Here’s the link:

http://blogs.northwood.edu/ideamagazine/2013/04/29/alumni-interview-with-robert-cornish/

Being prepared is a core part of success. If you plan for each day and each week and get completely ready for it, the odds will turn in your favor. I see people on a daily basis under prepared if prepared at all and it shows in their performance. They scratch their head and act bewildered when things don’t work out for the day or the week but it only comes down to their lack of preparation for the task at hand.

So prior to any day or week, prepare yourself fully for what needs to be executed the next day or throughout the week. This includes things like:

- Having a daily list of targets that need to be executed in a detailed, doable manner that will align your actions and keep you organized.

- Preparing any calls, appointments or details you need for the week to make a definite agenda that you can focus on and simply execute.

- Studying any training material or reading relevant books that will help you be mentally prepared and trained for what you need to do. Few people put enough time and energy into studying and training on relevant material that will allow you to excel in your position.

- Drilling any processes or in sales, patters and objection handlings that will help you smoothly execute your tasks. Drilling can be enormously effective because it makes you perfect. It fully prepares you and makes your work and actions become second nature. So drill until you know your position cold. Actors do it. Top athletes do it and you need to do it.

The bottom line is – be ready. In sports, training and being prepared is everything. When you’re fully trained and prepared, you’re competent when the game comes and playing at your best is a natural course of action since the training and preparation has been done. I can’t stress this enough! Be prepared.

In an interview with Usain Bolt when asked where his self confidence came from, he replied,

“I trust my trainer, myself, and the hours and hours of sweat that I put in.”

Bolt’s trainer Glen Mills added, “I see too many athletes having to try too hard on the day, because they’ve not done the work. The result is their muscles are too tense and they can’t flow. If you put in enough of the right practice, the execution becomes automatic, and the result will take care of itself.”

So train and be prepared and your goals will be realized and your work life will become easier.

- Robert

http://www.33voices.com/robert-cornish/audio

Enjoy!

- Robert

1) Work to find and hire talented salespeople to start with. Keep pushing your standards up to find the very best that you can find. This is easier said than done. As a pointer, ask them about their previous stats, sales results etc. and ensure their ability to communicate and sell themselves to you is strong and then ask for 3 references to call so you can verify what they’re saying. Keep in mind that a Rockstar salesperson who you’re potentially looking to hire will follow up with you to get the job. In fact, I’d recommend not following up with them. Make them chase you for the position. If they do and the references work out, you probably have a winner on your hands.

2) Then work to make your products or services and the marketing of those products and services so strong that it practically sells itself. Refine and iterate them to work over the products and how you communicate them to focus on making them irresistible. There’s plenty of examples out there that fit this like Apple or BMW or Lexus or companies like Google. They put out products and marketing that is irresistible and that effectively sells itself. By doing so, they turn their sales force into order takers. You want to have prospects just calling your sales team to get started rather than run them through the wringer each day. So ask yourself what you can do to make your products and the marketing of those products so strong that they sell themselves and effectively turns your sales team into order takers.

Combined, these two parts pack a powerful punch that will take your sales efforts to a new high level.

- Robert

For our agency for example, early on we were considered to be in the field of new media PR mixed with sales making us a bit of a hybrid. We didn’t like this idea whatsoever and didn’t want to be pooled into a category of PR, marketing or advertising. We saw ourselves as something new. Something different and refreshingly results oriented to help fuel our clients revenue and growth. We coined ourselves as “Strategic Relations” which was the best term to fit what we did. We positioned ourselves away from marketing, PR and advertising and the agencies within those fields. This move put us in a category of our own that doesn’t compete at all with those three disciplines. We now encourage prospective clients to do marketing, PR and advertising but not compared to or instead of strategic relations but rather to complement it.

We can now look at other marketing, PR and advertising firms and have absolutely no concern about them as it relates to our agency and our clients. They simply don’t compete with us in any way or us with them. We have a very focused niche that we sell and deliver to our client and the idea of competition simply never comes up as a barrier with a prospective client.

So I’d encourage you to review your value proposition and your overall beingness of your company to really decide “who” you are and what you do and assess how you can position yourself so you simply don’t compete with your so called competition. Then cater all of your promotion, sales material and value proposition around that position and use it as an advantage to close business.

Let other companies compete and play that game against each other while you work to carve a new position altogether and scoop up hoards of fresh new business because of it.

- Robert Cornish