We’ve got 24 hours to work with…nothing more, nothing less.

You can get more done by 8 am if you’ll do a few things no one else will do.

I can’t remember who did the time study on CEOs in the U.S. I believe the finding was the average CEO achieved about 20 minutes productive time a day.

20 minutes!

How much of your time is spent on productive things in one day?

Let me define “productive” time for the pre-need seller.

Prospecting and Presenting is productive time.

Anything else done is un-productive.

The other day I turned in a bunch of business and spent at least an hour working on all of the paperwork.

Guess what. I consider that time un-productive.

The productive time was spent in front of my Prospects and getting the sale.

The question for you; how much time are you spending on productive time?

If you were to make one presentation per day what would happen if you were to make two presentations a day?

Two presentations would equal a doubling of your productive time.

If you spend one hour a day prospecting what would happen if you doubled it?

Well, here’s today’s tip:

Double the time you spend
Prospecting and Presenting
and you’ll increase your
sales a bunch!

It’s that simple

If you do nothing else just a little more time focused on productivity will increase your sales and trips to the bank. 

It’s that simple.

Now, all you have to do is tweak your schedule accordingly to double your sales in the next six months.

Happy Selling!

David…

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The BIG LESSON in this week’s latest newsletter is out.  It’s FREE to all subscribers but you’ve got to do one thing and one thing only…

You’ve got to be a subscriber

Subscribing is FREE and easy.  Simply go to the top right of the page and be sure and click the “confirmation” link I send you.  By the way, you might have to rescue the “confirmation” link in the junk-mail-trash can section of your email in-box.

I’ll send you The Latest Newsletter in the “welcome” email.

Newsletter Issue # 03      –        Free to subscribers 

The Big Lesson:

Process & Training

The Big Lesson

Issue #03

This month’s big lesson is about the process. Recently I received a book from a subscriber in New Jersey.  He goes by the nick name “Buzzy” and I wanted to publicly thank him for sending me the autographed book below;

Winning the NFL Way
Leadership Lessons from Football’s Top Head Coaches
By Rob LaMonte (with Robert L. Shook)

I often talk about how you can learn something from just about anybody if you can eliminate your own biases and listen for the content and ideas.

One of the emails I used to send my subscribers involved Tiger Woods.  The point is Tiger is considered the number one golfer in the world and he has a coach.  If the number one golfer has a coach why wouldn’t you?

But, after Tiger’s personal problems I began receiving emails from subscribers complaining about using Tiger as an example.  I eliminated the email (shame on me!).

What I should have done was leave the message to continue to illustrate the point.  None of us are perfect and we all have failings both personal and business.

If you want to learn how to improve yourself you need to understand what successful people are doing that you aren’t doing.  It is necessary to overlook other’s short comings to get the message.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the latest book I’ve been reading on leadership.

So, why am I recommending a leadership book to sellers of pre-need who may or may not be in management?

The book talks about 5 NFL football coaches, where they came from, and what they accomplished as head coaches including their work ethic and philosophy.

There are several lessons you can take away from this book whether you are a supervisor or individual seller of pre-arrangements.

On page 81:

“Andy Reid has never been like that. Instead he says,
‘I want you to make sure those guys are on time and make them work hard
when they’re in the training room.’
Coach never focuses on the product.
He focuses on the process.

There are two lessons to get from this paragraph.

Big lesson number one

Be on time and work hard in training.  Here’s the analogy.  Time is important.  Check out my previous postings on time and how to get more of it.  The reason football players work hard in the training room is so they’ll be conditioned to play the entire game at 100%.

…

To get the rest of this Newsletter FREE

become a subscriber today and

I’ll include it in your “welcome” email

Happy Selling!

David…

P.S.  If you’re already a subscriber, check your email box…

…

 How to Get 12 Hours Out of An 8 Hour Day!

     But first I’ll cover a couple of principles you should be shooting for in your sales career.  The first principle is to work smarter, not harder.  The smarter you work the less you work and the less time you’ll spend at the office wasting time and energy on unproductive things.

There’s never enough time to do it right the first time but
there always seem to be enough time to do it right the second time!

