Nordic Business Forum 2012 - Brian Tracy on Leadership

I'm going to start off with a question and the question is what is the most valuable and most important work that you do and this is kind of a trick question but the answer it is thinking your ability to think is the most important thing that you do in the whole world because in quality you're thinking determines the quality of your decisions and the quality of your decisions determines the quality of your actions and the quality of your actions determines the quality of your results and your results are everything in business we can talk about many things that the final in the final analysis it is financial results that are most important in business maybe not a personal life maybe not in medicine but in business we always think in terms of numbers and the quality of your results is determined by the quality of your thinking many years ago I began to study the subject of time management because I thought it was a very helpful subject and I was amazed at how much there was in time management I then produced programs and books and books on time management are now the best-selling in the world in 40 languages but what I learned was a concept and the concept was called consequences consequences I found is one of the most important words in our world and the reason is that in time management something is important to the degree to which it has big potential consequences and something is unimportant to the degree to which it has low or no consequences thinking is the greatest consequences of all in fact if you look at people who are successful in people who are unsuccessful successful people do things that have greater long-term consequences and unsuccessful people do things event lower no consequences and thinking has the greatest consequences of all so what I want to give you is I want to give you a series of thinking tool at Harvard University they did an interesting study over a period of 50 years to find out why some people moved up financially in their lives and why some countries move on financial and what they come with regard to people is that hard to do with vocabulary and a wise man once asking what if what is the purpose of words in human life and people said well to communicate he said yes he said but it's more than that because a word is a condensed thought and one word can have many meanings think of the words like love and freedom family and success these can fill entire books and libraries so he said every word that you know is a condensed of thought the more words that you know the better you can think because you can put these words together into more complex thoughts as a result you can think better and make better decisions so what they found is that worldwide is people who have the very best vocabularies rise to the top of their societies the more words that you learn and understand the more better you can think the better results you get that better like Japan well at the same time the things we'll talk about today are like words they're condensed times they're ideas that apply to business and when you take these and you put them together you can think much better about getting results in visits so let us begin when I started off I started my own business in 1978 and I say when I started my own business for the first time after working for other companies for many years I learned how to sell again I had to sell my house I sold my car I sold everything that I had and I had to borrow from my friends and family to stay alive and I was shocked because there are maybe 1500 million businesses in the world what could be hard about starting a business and it was amazing what I learned is every new business startup starts off with great hopes and then it really goes into and dive like an airplane diving toward the ground and the job of the business owner at the beginning is to try to stop the airplane from crashing crashing leads you run out of money and you can't get any more money and so you crashed they find that 80% of new businesses fail or why why is because the people lose all their money before they figured out how to make a profit now if you find out how to earn more money then it is costing you to be in business it's like an airplane you pull the airplane out of the dive instruction your business starts to grow and this is this it's called the sigmoid curve your business goes into a decline phase which is the growth phase where you are learning at an incredible rate by the way when you start a business get married introduce a new product or service start a new job you go into this very fast learning phase and then as you learn you start to turn and you start to come out and you begin to grow the business begins to grow it's actually seem like you do it like this it's very important this curve determines all of life or say it's like this and you start here with high hopes and enthusiasm you're immediately go into a dive if if you if you can find a way to make more money than you that it's costing you you pull this out you're going to a growth phase and into a decline all businesses all products all careers all lives this is the law of life and here's an interesting thing all businesses will level off why do I think of the word here okay why is depressed Nokia went to its growth piece is learning phase very rapidly began to grow became one of the most popular phone companies in the world with miracle of technology and then for various reasons they flattened out and begin to decline once the decline begins by the way it is very hard to turn around it's like an aircraft that runs on fuel it starts to God and then they be in destroyed when you go into a business by the way you go and you can analyze the business and find out what phase it's in by asking three or five questions most companies that I go to are either here or here but this phase is what what they found is this is that when you are in this growth based and you are growing rapidly this is the time where you must be the most alert because it's right here where you are the most successful and making the most profits that you must begin a new phase and begin developing new products new services will be forward I read a very interesting thing I was going to say I was late through the seminar because I was walking the streets looking for the new Lumia nobody can find it it seems to be hidden somewhere the new Nokia phone coffee and the interesting thing I read is that no kid is Nokia develop the OneTouch telephone the engineers develop the OneTouch telephone they develop the technology for the iPad is that true