No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits: No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Really Getting Rich

by Dan S. Kennedy

Education.

Your follow-ups must inform your prospects and customers.

You need to provide valuable ...

If you’re showing up with no value, you’ll wear out y...

You need to communicate that you are on their side and des...

Fact is, the sales process is confusing and intimidating ...

They want to tr...

Give them the information they need and you’ll e...

Repetition.

It’s a proven fact that human beings have to hear the same thing over and over before it sinks in.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if a prospect heard the pitch once, he understood it. Chances are, he didn’t. Tell him again and again and again.

Variety.

your follow-up delivery needs variety.

sales, you must use multistep follow-up sequences that incorporate and orchestrate direct mail, phone, email, fax, voice, and other media!

In most businesses, the investment in salespeople is either democratized, i.e., the same for all, or weighted in an entirely unproductive way.

get matches and gasoline, and invest yourself in fanning his fire.

Piss on everybody else.

You will profit to a far, far greater extent by doing exactly the opposite. By supporting, working closely with, and giving more resources and opportunities to champion performers, you will get a lot more sales.

can you turn a poor performer into a top performer?

it is difficult, painful, time-consuming, costly work with low odds of success. It is social work you will more likely be rewarded for in the afterlife than in this quarter’s revenues.

It is more certainly profitable to ruthlessly discard the weak and recruit and then facilitat...

the bottom two-thirds,

fire at least half those at the bottom,

and sit down with those at the top to explore and discuss what you an...

Highly skilled, successful sales pros should be spending as much of their work hours as you can engineer for them—selling.

Not cold prospecting, not otherwise prospecting,

That means relieving them of as much of everything else as you can.

If you have a sales professional making a cold call to try and create interest from scratch, in this day and age, you are a fool.

My book No B.S. Direct Marketing for NON-Direct Marketing Businesses, 2nd Edition is the primer on this. Behind it, read No B.S. Guide to Trust-Based Marketing. I have routinely cut the number of salespeople at a business while increasing the productivity and personal incomes of the retained ones,

You also want your salespeople selling to the best and highest value, highest probability prospects—not just anyone.

Putting good salespeople in front of poor prospects is pretty dumb,

but that’s what happens when they are left on their own to prospect or when there is no managem...

three representatives, each producing about $20,000.00 a month in net...

they were charged with creating their own leads and getting their ow...

“If the guy meets quota and produces enough revenue, I don’t care what he’s doing or how he’s doing it.”

This is why 90% of prospects actually requesting follow-up at trade show booths never get it.

You just cannot leave salespeople on their own to decide how they’ll use or waste your resources and opportunities.

You can’t leave him alone with how he’s doing it either.

Your business’s reputation and long-term sustainability and equity are all put at risk by every spoken or written or emailed or tweeted word and by every action of your representatives.

Salespeople need a lot of...

People who are given a good opportunity, who want to excel, respond reasonably well to accountability that aids them in staying on track and improving. People who resist and resent this kind of accountability are best sent packing.

Please don’t mistake this book as a giant exercise in blaming the employees.

A lot of employees won’t perform and need to be replaced.

But a lot of employees who would perform don’t, largely because nobody has ever defined what they’re supposed to be doing, taken the time to explain why, and provided enough initial and ong...

a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve.

only 20% were “enthusiastic” about their company’s goals.

establishing expectations and incentives,

and summarily firing the one nonperformer.

His fault. His fault. His fault.

What your customers and your prospects tell others about their experiences with your business is infinitely more powerful than anything you can say,