     The second principle is to kill two birds with one stone.  Anytime you make a Presentation and Prospect at the same time you are killing two birds with one stone and saving precious time. 

     Time is an interesting topic.  In our society today, we seem to always tell everyone that we have no time.  We are so busy we barely have time to get things done let alone setting aside time to relax, think, plan, and enjoy the good things in life.

     The third principle is the concept of working to live, not living to work.  It’s imperative to have balance in you life.  If you are spending 80 hours a week at work all the time pay special attention to my time management for memorial counselors’ tips. 

How to work less and make more money with a time management machine

     There are three basic techniques to time management:

• Time blocking
• Working smarter
• Discipline

  Time blocking is a very powerful technique that will create a lot of down time for you, consistency in your scheduling, and force you to be even more productive.

  When I first started in the cemetery business I set aside two hours for prospecting via phone every work day, same time, same phone, same office, with a cup of coffee.

  Once I began to ask for referrals during my presentation I virtually saved two hours a day as it was no longer necessary to cold call again.  That’s the power of mining your natural market!

Work smart save time, work less & play with more time

  Another example of blocking time is to always schedule your presentations during the same block of time daily.  If you need to work during the evening, schedule a block of time one evening weekly, same times, to make your evening presentations.

  I knew a guy that worked in family service and followed up with his families’ one of two evenings during the week.  It was either Tuesday or Thursday evening.  He would block a four hour time frame, four in the afternoon to eight at night every week.  He never deviated from that schedule.

  The result is he trained his customers to expect those times and days.

  It is similar to a Doctor who blocks out certain afternoons for patients.

  The example to copy is a Doctor.  Almost any Doctor blocks time to meet patients.  He/She never deviates from the schedule.  Blocking time saves enormous amounts of time for you and makes you even more efficient.  Doctors typically block different days and different times for new patients verse current patients.

  We’ve learned to expect time blocking at the Doctor’s office.  Most people think of a Doctor as having little time.  We’ve been trained well to believe this.  You are no different then a Doctor.

  A side benefit to blocking time is people appreciate it.  If people know you have a set schedule and do not deviate from it they will respect you even more.  The opposite is also true.  The more available you are the less you will be appreciated.

Play a little hard to get…

  Availability turns you into a commodity; a very bad thing to do.  Commodity products are thought of, in the mind of customers, as cheap and price is the major issue.  Never ever turn you or your product into a commodity.  Add value when ever you can, block your schedule and don’t be very assessable.

  Discipline is critical.  You can drag a horse to water but you can’t make the dumb horse drink the water!  You’ve got to dig deep down inside to find that spark of what makes you tick.  Take what makes you tick and turn it into discipline to do what needs to be done to be successful.  The tips in this course will guide your direction and help you achieve the outcome you are after.

  In other words, I can drag you to the watering hole but I can’t make you drink the water!  It requires discipline.  I can’t make you do it.  You have to figure out what makes you “do it”. 

Use a checklist to block time

  I remember a former Sales Associate I worked with who had a checklist of 5 things he did every day no matter how late he stayed in the office to accomplish his list.

  He followed up with three at-need families every day, sent a handful of letters to referred prospects, phoned for an hour, and walked the cemetery grounds (he would write down a few names of markers that didn’t have the spouses name.  He’d look up the information in the vault and contact the spouse about completing the cemetery portion and or pre-need funeral).

  Block your time like a Doctor, work smarter and more efficiently, and find the discipline necessary to get it done.

Happy Selling!

David…

P.S.  Invest in your SELF.  If you  don’t no one else will.  They can’t take your education and experience.  Those are the two things that make you marketable and in demand.  Get on over to the catalog page and invest in your SELF today!

The Catalog Page

P.P.S.  If you aren’t a subscriber yet, why the heck not?  Cruise over to the top right side of this page and punch in your name and email.  I’ll send you some specific strategies to launch you to the top and best of all it’s FREE…

Random Thoughts On Increasing Pre-Need Sales

These are little things that may not seem like much but add up quickly to huge results.

Here’s an interesting ditty on time I haven’t spoken about much and I’m just as guilty as you are by not using this strategy.

A study done years ago looked at how much “productive” time CEO(s) accomplished per day working.