say yes that's the most interesting thing why didn't they develop it well because they were this stage and they said where's the fridge which we don't need that new technology besides they said it might take away from our existing business a major reason that businesses failed by the ways they do not want to develop a new product or service because they're afraid that if they take away from their existing products or services and then they think no one else in the world will come up with this Kodak develop digital photography in 1986 I was speaking to a senior executive of Code nós we have digital photography no no it will take away from the film business so you go back to your you go back to your laboratory and work on something else and so kodak is now bankrupt and other companies are making a fortune on digital technology kodak whispers Nokia's first right you're crazy so it started a new business here you are and then this is where you want to be at at this stage you must say now what is going to be my new product my new surface Gillette Corporation the ones that make the razors they say their goal is to put themselves out of business every two to three years before their competitors put them out of business develop a new product a new service a new technology and today we have to be very very fast because things are moving so quickly so your question is where are you the interesting thing is that 90% of businesses started by people with business experience succeed very very high success rate if you have business experience because you can go through these curves very quickly and I'm going to give you some ideas that help you to get to here this is where you want to be growing high profits great future wonderful prospects Zen a good goal say yes something so the most important the most important thing that you do is thinking and the more taking tools you have but better you can think the better results you can get it so second question is what is the most important part of this conference well the answer is what you do afterwards it's what you do afterwards it is the actions that you take and one of the most important things that I've learned is that successful people are intensely action-oriented they're always thinking in terms of taking action unsuccessful people tend to be more passive and they wait for things to happen and they have reasons not to take action always reasons to wait to procrastinate but the leaders are very action-oriented discovery for me is that when you take action the fact is nothing works at least it doesn't work the first time and sometimes it doesn't work the first five or ten times but you have to take action we say that leaders do not like to fail but they recognize that failure is indispensable you cannot succeed without failing so they are willing to take action and they say take actions get feedback correct at take more action three wonderful things happen when you take actions on a new idea the first thing is that you get immediate feedback which helps you to change your course second thing that happens is you get ideas to help you to be more effective it's the most amazing thing and the third thing that happens is that raises your self-confidence and it gives you energy so you get 3 great benefits from taking action and the action scenes simply means stick the perspective if you have an idea take the first step the first step is the major difference between success and failure in life when I took 4000 hours of courses I read hundreds of books and articles and I began to put together basically a recipe for business success and what I found like a recipe in this case seven ingredients if you have all the ingredients of the recipe and you mix them in the proper proportion then you get great results and if you don't it won't taste it in many cases equal bankrupt and that is why companies go bankrupt so in the time that we have I wanted to sort of share with you a series of ideas like words that I want you to think if these can be helpful to you and the first thing I learned is that in order to build a successful business you must become a great leader leaders are highly overrated I believe that a leader is simply a person who could get results and so I've studied leadership and I've studied military leadership great military leaders great business leaders and at the bottom the bottom analysis is leaders can get results so instead of leadership I find that leaders have seven key qualities or seven key responsibilities that make them valuable a failure in any one of these areas leads to a failure of leadership so let me just give it to you quickly the first is that leaders have the ability to set and achieve business goals they have the ability to set and achieve business goals when you look at the fact that many companies are changing their leaders more than 50 percent of big companies in the last ten years have fired their top executives it's because why they went back and fortune magazine did a study and they found it because they did not get results they were hired and put in that position to get certain financial results and they did not achieve it so they replaced them and brought in someone else so number one is to set and achieve this as goals and everyone who is required to achieve the goal must be clear about the goal some years ago I had an opportunity to do some of these big seminars with twenty and twenty-five thousand people and one of the other speakers was general Norman Schwarzkopf who was the general in charge of the military operation Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991 and after he retired from the Army he began giving speeches on leadership amazing man amazing man here he had under his control we had something like 350,000 troops under his control in the desert war and he explained to me something interesting he said they spent six months of planning six months where they planned every day of all the key people were involved in the planning and then they went back and they explained the plans to the soldiers so that every soul every animal every marine knew the plane and then when they launched the plan the second biggest army in the world defeated the fourth biggest army in the world in 103 hours which is the fastest that has ever happened in all human history ok everybody every other general just threw out the pants how could you ever be that and it was because everybody knew the plan and the plan was clear so one of the most important things that you do as leaders in your business is make sure that everyone is clear about your goals and everyone is clear about how