Grant Cardone - If You're Not First, You're Last - Sales Strategies to Dominate Your Market and Beat Your Competition

I want you to make one personal visit a day for the next 21 days—and watch your life and business become revitalized. From the people you called or sent mail to in the two actions I mentioned earlier, choose one person a day with whom to make a personal visit. Do not call and tell that person you are coming by; do not ask for permission. Just drop in. In most situations, you will likely meet the gatekeeper/ receptionist, at which time you will say, “Is John in? I am a personal friend.” (Or “He is a client of mine.”) “I was in the neighborhood and just wanted to say hello.” If your client is not in, leave your card and take the time to pay attention to the person who greeted you. He or she should become a new addition to your power base because you will need him or her for future contacts with your client.

On those occasions when you do get face to face with your contact, simply say, “John, I was in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by and say hello. Do you have a few minutes? How are things? Is the product or service you bought from me satisfying you?” In the case of a past client with whom you have yet to be successful: “I was in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by and see how you are doing and take some time to reconnect. How is your business? How is the family?”

The clients you meet will naturally reciprocate and ask about what you are doing. Respond in kind, and if they express interest and you see an opening, do some fact-finding to see how you can help them. If there is no fit for what you do, ask them for the name of someone they know who might be able to use your services. You might say, “I didn’t come by for this, but who do you know that would be interested in using my products or services?” Then be quiet and let the client think about it and give you a name.

There is no downside to a visit. No one will throw you out, no one will ridicule you, and no one is going to call the police on you. There is no way to be rejected or even fail, as you are basically just dropping by to say hello and reconnect; you’re not trying to sell anything. The upside is that you may get lucky and run into someone who actually needs what you have, which will allow you to enter into a presentation, a proposal, and a sale. If you just sit around and wait for something to happen to you, you will be doing a lot of waiting—and will be miserably disappointed at the end of the month.

If you go out and start making things happen, something will happen. This is one of the great underused methods for surviving a contraction. Consider the person who loses his job and is looking for work. Most people spend time rebuilding their résumés and then send them out and wait for someone to look at them. When the economy slows down, jobs are lost, and more people need work. This means that more résumés are being sent to companies, which decreases the chance of yours being read. You won’t get a job with just a résumé; it will happen when you get in front of someone, meet that person, and make him or her feel confident about hiring you. I am shocked at how much more time and money people spend on figuring out how to write a résumé than on how to sell themselves during an interview.

Look around your office. Do you see money or opportunities to do business? Mostly likely, you don’t because these things only exist outside your office. Similarly, if you run a company from home, you won’t find any hidden money in your kitchen. No one who lives there is going to buy your products or services or fund your projects. So start with your power base and past clients. Reach out to them by way of personal visits. Thousands of businesses—even entire empires—have been built by such means. Get over your hesitation and resist any of the beliefs you have been taught. Become unreasonable, and act like your life depends on doing this one thing well.

So go make a personal visit—either right now or first thing tomorrow. I don’t care who it is you go see; just go. Then schedule a visit every day for the next 21 days. If you don’t miss a day, making such connections will become a habit by that time, and you will be experiencing the rewards of advance-and-conquer techniques.

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Take a moment to think about all those people with whom you have worked but to whom you have not sold anything. It’s probably a huge number because the reality is that you don’t sell to most of the people you work with. We are now going to take every person who has landed in this category over the last six months and convert the “unsold” into the “sold.” Though rarely utilized, this tactic truly works; after all, don’t these people remain unsold simply because you didn’t transact with them? Everyone ends up doing something ; it is just a matter of when and with whom. The fact that you failed to close an opportunity and then dropped or forgot about that lead does not mean that person is no longer potentially in the market for your services. Just because you quit following up or the client bought from someone else doesn’t exclude that person as being a prospect for you now. Maybe he or she couldn’t afford your product at the time, wasn’t quite ready, or delayed a decision with the intent to reconsider. Maybe the client couldn’t get funding at the time, maybe you had the person on the wrong product, or maybe he or she bought from someone else and isn’t happy with that decision.

This greatly overlooked opportunity must be converted so that you can advance and conquer. Don’t waste time worrying about the fact that you didn’t sell to these potential clients before. They still represent a viable opportunity and should not be written off as part of past experience or as “losses.” Rather, they should be reactivated until they become a future sale or a part of your ever-expanding power base. Such prospects are great people to add to your “personal drop-by” call list. Remember, everyone knows others—and the more people you are connected with, the more people you will know and will know you!

A study by Thomas Publishing Company reveals that most salespeople, regardless of the industry, give up too early. According to the study, 80 percent of sales to businesses are made on the fifth sales call, but only 10 percent of salespeople call beyond three times. Oops! Chances are that you haven’t followed up on leads diligently enough, consistently enough, or long enough. The new business you need is sitting safely away in your files. Since you’ve already invested the time and energy, just keep following up and chipping away until you mine the gold. The best way to do this is to go back through your notes or database. Use the earlier actions discussed, and never rely on one means of contact. Bring all of your artillery to your acquisition of new clients—including phone calls, messages, mail, e-mail, and personal visits and never stop following up. I have clients that I have called everyday for 20 days consecutively before they finally took my call. Regardless of the reason they are not calling me back, when it comes time to doing something with my product, I will be the one they think of first. Is that too much? Not if you want to be first!

Here is an example of a call you can make to people with whom you worked in the past but did not close a sale: “John, Grant Cardone here. We met four months ago when you were considering my product. While we were not successful in earning your business at that time, I wanted to call today for two reasons. First, I wanted to check on you. How are you?” (Engage in small talk, but not forever.) “Second, where are you today with what you were considering four months ago? Did you ever make a purchasing decision?”