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1-Page Summary of The Ultimate Sales Machine
Overview
Chet Holmes’ book, The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies (2007), is a guide for increasing performance in any company.
Many companies try to improve their sales by using many strategies. But, maximizing a division’s potential doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be achieved with focus on key areas of improvement in the business. One way to think about improving sales is that managers and staff should do fewer things repeatedly instead of doing thousands of tasks once or twice. There are 12 proven principles that any business can develop for success, which include: 1) Focus on your customers’ needs, 2) Use technology wisely, 3) Build trust and credibility through honesty and openness, 4) Make every sale count (don’t give up after one try), 5) Listen carefully before you speak (and then listen some more), 6) Sell value—not features/benefits (remember the customer’s price sensitivity), 7 ) Keep it simple—avoid over-complicating prospects’ decisions by making them choose from too many options all at once 8 ) Stay focused on what matters most 9 ) Be persistent 10 ) Don’t let rejection derail you 11 ) Develop positive self-talk 12 ) Trust yourself
Managers should focus on improving their performance by better managing time and thinking strategically. They should also review how they hire new employees and train them. Salespeople must identify ideal clients even if those clients say they’re not interested, and concentrate on these ideal clients. Salespeople should follow up with potential customers after a sales presentation to ensure the sale is completed. Managers of sales teams should meet each week to discuss ways for all members of the team to improve in every one of these areas: time management, strategic thinking, client identification, training existing workers, communications methods between departments (sales staff has different needs than marketing staff), hiring practices (for example: what kinds of people are we looking for?), discipline (staying focused on goals), and motivation (setting aside time to improve).
Key Point 1: Effective time management is essential to growing a business. Striking the right balance is not complicated.
In order to get the most out of a day, people should simplify their schedules and routines. They should list no more than six tasks they want to finish that day, starting with the hardest projects and then deciding how long each task will take. Then, they must commit to getting things done. Business consultants have been touting this method for years. For example, Charles R. Schwab (the president of Bethlehem Steel Corporation in 1918) hired Ivy Lee as a business consultant after finding his executives were not being productive enough at work. Lee advised them on keeping short lists of only 6 tasks per day in order of importance and working through those lists from first to last without moving onto another until it is finished before going onto the next item on the list until everything is done; he charged $25,000 for this advice (a huge sum back then).
Key Point 2: To keep the company running smoothly, managers must train and retrain employees on a regular basis.
Training employees should not be considered a one-time affair. Managers have to train and retrain their employees regularly because it increases productivity, which saves the company money in the long run.
Training is becoming increasingly important as the economies of industrialized societies rely more on automation and artificial intelligence. A report conducted by McKinsey polled over 1500 executives from private and public sectors, who believed that they would have to retrain or replace up to 25% of their employees in 2023. However, only 16% said that their companies were very prepared for this change. The majority of respondents placed the responsibility on corporations rather than governments or educational institutions for retraining workers to cope with more automation.
