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

While this program doesn’t replace our school by any means or live engagements, it does supplement our core products and even drives more people to our schools, seminars, and other offerings. All the client needs in order to take advantage of this initiative is a computer. Clients can train their staff to handle every sales situation as well as access expert advice on increasing production in real time anytime they choose. Entire sales organizations are going online to use our Quick Close technology, which allows me to assist them in closing a deal while they are actually involved in the transaction. The user identifies a problem or situation and I pop up on his or her computer and give advice on how I’d approach a similar situation. A virtually “live” training session—with no boarding pass necessary!

The problem the client was faced with during the economic contraction of finding training with reduced budgets, forced us to look at new solutions and create an entirely new product line! This action of repackaging opened us up to creating a revolutionary product line, one that not only expanded our business but literally is changing the way people train, motivate, and improve sales performance. Without the quandary the contraction introduced, we may have rested on our laurels—and never even imagined designing this product. Remember, repackaging to solve problems didn’t just satisfy our existing clients; it allowed us to attract brand new customers and reenergized the company during a time when energy is everything!

Let’s say, for example, that you sell advertising and that you have a customer who currently can’t afford for you to write a $5,000 direct-mail package. However, he can afford to pay you $500 to critique a package he writes himself. Or maybe you’re a consultant with a client who can no longer justify spending $100 an hour for your services. You might design an alternative offering that provides your client with teleconferences and/or videoconferencing instead. Maybe now is the time to get your client’s staff to work on newsletters to your clients. Maybe it’s time to write your first book that you have wanted to write for years. Even if you don’t get it on the bookshelves, you can get it to your clients to show them you are still in the game and still expanding. If your clients aren’t spending money with you now because of monetary restrictions, repackaging to provide them with new solutions will keep you connected to them, reenergize the troops, give you new reasons to stay in contact—and when you come up with the right solution it will bring in much-needed revenue.

Freelancers, consultants, and other service providers can repurpose their expertise and services in a variety of formats: hourly and/or telephone consultations, critiques, newsletters, special reports, booklets, audio tapes, instruction manuals, books, seminars, blogs, advice columns, etc. Manufacturers and other product sellers can offer compact models, economy sizes, no-frills versions, special discounts, payment plans, and smaller minimum orders. For example, automobile giant General Motors is now introducing a 60-day money back guarantee—something the company never even considered to be an option before. The goal is to eliminate fear of decision making or loss from the customer’s mind-set in order to encourage more buyers. Those of you who have seen your core product’s sales drop off may want to increase your focus on servicing already-sold products. Service sales typically increase when overall sales diminish during difficult financial times since people often decide that it’s more economically sound to fix or improve what they already own rather than replace it.

These alternative reassembled products or services may not provide as complete a solution as your earlier offers did. You shouldn’t see them as a compromise, but rather a way to continue to accommodate your clients. Again, arrogance has no place during periods of contraction; the market is changing, and you must change along with it. Failing to offer an adjusted version of your merchandise might well mean a potential loss to a competitor who is willing to do so. If you don’t offer it, someone else probably will, at which point, you will have compromised everything by refusing to be flexible to economic fluctuations.

Finding new, smaller clients who might be interested in your revised products is another option—and a much better solution than losing the business entirely. When the big companies are not giving you large orders at high prices, selling these alternatives to the less affluent or budget-minded segment of the market can put lots of extra dollars in your pocket, maintain much-needed cash flow, and keep you in front of your audience. And realize that repackaging doesn’t always mean smaller sales. In fact, one of our product lines actually doubled in gross revenue because we repackaged it in a way that included services of very little cost to us. However, it doubled the value proposition and the product’s closing effectiveness during a time when our competitors were getting their heads handed to them.

Once you have repackaged, you may discover completely fresh product lines to get excited about, along with a new story to bring to your clients. This excitement is critical to advancing in any economic climate, especially during times of contraction. Take the time to creatively repackage. I assure you that this will elicit new products, solutions, and opportunities that you would not have otherwise discovered.

It is critical during a slow period that you keep a very tight, disciplined schedule—something I call a power schedule —to keep yourself and your company focused and productive. It’s fairly easy to become immobilized by bad news and find yourself doing little more than being worried, scared, and unproductive. But when things tighten up, you must be more disciplined, structured, and constructive with the time you have—not less. Any production, output, effort, or action done in sufficient quantities on a regular basis is better than no production—and it will get you results . Don’t just think of an economy in terms of money but of all the elements that compose it—goods, services, goodwill, clients, resources, equipment, activity, contact, and any efforts at production. The word production comes from the word produce , which means to cause to have existence or to happen or bring about. It also means to compose, create, or bring out by intellectual or physical effort. If you want to cause something to have existence, you must combine time with actions to produce the economy you desire. Consider this simple formula:

Time × Actions = Measure of Advance

The degree to which you advance is only limited by the amount of time and action you invest. While much—if not most—of the world vehemently refuses to spend time on activities that won’t immediately pay off, I would personally rather be productive and not be paid than not be productive and not be paid. In other words, I would rather do something for free than nothing at all. While many might disagree with this perspective, I can assure you that sooner or later, the productive person will be paid in some way, and inefficient people won’t. To put it a different way: The person who willingly swings the bat has a better chance at success than the person who refuses to swing . Any efforts—even poorly executed ones—will aid your progress toward advancing and conquering, especially if you make them regularly and follow them up with subsequent action. It’s especially important during a period of contraction to develop a disciplined commitment to using your time and energy. Most people don’t have enough of the “advance” component in their daily schedules. If you want to move yourself forward, you have to do a lot, and you have to do a lot consistently.