they're expected to contribute to the goals I sometimes do an exercise with managers and the exercise is called it's a game and it's called keep your job now I'll explain to you the rules of the game and then you can tell me that you would like to play ok well the rules are this is write down the names of the people who work for you and you write down their three most important job responsibilities or goals ok and you give you that list and while you sit here I will then go and talk to these people who work for you and I will ask them to tell me what their three most important goals are and if their answers and your answers are the same you get to keep your job would anybody like to play I have never found a manager in 60 countries I've never found a manager who wants to play keep your job yes they don't know if their staff knows what they're supposed to do well then the second quality of leaders is that they have the ability to innovate and market innovate means finding better faster cheaper easier ways to accomplish the same result one of the greatest enemies of human success several but one of the greatest is called the comfort zone and the comfort zone is we get comfortable doing things a certain way and we resist change and we have to be really really aware of this because someone says why don't we do it this way or that would no no we resisted automatically because we become comfortable they did a study of leaders a few years ago one of the best ever died and the conclusion they came to was that leaders are aware of the danger of the comfort zone so they continually moved themselves out by sending bigger goals they said eight goals so I would suggest to you whatever business you're in Senegal to double the size of your business Senegal to double the size of your business in three to five years now people say well that's ridiculous difficult economy competition just cynical just if the interesting thing is when you set a goal it forces you to think bigger it forces you to think out of your comfort zone it forces you to be open to different possibilities that you hadn't thought of before here's one of my favorite graphs that applies to personal life and it applies to business life as well and basically it says that this is this is income all right over time and this is time and each company has is on a particular growth path when you start your career by the way you start your career to start off earning something and then most people's personal income like a bad week or a bad month on the stock market their income is like this stuff about up and down okay they are earning money a lot of money no money a lot of money and over the course of life versus lifetime their income goes up about three percent per annum if they're employed if your income goes up at three percent each year you never get out of debt you'll never become successful however there's also a growth pact and in this growth path is about ten percent to twenty five percent per annum and this is a bad is determined by knowledge plus skill and the interesting thing is the way you get off of this path which is 80 percent of the population or more and get onto this path is by continually developing your knowledge and skill the very best leaders will tell you that leaders are learners according to great study University of Chicago the top twenty percent of people are on this growth path is that constantly upgrading their knowledge and skills in their business and I could spend the rest of the day talking about this but just just this one point is yes that you have to be continually asking this question twenty-five years of research on this the question is what one skill would help you the most to make a greater contribution in your work right now what one skill would not be the most to double your income or what one skill would help you the most to grow your business more rapidly it's usually marketing it's usually the development of better technology usually has to do with getting customers but you have to keep asking what one skill will help me and then focus on developing one skill at a time and this is the key discovery is the top leaders focus on the one skill that can help them the most at this moment solve problems and make decisions and this is the third major responsibility of leaders is that all that stands between you and any of your goals is problems difficulties obstacles challenges the market the competition people so your ability to solve problems the largely determines your success or failures in life is that leadership is the ability to solve problems that success is the ability to solve problems so if I were to take your business cards I know the job description of everyone in this room everyone here is a problem solver that's all you do from morning tonight in fact your ability to rise in life like passing through school is determined by your ability to pass the test at each level and if you keep solving the problems at your level you get promoted to solve bigger problems in fact all you get in life for solving problems is bigger problems to solve but with bigger problems comes greater responsibility greater income greater influence greater authority so how do you become an excellent problem solver and this is as a subject I love like train IBM all over the country on problem solving i I know a little bit about the subject the answer is if it is think about solutions focus on the solutions most people going to have a problem they immediately say who did it who's to blame why did this happen they become angry that become depressed they blame other people but not leaders leaders say what's the solution and the more you think about solutions the more creative you become and what do you think what can we do now what actually can you take what's the solution okay it's happened rule for success never worry about a past event that you can't change focus on what you can change and you can change the present and the future so always focus on the solution different question fundraise anybody anybody here have any problems of course of course now interesting you know within every problem is contained the answer for the solution to their problem within every problem you have there is an advantage for opportunity if you find it within every problem you have in business or personal life there's a lesson that you can learn that can help you in the future so what is the difference is taught people think about the lessons the possibilities what they can gain from the problem and how to solve it average people think about what happened and who's the blame so your job is simply