I’m going by memory but I believe it was less than 30 minutes a day of productive time.

One thing I know for certain, for the Pre-Need Seller, there are numerous time wasting things occurring every single day.  Before long YOU begin to wonder why your sales suck!

My Number One Strategy is:

LIMIT ACCESS TO YOU

To really appreciate this strategy you’ve got to take a long hard look at how much of your time (by the minute) is being stolen through little things. 

For example: 

1. If you are going to go to lunch make your lunch partner come to you.  You’ll be able to continue working and won’t waste 10 – 30 minutes in the restaurant waiting on your lunch partner.
2. Quit checking your email every 5-minutes.  Check it once, twice, three times a day at predetermined times.
3. Forget the impromptu meetings.  Meetings are out.  Meetings are the most unproductive time wasters on the planet.
4. Don’t wast lots of time with Prospects who are less than a 6 on a scale of 1 – 10.  Spend time with the 7 – 10’s on the scale.  Use your assistant (if you have one) or marketing to warm them up before you spend lots of wasted time on the phone or in-person meetings.
5. People need to complain about how hard it is to get to you.  Make it tough.  Quit wasting time by focusing on the little things that steal your time away.  Eliminating just a couple of these time wasters will add to your productive time and SALES.  By the way, sales is where it’s at.  These time wasting things take away from your presentation/close, follow-up, stay-in-touch, and other productive endeavors that ultimately make you money.  Stay focused! 

Finally, I’d say to use TIME BLOCKING to help you create a schedule you can keep.  Also, use your TO DO LIST and make sure you’re crossing off things you’ve got to do daily.  I like to use a simple yellow legal sized pad.  Without organization there is chaos (as my former teacher used to say).  I’ve added: 

Without organization there is chaos

and TIME WASTED

and NO SALES!

Top Producers are way more productive with time.  Just adding 30 minutes to an hour of productive time will increase your sales dramatically.

My Number Two Strategy to Increase sales:

The COPY STRATEGY

We’ll talk more about this one next time.

Happy Selling!

David

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You know who I’m talking about?  The seller of pre arrangements who gets to the office in time for coffee and a doughnut only to begin the wandering routine of;

What am I going to be doing today?
Why am I here?
Where’s the  leads?
Complaining that NO one wants to purchase pre-arrangements

I could go on.

There’s an old saying that “if you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there“.

We’ll be covering a lot about the wanderer next week.

We’ll be covering how to Discover what kind of Pre-Need Seller you truly are and how to get out of the slump column and into the sales column.

With a little bit of organization (not much because I’m the most disorganized person I know) and a little bit of direction we’ll get into how you can double your sales in half the time.

Yes, you heard me right!

How to double your sales in half the time.

I’m talking about selling more in the next six months than you did in the last 12 months.

So, in the mean time, there’s a couple of selling days left.  Take advantage of them or if you’ve hit your goals for the year rest up and relax for a couple days and get ready to begin selling lots more prearrangement’s than you ever thought possible.

Happy New Year!

Happy Selling

David…

…..

I refer to this as a Champion Endorser® (see more on this in the Ultimate Package)

The best time to get referrals is early in the presentation.  The second best time to get referrals is to mention throughout the presentation and the third best time is after the sale.

In other words it is always a good time to ask for referrals.

Your monthly newsletter is another perfect opportunity to ask for referrals.

Whatever you do always be asking or bringing up the topic of referrals all the time.  People forget.  As soon as your new customer walks out the door he/she has forgotten all about it.  Remind them of referrals.

Finally, think about your process from beginning to end.

Put together a ‘referral’ opportunity into each step of your Marketing/Prospecting/selling/stay-in-touch/follow-up program. 

If you don’t ask you don’t get.

And, for Pete’s sake, don’t forget to reward your Referrer.  It can be a personal note, a pat on the back, dinner, candy, flowers.  Don’t forget to acknowledge your Referrer somehow some way.  I’m guilty of this mistake myself but you’ve got to do it (another one of my many New Year resolutions).  Better late than never but acknowledge your Referrer.  If you haven’t done so, do it now!

Happy Selling!

David…

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