How to win business and gain market-share

If your customer has money to invest, would you rather they spent it on you?
You might think what a silly question, of course I want the money spent on me and not my competitor you say. If that is the case why do many business owners act in such a careless way as if they rather the money was spent with our competition?


Rather than focussing on how the extra revenue might benefit ourselves should we look long-term at what we can offer our customers, distributors, clients, franchisees and the best way is GC&P.... So instead let's look at guidance,care and protection.
If your client needs a product/service could you offer more guidance care and protection... You or your competitor?
If you have a competitor that is better than you at GC&P then watch out as they will take market share away from you and your business.


Just save all your the expense of running a business and send each customer to the competition. However if you set a best practice, getting it right on each and every occasion you will take customers away from you competitors. Don't be the one only after the money be the one that really wants to see your client/distributor grow and succeed.


This get's your customer into your fold as you start to gain a loyal following.
The word customer could be exchanged for anyone you do business with including franchisee,agent,client, distributor and possibly sometimes even supplier.

You must never be a weakling when it comes down to marketing as the best man will win and the meek will not inherit the sale.
Treat the customer like they are a child and not just any child... Your child.


So the customer is not just someone off the street they are like your child.
You are sworn to care, protect and guide your own child.Do the very same with your customer.


You could ignore this idea, even snigger, when you do the, there's a massive chance that the customer or rather the child will buy into another persons pitch and find someone who's saying they are more caring than you.


As customers sometimes buy the story of a scam artist a child can be lured by someone of warped character and in the same way customer can be taken advantage of.

Okay you say now he's rambling and lost the plot!


Wrong! Open both your eyes as right now today all around you there are people selling get-rich quick schemes. Whilst others have tremendous business opportunities and do not offer the (fake)care or guidance of the pitch of a well oiled get rich quick scheme.


The fake gurus all preach (give me money)I'll get you, customers quick, get to the top of Google in a day. If anybody offers you anything in the fast success department run away and do not even ask them any questions.
I will just repeat that again, when offered get-quick-anything WALK AWAY asking or answering no questions. There never has been get-whatever-fast and long-term never will be.
Customers are like children and simply it is not the customers job to know that.


With free sweets,like a child, they see the sweets and they get entranced. Those sweets look so tasty they forget why they came and why they met. In business it is more lolly than lolly pops that makes sane peolple forget that they didn't really want to get into business to get-quick-(insert a word). The real pitch is not instant riches more often we want freedom to live how and where we choose. Today I write this from my home on the beautiful Indian Ocean Island of Sri Lanka and I know that all my old chums (before self employment as a manufactures agent) are working 08:00am until 9:00pm 6 days a week playing a game called never enough and some earn more... so they should as they forgot how to stop.


Because most of us don't get into the business to 'get-top of Google,rich or whatever else-quick" keep very clear why we got into business.
Freedom over our lives and for our family.


We know that if we work for someone else,we've sold ourselves as wage slaves,someone will tell you what to do, when to do it and how long you can go on
holiday. The places you go are also dictated by the boss as they decide how much you will get paid and we're always at their beck and call.


Pissing you life away at the beck and call of another means they enjoy the lifestyle and you can count all the sunny days that pass you by. In the UK today we have around 250,000 people looking to escape that employment
trap and that is when we start a business. Then we find the business is actually much harder than we have ever intended. We work 7 days a week, three for the taxman, two for the bank and end up with a 10% bottom line profit. More sunshine is passing us by than ever before.
That's when the pervs with the sweeties pitch up. In business terms it is the fake guru's and outright scam artist who know you're struggling.
These people feed their family from knowing you'll do anything to get some more lolly in the bank. They know that you'll do anything legal to get noticed by the search engines or pitch all of your friends on a fake set of e-books or tapes. You should do your duty and fight off the fake guru and slick pitcher.
Your customer will get promised the world by these people and you know that the promise is false. You know that the get-quick-whatever is just a waste of time, energy and money. You can let these scam merchants win. Or fight them off. You will need to market the way you should and create more opportunities to do business. You are now going to brush up to present your products and services the way you should.A long comprehensive demonstration built off the back of asking questions will convert more customers and I promise you presentation matters.
Do you see what I see? Our false guru's selling get-quick-rich-whatever,are selling thin air.
The real business has real products/services and will not have anything to present that is so spectacular.
You can win the battle against the false guys by being smarter and this comes from understanding the psychology of a customer. So you have to be smarter. You have to present the information in a manner and sequence that goes in sequences to your customer's brain.