like a searchlight take your brain and constantly think of what are all the solutions my favorite exercise is this much weight like this is this is not even in my talk but it will make you rich is it take whatever your problem is and light it at the top of the page in the form of a question let's say you want to double the Assizes of your popular profits of your of your profitability in the next three to five years so say how can we double our profitability with my December 31st 2015 be very specific about the amount and the time and then write 20 answers I call this the 20 idea method just keep writing 20 answers sometimes I'll come up with 30 answers by taking management and companies through this they'll come up with 30 40 answers just take and develop 20 answers to the question and you will be amazed you say well we could do this by the way this four ways to change your life or your business only four and here they are number one you can do more of certain things number two you can do less of other things so what should you do more of do more of the things that you're getting the best results from what should you do mess up do less of the things that you're not getting the results number three is you can start doing something completely new but because if the comfort zone people are very reluctant to start something and you have to come man what could you start doing that you're not doing today new products new services new markets of technologies and number four and this sometimes is incredible is stop doing certain things altogether here's a rule in life is you cannot be can only get your life under control by stopping doing things you cannot become more efficient or more effective and do more things you've got to stop doing things of low value or no value stop doing things that don't work anymore and so stopping things completely are the key so when you start to write out your answers here you say what could we do more look get less if you start doing what could we stop doing just keep writing answers until you can't think of any more answers but I promise you this when you start doing this exercise your brain will light up like a Christmas tree you'll become more creative you'll become brighter your brain will release endorphins you will be amazed at how intelligent you really are when you start writing down answers and then take at least one answer and take actions typically if you'll just do this on any problem or goal that you have in life today write it as a question right 20 answers to the question and take action on one this is the greatest success principle in creative thinking I've ever seen I have never had a problem or difficulty for myself or for my clients that has not been resolved with the simplest action all it requires is a piece of paper a pen and a little bit of self-discipline fourth key of leadership is to set priorities set priorities on use of time and money and resources in my work in time management thirty years of study I found that all of time management can be boiled down to a single principle the ability to set priorities what do you first what do you do second and what do you do not and the job of the leader is to set the priorities is what are we going to do more of or less of what are we going to start doing or stop doing because it's not the job of the staff to think about these things it's your job the fourth part the fourth key the fifth key is to focus and concentrate now to focus and concentrate is really the key to greatness as an individual is to be able to focus and concentrate your energies and resources on one thing the most important thing and stay at it until it's done your ability to be a role model is to be an example to other people when you become a leader you have to raise we say we have to want to raise your game is you have to raise the bar on your own behavior because morale in a business flows down from the top it does not rise is that morale is determined by the leader and people need and want to admire their bosses they want to admire their leaders and their managers so when you're out when you are moving on the way working your way up you can be more casual but when you become a leader everyone is watching you they're watching out of the corner of their eyes we're watching to see if you are saying a standard for us so if you want other people to be punctual you must be punctual if you want other people to work on their top priorities you must work on your top priorities if you want other people to treat each other well and be friendly and be respectful then you must be friendly and respectful you set the tone for your whole business and in many studies they say that being a role model is the most important job of your house if you have children what I discovered when I had my first children was that your your model that will have more of an influence on the development of their character than anything you say you could talk all day long but they just watch it and they watch it and they model themselves at an unconscious level on your behavior so if you want your children to turn out well a good role model for them and and the final requirement for leadership is to the ability to perform and get results so the greatest question leaders is always what results are expected at me what results are expected of me not activities but what are the results and of all the results that are expected of you what are the most important results in time management there's a great question I think it's a question that is one of the most important I've ever heard it's this is what is it that I and only I can do that if done well will make a real difference this is something that no one else can do and no one else will do it but if you do do it and you do it really well it can make a major difference in your business and in your life and there's always an answer to this question and this is usually the most important thing that you could do to contribute to the company Peter Drucker had this wonderful observation he said if you just change the word in business from success to contribution will solve all your problems and I think that the word contribution is one of the greatest words in our lives what can you do to increase the value of your contribution to your business to your friends your family to your community because there's a wonderful thing once Peter and I were talking about this is the more you contribute to your world better you feel about yourself all human beings want to be happy and how do we become the happy is just a byproduct of making a valuable contribution to the lives of other