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

It’s easy to act like you are invincible when you’re busy, in demand, and have much more work than you can handle; however, it’s not attractive. Knock off the arrogance and start acting hungry. Acting hungry means that you’re aggressively ambitious or competitive. Perhaps it stems from a need to overcome poverty or past defeats or it is because your desire to succeed is so great. Regardless of your position in life, if you want to stay on top, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to earn more business—during good times and bad.

You need to show great appreciation and gratitude for every opportunity you get. Be willing to bend over backward, sideways—even do handstands, if necessary—to let people know that you’ll do whatever it takes to earn their business. Don’t let yesterday’s successes give you a false sense of security and make you feel like you don’t need success today and tomorrow. You must have your attention on the future to create one and you must do things now that you didn’t do before the slowdown.

If your market is down 40 percent and you are still operating with the same energy, effort, and actions that you did before the pullback, you are going to move backward—because your efforts have not adjusted to the reduction in business. Your absence of effort is likely due to a lack of awareness, an abundance of arrogance, or a combination of the two. So wake up and make the adjustments necessary to tweak your business to the economy’s new realities. You absolutely must (1) make the mental adjustment that things are different and start acting accordingly; and (2) increase your activity. Just because you won the Super Bowl last year doesn’t mean you don’t go to spring camp and train next year. As any sailor knows, “yesterday’s winds won’t fill tomorrow’s sails.”

Always, always, always demonstrate your hunger and desire to grow your business by displaying how service oriented and interested you are in your clients on a daily basis. Follow up relentlessly and do anything you can (ethically and professionally, of course) in order to obtain someone’s business—especially when things tighten. Be useful, courteous, accessible, humble, and now more than ever, willing to go the extra mile. Surpass any and all expectations, act like you really want someone’s business—and do whatever you can to earn it.

Adjust your actions to match the reality of the situation; make sure potential clients know how much you do want their business. An attitude of “they need me more than I need them” always fails; treat your customers as though they’re more valuable than you and your company—because they are . If you give your clients genuine reasons to like you, demonstrate an authentic willingness to do anything for them, are consistently helpful, and never quit, they will want to do business with you, whatever your business is.

Any time someone who serves me continues to exhibit that hungry desire to do anything humanly possible to earn my business, I find every reason possible to support him or her. I stick with that person as long as he or she keeps exhibiting that kind of hungry attitude, and I don’t think I am unique this way. Most people want to be taken care of and paid attention to, and they crave this type of service from people because it is lacking in our culture. People wonder why their businesses fail in a country with countless citizens barely making it financially who are subject to the whims of the economy, dependent upon credit to pay their bills, and enslaved to someone else’s economy.

If you want to expand and conquer and create a personal economy that allows you freedom and control, then make sure everyone knows how badly you want their business. Act like your life depends on every transaction, every moment of every day. And if you have to tell someone that you really want his or her business, well then, you probably aren’t acting hungry enough!

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Most of the people with whom I work have a set of mental or written guidelines that determine which customers they desire and which they do not. While you may not even be conscious of these parameters, they can have a negative impact when things tighten. A depressed economy or personal business downturn requires that you relinquish any restrictions about your “ideal” or preferred customer. This isn’t a time to be selective with your criteria; you may have to break some of your previous rules for those with whom you do business.

For instance, let’s say you normally only have Fortune 500 companies as clients. You may want to consider taking on assignments from smaller firms as well since you need to adopt an appropriate game plan to ensure that you advance and conquer when things are tight. What you did yesterday may have worked then but probably won’t be relevant today or tomorrow, so be willing to open up your client base to offset any pullback from your normal list. If your typical customer profile has diminished or clients have cut back on their budgets, you will be forced to look to wherever a flow of business could occur.

When economic conditions change, all of your earlier considerations and actions need to change along with them. The other day, I drove six hours round-trip to do a presentation for eight people—something that wouldn’t have been practical for me to do a year ago. Whether it was worth it or not is to be determined, but when things tighten, I immediately loosen up any and all earlier restrictions. I need to get in front of more clients, and I know I have to go the extra mile to offset the reduction.

Now is the time to be prepared to change past decisions in order to achieve your goal of advancing and conquering. It’s not the time to hold on to any beliefs from the past that will keep you from moving forward.

Let’s say, for example, that you are an accounting firm that has traditionally only worked on major annual reports. Now you might want to consider doing smaller quarterly reports—without your normal annual agreement—in order to generate some much-needed revenue. Maybe you expand your client profile to include smaller companies as well. This doesn’t mean you throw your standards out the window and work for anyone who calls you; you’re simply readjusting your acceptable criteria during this temporary lull in order to accommodate a wider range of prospects and projects.

How far should you take this? It’s up to you. If, for example, you normally have a minimum project fee of $1,000, you might accept $500 assignments, but you probably would not take on $50 assignments. When you think about it, there are probably a lot of things you do for free everyday anyway. While the initial presentation you make prior to earning someone’s business costs you money, it’s usually free to that person, and you may or may not get the business. I always remain open to creating new relationships in order to establish new contacts that may one day become regular clients.

So get real during economic contractions, and know that you will have to make adjustments in the way you think, the people with whom you’re willing to work, and how you conduct business. You may not even be aware of some of the things that are holding you back—so you may have to do some digging. Ask yourself why you don’t do business in a particular zip code area or with a certain sized client or group? Start looking for new markets and clients, and spend your energy and resources to determine what you have to do to go get them. You may uncover some hidden consideration or agreement not to approach that sector, or maybe you just didn’t have time for it before.