We all think in the same steps whenever we are buying something, we always follow a solid path to making a decision.
It will happen as fast as light and you need to be trained as to how this will happen. The brain sees the buying process as a ritual, customers like to solve problems, customers buy from what they see as people like themselves, customers never like to commit, customers have a secret code that they talk in to avoid buying, this code is often called telling fibs and customers use the information presented to thems against your business by touting it around the competitor.


Politely some might say this is a series of extremely analytical steps and this should be avoided at all costs and you should break the routine. Of course when we're marketing, we completely ignore the buying process. And in doing so, we fail to get hold the customer's attention and simply lose control.


When we lose control we drive that customer right into the arms of our competition.
The competition might be out of tune (like you), let the customer go,off they drift until a false guru does some smart selling and your customer is swallowed up.


The false guru and the scam artist has no hard sell to get the customer, they simply use psychological step and this is also great news is for you no hard sell need take place. Hard sell is not needed. Not wanted. Not required. What's needed is a buying process with all the right question, establishing the right information in the right process, and followed up with the right call to action.
The questions and the presentation are very important. The hard sell doesn't. Present your information, try to see if it is the right solution for a customer, customer, I prefer to try to eliminate in the right sequence and then the customer will come to you. And you can care, protect and guide them in the way you care and protect a child. Guidance, care and protection are the keys to controlling the ritual or you will fail to care, protect and guide.


You lose the customer. You lose the money a customer was about to pay you. You have less money than when you had a job, less holiday, no family treats and do not hit the business plan!


Keep this up and the bank will call in the loans or you struggle with the mortgage and then the family get at you. You go from happy-go-lucky employee to desperate business owner. And then the false guru comes along with a get rich quick pitch and you join the viscous circle. What happens next. If you wish to avoid what happens next keep an eye on this blog and get a slice of the online action at http://myinternetmillionaire.blogspot.com


I am pleased to keep you furnished with tips and quite frankly your money is not my motivation.

Just monitor your marketing, only spend money on what brings people to you, or you to the people and spend more on what works.

Make a presentation off the back of asking questions and present the price.

Have a reason to do business now.

Ask do you like it?
Is the price right?

Shall we get the paperwork out of the way?

The right process in these unusual times will make you a fortune and I hope to be of service along your journey

See you at the top!

Richard

Richard Williams

Chris Dawson, founder of the £150m retail empire The Range and Britain's boldest retailer

A great meeting is taking place and shows that great things will happen during tough times

Chris Dawson says that Allied Carpets is a place people visit to commit suicide. When MFI went bust, he bought £68m-worth of its stock, piled it onto 2,400 lorries and made an instant fortune. To him, recession is an opportunity to hire "first division managers for third division prices".

STOP PRESS>>>ENTREPRENEUR Chris Dawson has pulled off another massive coup – buying £29million worth of electrical goods from a failed national wholesaler.

Chris Dawson, 57, is the kind of man who could smell a fiver in a force nine gale. The son of a market trader, he gained his first sales experience aged seven, when he took charge of a jumble stall at a church market in his home town of Hooe in Plymouth. "It was a piping hot day and this guy came up, took off his plimsolls" and gave them to Dawson for jumble. Dawson tossed them in the pile, and an hour later, the man returned. "I sold him his old ones back for six pence," says the founder of £150m-a-year discount superstore The Range. "I remember thinking, bloody hell, I'm good at this."

He left school at 15 with little to show for it, and helped his father flog cockles and mussels from the back of a van, before trying his hand at motocross riding. Unfortunately, he didn't have the talent, he says. "World champions can see and hear differently from the rest of us. I couldn't." However, he could sell a suitcase full of jewellery and perfume better than anyone else on the markets. "At 18, I became quite a successful street trader. My mates were giving the same spiel, but I was taking double the money." Dawson, it seemed, was hearing and seeing things differently.