people what is the key to business success 90% of business success is to have a great product or service in the first place and the reason this is such a shocker to me because was because I'm surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurs who are looking for smart clever tricky ways to sell the product but not focusing on making the product excellent and over the years I have studied the subject of product quality and the relationship between product quality and sales and profitability there's more than 50 years of research at Harvard and they did a series of studies and they're probably the profit implications studies basically what are the different things that companies do and they studied thousands of companies that seem to be consistent with high levels of profitability and what they found was that there's the highest single correlation and profitability is perceived product quality if people think that your products are high quality they are going to buy more of them they're going to buy them faster and less costs of advertising or promotion they are going to pay more money willingly they'll put the money in your hands and you'll have high levels of profitability here's a great question what is the most important sale to a customer of all the sales that you make what's the most important sale and the answer is the second sale the first sale you could get through discounts DC advertising promotion aggressive sales techniques you can always hit the first sale but the second sale when the customer comes back and buys from you again is when the customer says you kept your funds your product did deliver what you said it would do when I bought it the first time and I'm back so the second sale is the most important thing all top business people think about the second and the third and the fourth sale while they're making the first sale so having a great product is the key now how can you tell predict the future of your business it's real simple ask yourself what percentage of people who use your product afterwards say this is a great product what percentage of people describe your product as a great product of rate x1 or a great service or when they do business with your company they say that is a great company I like that company because this is the number one single factor that determines your success is the percentage of your customers who describe you as a great company with great products or services so you take your 20 idea method you say what could we do to be sure that everyone describes our product as a great product or our service as a great service or a company it's a great what do we do I just think of all the answers now here's a great question that you've been asked as you can ask on a scale of one to ten mr. customer or mrs. customer do you feel that our product or service was a great product or service customers by the way will make you rich if you ask them if you ask them for their opinion what was mostly we don't ask because we don't want to know okay so we ask you say on a scale of one to ten was this a great product or service was this a great experience for you and if the customer says well a scale of one to ten I forgive you a six or seven that's not very high but it's better than a three or four so give you a six or seven and then what question you ask what would we have to do to earn a ten in your estimation and you know what your customers will tell you well if you want me to give you a ten you have to do for this or less of that you'd have to start doing this or stop doing that and if you do where your customers tell you to do they will then say this is a great product by the way there's years of research on this simple concept so if all you have is one focus in life is to get people to say afterwards this was a great product the number three is to develop a great a great business plan and a great business plan everybody is told you have to have a business plan if you want to be successful and most entrepreneurs most business people are conceptual they are wavering thinkers they don't like the idea of business planning so they've developed now systems where you can do a business plan and one out very simple business plan but a business plan is essential because it forces you to think about the most important parts of your business and in many cases when you do a goodness you'll find that this business won't work a good friend of mine started with nothing came from a poor family yesterday very very wealthy was telling me that he spent six months planning to go into a new business and it looked like a good business on the surface it seemed to be quite profitable and so he began doing research and he did very very detailed research he was going he was going to invest 50 million dollars in his business and he had the money lined up and ready to go but after he had done the research after six months he finally decided that no this is not a good business to go into it this time and he threw away and went on with something else he said it's much better not to go into a business after doing your research and dented way to a business without research and find out what has shown up so what he did was he decided no and he took all of the investment that he had spent in doing the business planning and just threw it away and he says one of the smartest things he ever did a very wise man once told me the best business is that you go into her once you decide not to the best business decisions you ever make are the ones where you decide not to go into a particular business so a business plan basically forces you to ask what are what is the product that I plan to sell who is the customer that I plan to sell it to how much can i charge and how profitable would it be how much would it cost to produce the product how much will it cost to market and sell the product how much would it cost to deliver and service the product and asking these questions forces you to think think it forces you to think better and if you're doing this imagine that someone else is going to be very critical and to know where this number came from many people start off with an idea that this is a great product idea and then they create the product or launch the product and they find that it's not a great product because people don't buy it I tell you a great story a friend of mine immigrated from England to Vancouver Canada and he started off selling advertising in specialty magazines he was in his twenties and he knocked on doors and so that was both magazines motorcycle magazines home design magazines he worked for a company that had specialty