your car and go home or Go upstairs and actually do the activity. How many of you would do the activity? Good. How many of you would flip me the finger? Okay, so here's what happened. See, here's a fascinating part. It had nothing to do with sales. It had to do with sales psychology though. So this, what happened. So the first he had these two realtors. Of course there was a bigger audience. There's just two realtors that were part of this audience. Funny part was the one guy owns an office for ReMax and this person used to be in his office and she left and moved to another office. He used to train her. Here's the difference. So the lady comes up to me and says to me, colin, what a ridiculous, stupid, benign, absolute ridiculous activity. And with a few great profanities in the middle of it as well. And I said to her, I understand that you don't want to do this exercise. I'm absolutely not doing it. What else can I do? I said, go to lunch, do whatever you want to do. So she went to lunch complaining all the way through lunch. She came back down after the lunch break, sat down in his chair. We got everyone quiet. She jumped up. Colin, this is the most stupid activity I've ever seen somebody do. Blah, blah, blah, blah, non stop. So a little voice in the back corner, a lady, a really amazing woman, gets up and says, can I ask you a question? I'm like, oh, oh, here we have a student that's on fire. You know, emotion high, intelligence low. So all of a sudden one person gonna ask another student a question. So she asked the question, so what was your number one reason for not doing the exercise? I said, great, I just have to facilitate now and watch the interaction, which is really funny. So that's the great part about being a good trainer, is about being a facilitator and getting the students to work each other's situations out for them. So she says, well, you know why? Because I don't, I cannot sell anything I don't believe in. And I haven't listened to that cd, so how can I sell it? So she says, oh, did you drive yet today? She said, yep. She said, why don't you just play the CD in your car during lunch? You could have listened to it and then you can go out and sell it. Second hurdle comes in. Oh, you know, once it's open, you can't sell something that's open. How many of you see yourself doing something similar like this? There's those non stop hurdles. People give you advice and you close the door. They give you more advice, you close the door. You I can't do it. It doesn't work in my industry. I've heard that million times. Here's. I'll give you an example. I'm busy working with an amazing company at the moment based out of Chilliwack. These guys came to me. They're one of our pro Pinnacle clients. These guys have spent nearly $30,000 with us in a program. But here's the difference, and I'm going to share with you. I can't tell you the exact numbers. What they did for the whole of 2011, they will do by March 2012 for this fiscal year. I said to them, I think you'll triple your sales doing what I give you to do. They've been pushed, comfort zone wise. Not happy, I can tell you, not happy at all. I phone, I check in every day, make sure they're doing exactly what I've asked them to do. And if I don't do it, I phone again. Until they get it, until they start. Until their mind takes. Gets into the game and starts to get on the field and play the game. When they hit that goal, by March, they won't need me. I'll just be there on the stands as a cheerleader, cheering them on to get to the next level. Because people's minds take them out of the game. Because those hurdles. How many of you realize you put hurdles in the way all the time? Challenges. We make up things. We make up excuses of why we cannot do things. In fact, we're so good at it, we sit at our computers, we go, I've got to send those emails. You know what? I feel like a cup of tea. Off we go. And tea. And an hour goes by. Go downstairs, phone a friend, go book a date somewhere. Do whatever important to stay focused on what you truly, truly want when you're going out and you build your business.