By his mid-20s he was making £10,000 a week, "telephone numbers", he says, because of the inventive ways he used to sell his products. Underneath a side door on a large white van, he started putting down straw in muddy fields and shining spotlights down on it. "So on an overcast day when most market traders would pack up and move on, I'd look nice and homely, and take more money selling china and dinner sets than anyone else."

But while he enjoyed the salesmanship, "once you've had all the rounds of applause, you think I want to achieve more". So in 1988, after "blagging credit from everyone I knew", he opened The Range, a 15,000 sq ft discount superstore outside Plymouth, kitting it out with everything from toys and homeware to DIY equipment and jewellery. One of Britain's first giant outlet stores, it competed directly with high-street stores, "who had a different set of overheads" at the time, and didn't negotiate hard enough on getting prices down. Dawson saw the gap and, without "one bit of planning permission and no banking facilities", opened the store in the Sugar Mill industrial estate. A Lidl-type operation, everything was sold out of boxes. "People used to come up to me and criticise what a mess the store was, but they'd be buying stuff as they were saying it."

Within four months, turnover hit £1m, and in the first year he made £250,000 profit. Within 14 months, he opened up in Exeter and by 1994 he had six stores across the southeast. Today, he has 40 branches and unlike many businesses, he remains unfazed by the recession. In fact, he says, "there are so many opportunities out there right now that it's like being an alcoholic in an off-licence". For example, he is the new owner of £68m-worth of goods from bankrupt furniture store MFI, which he is selling via www.tradingbargains.co.uk. But as to whether he'd ever sell The Range, the answer is a definite no. "You know, life's full of prizes and challenges, and this is my prize. You couldn't give me enough money to replace the fun I'm having."

Meet Chris Dawson and other confirmed Speakers

• Rohan Blacker & Pat Reeves, founders of Sofa.com, on how they turned the furniture industry on its head
• John Pickup, founder & CEO, Amputees in Action, on overcoming obstacles to build an award-winning business
• Chris Dawson, founder of The Range who bought £68m-worth of MFI stock, piled it onto 2,400 lorries and made an instant fortune, on his extraordinary entrepreneurial journey
• Barak Robinowitz, chief executive of one of Britain’s buzziest businesses Amuso, on the next generation of mobile business.
• Simon Calver, CEO of LOVEfilm, on building great British brands.
• Karen Darby, serial entrepreneur and founder of Call Britannia, on social entrepreneurship and job-creation.
• Obi Felten, technology guru at Google, will show how SMEs can make search engines work for them
• Chris Giles, Financial Times economics editor, will chair the debate on the future of the UK economy.
• Professor Russell Griggs, chairman of the CBI SME Council, on how Britain’s SMEs will raise finance in the future.
• Nigel Hammond, co-founder of Vespa Capital, will discuss how private equity is adapting to support SMEs.
• Lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman will chair our debate on the next big technology trends
• Michael Jackson, the man who took Sage to the FTSE 100 and a truly legendary business leader, will talk about how the UK will create its next great businesses.
• Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI, on how the British economy might look in the future.
• Tom Savigar from The Future Laboratory will paint a vivid picture of the future of UK business.
• Stephan Shakespeare, Britain’s top pollster and co-founder of polling company YouGov, on what entrepreneurs can expect from a new government.
• Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec Private Bank, on the forces shaping the UK economy.
• Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of EasyGroup and the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation, on keeping Britain a great place for entrepreneurs; and how entrepreneurship has the power to change lives.
• Tim Weller, the utterly inspirational CEO of Incisive Media, on building an international media giant.
• Jos White, co-founder of MessageLabs and Notion Capital, on where the next great UK companies can be found.

Bookings

BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW

Venue: London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square

Date: Wednesday May 12, 2010

Dress code: Business attire

Prices:

Early bird rate: £345 (+ £60.38 VAT) = £405.38

(book before April 14, 2010)

Standard rate: £395 (+£69.13 VAT) = £464.13

Booking confirmation...
Confirmation of your booking and a VAT invoice will be sent to you shortly after receipt of your application form and payment. If you do not receive your booking confirmation within two weeks of making your application, please telephone us on 020 7368 7123.

Cancellations...
Cancellations received in writing before midday on Tuesday April 13, 2010 will be subject to a 20% administration fee. All fees are forfeited thereafter.