magazines and he saw of advertising 20 years ago and finally after three or four years he realized that if you can sell advertising that's the most important part of magazines so he could start his own magazine so he did and he worked very hard building his advertising for his magazine it became a little bit profitable and he had enough money to go to an international conference on magazines in New York so he saved his money he flew the cheapest way possible he stayed in a little hotel around the corner from the convention center and he went to this convention center where they had the representatives the biggest magazines in the world talking about the magazine market and so he went from session to session to session listening like a little child at Christmas times he was just so fascinated because here he was he was a little businessman with a real magazine in a little town and he said he went in there one session that was being conducted by an accountant I never forgot the story and the accountant it was not very many people were in the session and the accountant was talking about profit and loss in the magazine industry and he said if you look at your balance sheet what do we call this line at the top of the balance sheet and they said that's the top line that's sales what do we call this this is called the bottom line this is profit or loss is it yes it says now I don't want your ears I want you to turn them over and put the bottom bottom line at the top and then everything else underneath it so this is what they did very simple thinking tool is took the book that took the balance sheet equips to pathology and at the top your column and so on and here what it were the sales and he's a bit neat but here you put your profits profits profits by money there's a profits that you want to earn then below that you have the sales that you're going to have to achieve to get the profits and below that all the costs of achieving the sales all the way down here but you start with your profits being your top line so instead at the end of the month say how much my project did we earn you start off at the beginning of the month and saying this is the amount of profit we want to earn what will we have to do to achieve that profit he said he took that idea back applied it to his little business today he owns 32 magazines is one of the wealthiest people in the city and one of the most respected people in the business community he I went and spoke to for him he had three hundred and thirty executives from his magazine Empire he said we have never had a loss in a magazine in a month or a quarter or a year or a year every single magazine executive every manager is focused on the profits before everything else the reason I passed that on to you is because it is a great concept is it there's one concept from Warren accountants in one session make it richer because most people wake up to the end of the month and say how much money we're what he said what he does every single person starts off with a profit responsibility at the beginning of the month and then what will we have to achieve due to achievement a problem just a 5 so a business plan is essential and with regard to a business plan I want to give you a concept which to me is so important it's considered by many to be one of the most important concepts in business and I call it the number Jim Collins who wrote a book good degraded calls it the economic denominator I have been teaching this in my business courses for 10 years before he wrote better I'm not saying that he got the idea from me because all smart people use the same concept so we call this the number and the question is what is your number what is your number what is your number and this number is the one number that more predicts success or failure in your business than any other single number what is the number and I worked out that there's about 35 different numbers that companies use there may be more but it's about 35 if you get the wrong number or you're focused on the wrong number what happens is you go off in a completely wrong direction and your business will not succeed and sometimes it will fail I'll give you a very simple example instead of doing it in a strategic planning session recently and we had we brought in a strategic planner for this company that I'm on the board of directors with and his whole idea was to increase the level of sales and so we talked all day about different things that we could do to increase our sales and everyone was quite happy with that it's just the sales goal for this year next year this month and then one of the directors very smart guy said I don't think that this is the right number the sales number what number do you think is the right number he said I think the profitability number is more important is it we should be focused on the profits on sales because you can have very high levels of sales and be losing money but if you have high levels of profits profits are real numbers and everybody in their rowing of course we were looking at the wrong number because you can spend too much have you noticed that each year you read about companies that are huge companies that are doing millions of dollars in sales or billions of euros and they're reporting huge losses have you seen that you see it all the time how can this be we are making so many sales because you know why their focus is on the sales number not gonna profit number and as a result they can actually go back right and many of these companies do how do retail businesses estimate what is their number well for example Apple today focus is it retail stores they focus on sales per square foot so we use their sales per square foot in Apple stores of the highest in the history of the world they're four thousand six hundred fifty dollars per square foot the second highest in the world is about three thousand dollars per square foot apples is substantially more so they focus on sales per square foot other people focus on sales per customer in other words how much does each customer buying other companies will focus on sales per person some companies will focus on return on investment the amount of money invested in the business or the most popular number is return on equity the amount of money that the owners have invested new business what is their radio if you look at real estate there's all kinds of numbers so the question is what is your number what's the most important number in your business that predicts your current success and predicts your future and if you get the wrong number you can offer the wrong direction if your focus is to