Scottish Sales and Marketing Strategies
Another weekend, another amazing seminar.
This time, California, for the 2012 Fitness Business Summit.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re not in the fitness industry, there were big lessons for you to learn.
At breakfast on Friday morning, I spent an hour with my good friend, Stage-IV cancer survivor, and amazing Scottish storyteller, Alwyn Cosgrove.
Our conversation ranged from integrity to customers lists, from avoid negative people to the power of storytelling, and business lessons from Bruce Lee and Alwyn’s Tae Kwon Do career…but mostly we talked about specific sales strategies.
Alwyn is one sharp dude, with a hilarious accent. It’s like talking business with William Wallace, minus the war paint.
At one point in our meal, as I was making ‘omelet sandwiches’ with my eggs and toast, Alwyn described the three number rule he has in his business.
“Creeeeeg,” he said, “We have three numbers in our business, number of calls, number of calls to appointments, and number of appointments to sales. We know what each of these numbers should be, and as long as we hit our numbers, we’re good.”
Alwyn’s a serious student of business. Very few businesses think to have guiding numbers, let alone to track them.
That’s just one strategic mistake most business owners make.
But everything you do should be strategic and systematized in order to make you more money and to reduce your stress.
For example, here’s the strategic plan that I gave my Mastermind members this weekend before they attended the Summit. (I guarantee you that hardly any other attendees thought about the weekend this way – but EVERYTHING you do should be strategic.)
I told them:
1) Make a list of everyone you know who is attending FBS.
2) Beside each name, put a column and write down what you can help them, who you can connect them to, what book you could recommend to them, etc.
3) Beside that, put a space for their contact info.
4) Create a 2nd page and leave blank to fill in with that info for at least 10, if not 20 other people at the actual event.
5) Also, remember to follow the Bedros Keuilian “whispers vs. screams” philosophy…plan to leave with 3-5 things that scream “IMPACT” in your business, and ignore the 20 pages of “whispers” that you could also write down.
Just focus on the 5% of screamers in your business.
This is a proven way to have a more profitable seminar. And you go home with a few major things to work on…rather than a million little ideas that stress you out because you can’t possibly get to them all.
That’s Scottish Strategery for your website business.
Finally, I want to give you something.
Since you couldn’t be at our breakfast on Friday morning, I want you to listen to this call where I interview Alwyn about his online business.
He makes well over $200K per year with a list of just 11,000 people, and that’s just a ‘part-time’ business for him. He barely spends any time on it each week.
But he’s built an amazing relationship with his readers.
And he gives us a lot to think about in this call (I know because I’ve read and re-read the transcript of it during my flights in the last two weekends.) I really like the part where he explains how we (you, me, him, everyone) needs to be the HIGH-POINT of our reader’s day. That’s great insight.
So go make yourself some eggs, pour a nice cup of coffee, put on your kilt, and enjoy this interview with the hilarious wee Scotsman here:
It’s a wee bonny good interview lads and lassies,
Craig Ballantyne
“To hell with circumstances, I create opportunities.” – Bruce Lee