In exceptional circumstances, the organisers reserve the right to change the programme without notice.

ARE YOU IN YOUR BEST ENVIRONMENT?

Always be mindful that if you're a product of your environment you must choose an environment that will best develop you toward your objective.

Are the things around you helping you toward your success, or are they holding you back and if so have you set yourself up for some self sabotage?

The first step toward getting somewhere is to decide that you're not going to stay where you are. You're not a captive of any environment and you can dictate the way you need to go.

If you don't like where you are today, make some changes everyday in every way and even tiny steps will take you in the right direction. You're not planted permanently in the ground like a tree. Don't say, "You would, if you could," start saying, "You will, because you can and you can if you want to."

When you become a part of anything it becomes a part of you.

Most people have one of three common relationships with their environment:

1. They try to protect themselves from it
2. They tolerate it
3. They try to 'work around it' so that it does not get in their way or slow them down."

Everyone knows the phrase, "You are a product of your environment," but most people never realise that they have the potential to proactively design and create environments that bring out their best. If you have any of the above three relationships with your environment, then chances are you are using a lot of personal energy and willpower to get things done. When you design empowering environments, the environments themselves support you and naturally pull you forward.

Here is a simple analogy to help you shift your thinking in this area. Many of us know people that have physical disabilities. We sometimes refer to such people as having "special needs". For example, we understand that people in wheelchairs need homes and offices with wide doorways, ramps, slip-resistant floors, grab bars, etc. We recognize that these modifications to their environment allow special needs individuals to function more effectively and efficiently. The secret is to realize that we all have special needs. Ask yourself:

• What is unique about me?
• How do I work best?
• How can I design and create an environment that will be ideal for me, and will support and inspire me?

Properly constructed environments can do all of the following and more:

• Nurture you - make you feel safe and protected
• Support you - provide you what you need to be your best
• Protect you - from the physical elements and other people
• Inspire you and naturally pull you forward; release your creativity
• Manage you - focus your time and attention

There are hundreds of other examples of how people have designed their environments to improve the quality of their lives. The key is to discover what works for you. Then instead of spending all of your energy trying to work on yourself - for example trying to make yourself more creative, productive, or organized - work on creating an empowering environment and let the environment bring out your best.

For me I enjoy sitting under a coconut tree in my PJ's and making sure that I keep away from that standard 9am-5pm

Think hard about the lifestyle you want and not the money.

As the saying goes Be careful what you wish for

Once in a far off land many years ago, there lived a poor stone-cutter who was unhappy with his lot in life. He longed to be happy and wished as hard as he could to be more powerful. Now this land was one full of magic and strange powers and it so happened that the stone-cutter wished so hard, he got his wish. With a gust of wind the stone-cutter was transformed into a rich man, riding on his own camel in fine clothes and beautiful jewellery.

As he rode, the stone-cutter thought to himself, ‘I wish I was more powerful … I wish I was a king. No one is more powerful than that.’ And once again his wish was granted.

Now he rode on a fine white stallion, with a crown of gold upon his head. As he rode on, the stone-cutter – now a powerful king – was caught by a great gust of wind which tore off his crown and sent it flying high in the air.

The stone-cutter thought for a moment before deciding that he wanted to be the wind, which was certainly more powerful than any king and could move anything it wanted. Lo and behold, the stone-cutter was transformed into a raging current of air which blew through the land, shifting everything in his path.

That was until the great wind came up against the side of an enormous mountain which simply would not budge. And, as you’ve probably guessed, the discontented stone-cutter wished he could be a great mountain standing proud and impenetrable, and through the magic once again he transformed into the object of his desire.

As the stone-cutter looked out across the land enjoying the feeling of strength and power, he noticed another lowly stone-cutter chopping large slabs from the bottom of his mound. The mountain saw this and longed with all his heart to be a stone-cutter again, as clearly such a man had the power to tame even the greatest peak.

So finally, as the mysterious powers once again transformed the stone-cutter, he at last realized that the grass is not always greener and perhaps he should have been content with his lot in life in the first place.

Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it, and then the chances are you’ll quickly tire of it and long for what you had! Appreciate what you have and make the most of your talents.