increase sales which is the focus of most businesses you can get more sales all you have to do is advertise enormous amounts and sell your product below cost that's very clever strategy that will last for a couple of months before you're bankrupt so what is your number what's the most important number here's an interesting concept good people are free good people are free poor people are expensive but good people are free and they're not only free they're free plus a profit good people contribute far more in value than you pay them not only do they contribute their own income their own salary but they contribute much more so if you take a course in microeconomics at the university which I did you'll find that a company can keep hiring people as long as each person is free plus a profit as long as each person is contributing more than they cost the company will continue to hire if the economy precedes that they have to let people go until they reach a point where each person is contributing more than the cost it's really simple so what is your job and my job in the world of work is to contribute more than the costs and the greater the distance between how much we cost and how much more we contributed the more valuable we are so all successful people financially are people who are free plus a profit and companies will hire you might pay you more money someone comes to me and says I want to earn $50,000 a year sure I'll pay you 50 thousand if you can earn me 100 thousand as long as you are free plus a profit I will hire that's a very simple equation if you're not I can't afford to hire number four is attract great people attracting great people is so important and it is an art and it is a science and there's something that you learn from experience when you start off in business as I did you'll find that your ability to hire the right people is variable and you make a lot of mistakes you hire the wrong people you keep them there for too long you put them in the wrong jobs you pay them too much money we say that 85% of our problems in life come with hair on top in other words there are other people problems and new managers make a lot of mistakes in iron so we say 95% of your success will be determined by the people that you hire to work for you and the very best companies hire the best people and the second best companies pie of the second best people and the third best companies are on their way out of business so learning how to interview and select and hire people it's a core skill for business if you cannot do that you have a better chance but if you can do it and you can do it well you can grow and grow and grow I'll give you 101 keys on this I teach multiple courses on I will just say this that the starting point of hiring the right people is to make a list of the right person there's three things you always want to look at in hiring a person first of all what results will they be expected to get for you and be very specific about the results and make them measurable what's the number for results number two is what skills will they need to have to get the results that you require not skills that they can develop in the future but you want to hire people who already have proven skills when you do background checks when you check references the question you're looking for is has this person achieve the same results somewhere else before the game to you because that's all that matters in your business not if they're a nice person and have a great personality biggest mistake we made gets we're over over the influenced by nice people and we hire nice people who are completely incompetent they can't do anything except be nice people and it usually takes about six months to realize that you've hired an incompetent nice person standard thing so make sure that they have to put the previous experience that proves that they get the results and then the third part we call this the golden triangle if you're looking for the law 3 and hiring they are first of all skills first of all this is the results you want people to get the skills that they must have to get those results and then the personality and personality is very important but the most important thing to hire us to hire a nice beat hire Pleasant people positive people but make sure that they are cleared of the results that you want them to get the three most important results and the skills don't have to have number 5 is to create a great marketing plan and they if you look at business strategy you'll find that all of this is strategy is marketing strategy marketing strategy is different from sales by the way what what is marketing strategies you know what marketing strategy is the ability to attract customers to your product or services it's it's like attractions like magazines how do you get people to raise the hand and say I am interested in your product or service and this requires the most important of all thinking that do every major mistake in business is a mistake in marketing they make a mistake in either selling the wrong product or to the wrong people at the wrong price in the wrong place in the wrong way give you a great example one of my favorite examples is Steve Jobs when he developed the iPod you know when he came back into Apple in 1997 and I just reading a book called the greatest business decisions ever made one of the greatest business decisions in that book was bringing Steve Jobs back into Apple in 1997 when the company was in serious trouble it's interesting the company was almost out of money when they brought him in and he was still a major shareholder so he came in and as you know Steve Jobs was a very difficult person very highly opinionated and he was a difficult person and he hated Bill Gates he gets Bill Gates and he started at the same time of 1986 Apple and Microsoft and Bill Gates decided to have an open architecture that everybody could develop programs for me for Microsoft product and Steve Jobs decided to have a closed architecture so they could capture low profits by having exclusive control of the architecture and so Steve Jay the rest is history is they were very successful Apple products computers beautiful products people loved the products but they had a closed architecture and limited amount of software Bill Gates open up the software and everybody in the world used it when 20 years later Bill Gates at 9% of the world market and steep drops and Apple banker so anyway Steve Jobs comes back into Apple and Apple has 104 products every time somebody says could you make a product for us they would go to work and build a new product new factories new manufacturing new science new hundred four products so he looked with two things first of all we have far too many products and second of all we're out of money so you know what he did is he called Bill Gates he said call a man he didn't like Christy bill yes he said we're almost broke we need some money Bill Gates said how much money we need he said we need 150 billion dollars to get you here he said ok I'll give it to you he said I don't think it's a good idea for Apple to go out of business and assign the checking 700 million dollars to save them even though Steve Jobs had been attacking him for years and years and years that's the mark of why Bill Gates is such a great businessman and then the next thing that Steve Jobs did was he reads that they're going to reduce the product line to four products and he eliminated a hundred prophets and all my crazy says you can't do it uh but he did and then he said then we're going to hear dis new products and he came up with the ipod which had music but in order to have the iPod he had to have iTunes so that there was something to put on the iPhone at 99 cents each and nobody had ever heard of something like this so they looked at the marketing market what can you do and he finally came up with Bill Jobs did you just eve Jobs came up with this 1500 songs in your life that's our advertising on 1500 songs in your pocket sold 50 million copies transforms Apple turned it into one of the most profitable companies in the world that mace came out with a telephone the same common Nokia had developed some years ago so remarketing basically you're looking for full effect first of all it's called specialization specialize in a particular product or service or customer especially what is the biggest retail operation in the world you know it's Walmart Walmart is the biggest private company in history of the world 1.4 million employees is the biggest retailer in history of the world Walmart has one focus in terms of specializing they specialize in customers who live from paycheck to paycheck that's their internal strategy I've worked with Walmart wonderful people by the way they have this this obsession with getting prices lower for people who live from paycheck to paycheck people who don't have any extra money people who can't buy something that doesn't work Walmart has an unconditional refund guarantee for everything you buy from Walmart no questions asked they want to make it so easy for people to buy good quality products at low prices so that's their specialization they don't sell to wealthy people they don't sell to businesses they sell to people who have limited incomes live from one paycheck to the next and in the US I don't know what is in Finland but 70% of the population lives from paycheck to paycheck so that's a pretty good market to go after what you say 70% of the population is big most successful country in the world well you have to specialize in a product or a service or a customer particular customer McDonald's specializes in people who want to be quickly good quality inexpensive clean good value they want to be quickly they don't try to be a gourmet but just serve bad people that's that level of people who want to be quickly and eat good food reasonably good food biggest restaurant chain or by specializing clear powers second is differentiation the second part of marketing is differentiation and that means that your product or service is superior in at least three ways to your competitors and since the area of superiority the area of excellence has to be clear to you and clear to your customers your area your area of what we call competitive advantage what gives you a product and advantage over your competitors imagine that a customer were to ask you that I am trying to decide whether to buy your product or this product or that product why should I buy your product why is it to my benefit or advantage to buy from you rather than it from someone else your answer must be so quick and so clear the basic Oh in that case I'll buy yours so what is your competitive advantage and the rule is that if you don't have a competitive advantage something that makes you superior clearly superior to your competitors then you must develop a competitive advantage ok another stick coming up number six is develop a great sales process and we will talk about that at great length a little bit later we'll talk about that Saturn hoon is a great sales process every top company I work with has got a beautiful sales process because the first key in business is marketing which is to attract people but the key is to convert them into customers they may come into your store but you don't want them to turn around and walk out they may agree to talk to you because of your advertising and your promotion but you don't want them to say well let me think about it and go and talk to your competitors you want to be able to convert them so your conversion ratio in business is the determinant of the income in your business it's the determine of your revenues your profitability your growth and your entire future if you can increase your conversion ratios from interested prospect to customer you can conquer the world and this is a learning skill the most important thing I've ever found about businesses that transform my life is that all of these skills are learning skills you can learn any business skill well number seven and the seventh is something we could spend two or three semesters on is develop a great customer experiences this is the key to the future a great customer experience you want customers to be happy you're I was saying this this afternoon but I say what is the key to business success is to make it is to make your customers happy make them happy that they did this is with you that they bought your product or service and everybody in your company has to be thinking how can we make our customers happy and then how can you make them happier than your competitors because customers almost like a lot it goes to the flame will be it goes to honey customers go to the businesses that make them the happiest and then come back yeah

Channel: Nordic Business Forum

Views: 33,451

Rating: 4.8000002 out of 5

Keywords: nbf, Nordic Business Forum 2012, Sales, Brian Tracy, Personal Growth, Business Development, nbforum, nordic business forum, Nordic Business Forum, Personal Development, Leadership, brian tracy leadership skills, brian tracy leadership, suomen yrittäjäyhteisö, Listenable, public speaking, seminars, personal development

Id: 4P5ctvHIuiw

Length: 57min 37sec (3457 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 25 2013